Jim,
So how many like this did you hear?.....
John P Weatherman
Database Administrator
Replacements Ltd.
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 11:24 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
mkb,
Your surprised? Over the last 6 years I've interviewed many a candidate
while we added two DBA's to the group. I've gotten a lot of answers like
this:
Question: How do you create a table?
Answer: The developer sends me a script. I run script.
Question: How do you shutdown a database?
Answer: Turn off the power to the computer.
Question: How do you change the block size of a database.
Answer: Change it in init.ora, restart database.
Question: How do you add a datafile to a tablespace?
Answer: You can't.
Question: What are archived redo logs?
Answer: There is no such thing.
BTW: these folks had an OCP certificate.
Best answer to a question I've asked:
Question: You have a database crash at 6AM, what do you do.
Answer: Get a cup of coffee first, then look in recovery manual.
We hired the guy, he's still here 2 years later and just recently got his
OCP.
Dick Goulet
____________________Reply Separator____________________
Author: mkb <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 7/22/2002 6:58 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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