Re: Certifications don't count! (from one who has none)

From: Allan Nelson <anelson77388_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 10 Jun 2008 16:14:19 -0500
Message-ID: <ffb96860806101414g70ef2e69gd04a7650f9126dc6@mail.gmail.com>


The truth of it is that hiring is hard. Certifications, at least in the days of technet, can mean that the candidate put in a lot of work and used the test process to acquire a fair working knowledge of Oracle. It can also mean that a candidate has good retention and has used software test simulators and passing the test is all they can do with Oracle.

The key in my experience is to interview with a series of troubleshooting scenarios. I take something that has happened on our systems, reduce to a "here's what you know" and then ask them how they would proceed. What I'm listening for is how they approach the troubleshooting effort, not what we actually found to fix the problem. This has proven helpful for me but not bulletproof.

Too often though the Oracle minutia interview is just an ego driven contest to see who knows the most obscure things about Oracle.

I like the older position some have taken to certification: A useful guided tour of those features of Oracle that you don't use every day.

Any hard and fast rule about hiring or not hiring certified candidates in my view is an attempt to avoid expense and work in screening applicants. There is no doubt that acquiring knowledge about applicants is both time consuming and expensive. If it is HR that is driving your policy then you know that your HR department is deficient in imagination or work ethic or both. If it is your quick and dirty rule for screening dba candidates as a practicing dba trying to do a good job for your team and your company, then I might gently suggest that more is possible.

Allan

Allan

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Received on Tue Jun 10 2008 - 16:14:19 CDT

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