Re[2]: Rant

Ken,

    The reason I liked the guy we hired as out Junior DBA. He did not know the answer, but did know where to find it in the manuals. He also knew to calm himself down. Premature actions often cause more trouble.

Dick Goulet

____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: "KENNETH JANUSZ" <kjanusz_at_att.net>
Date:       7/22/2002 7:23 AM

One thing to keep in mind is that it is easy to get "rattled" during a job interview and have your mind go blank on you. This is especially true with computer technical types who are basically introverts. Some years back when I was a corporate controller I interviewed a young lady for a admin type position. Her interview was a total disaster. She took the typing test and completely messed it up. But there was something about her skills that came through and I hired her. I was never sorry that I did. She could type up complicated tax forms that were always 100% correct. She was a model employee.

Sometimes you have to go by your gut feel. Answers to technical questions are not the complete picture.

My $0.02 worth,

Ken Janusz, CPIM

• Original Message ----- To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com> Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 9:58 AM

> Ok, I need to vent a little.
>
> Last week, I was asked to do some tech interviews over
> the phones for a mid level DBA position. Someone with
> about 2-3 years experience.
>
> I don't consider myself a real smart DBA, nor do I
> think that I ask particularly tough questions. The
> questions that I ask potential candidates are soley
> based on what is on the resume. So I figure if
> someone has, say, hot backups or SQL tuning on their
> resumes, I'd expect them to be able to hold a fairly
> intelligent conversation about these topics. No such
> luck!
>
> What really frustrated me, and what I really want to
> get out of my system, is that nobody that I talked to,
> had a real good concept of hot backups. Forget about
> recovery. I asked each and every candidate who
> claimed to have done hot backups, just give me a high
> level overview of how you do a hot backup. Don't care
> about syntax, just give me the mechanics. The answers
> I got were completely off base, baffling and
> frustrating. Some of these folks claimed to have 5
> years experience!!!
>
> 'Well, we use scripts to do these, so I'm not sure how
> these are done...' (But it says on your resume you've
> done this???)
>
> 'Oh, I take the tablespace offline, and copy the
> datafile to tape...' (Unless I'm mistaken, that's not
> how a hot backup is done, right?)
>
> 'Well, I use the export utility, and as the backup
> starts, it is written to the dump file.' (Huh? What?)
>
> 'During this time, everything is written to the redo
> logs and not to the tablespace...' (You've been
> reading one of those books, haven't you?)
>
> I also asked them how they'd put a tablespace in
> backup mode. Simple enough, right? Not one of them
> got it right. Not even close. Didn't have clue as to
> what I was talking about. Fair enough, you don't
> know. Well how about a simple recovery scenario. I
> asked every candidate how they would do an online
> recover of a datafile while the database was still in
> use. No ideas. Not even close.
>
> I dunno, perhaps I'm spoilt by being a member of this
> list? Perhaps I expect every candidate to be as
> knowledgeable as you guys? Perhaps I'm asking too
> much?
>
> Rant over. Thanks for listening.
>
> mkb
>
>
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Author: KENNETH JANUSZ
  INET: kjanusz_at_att.net

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  INET: dgoulet_at_vicr.com

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