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Home > Interview Tips >SQL Interview Questions and Answers

SQL Interview Questions and Answers

SQL interview questions and answers is all about getting you more SQL job offers.


Which sounds easy but will require some work on your part, as passing a well structured interview processes is quite a challenge. Having spent many years recruiting for IT service firms, the technical roles require successful candidates to demonstrate both technical aptitude and a suitable personality for the company in question.

 

SQL Interview Questions and Answers – Interview process

SQL interview questions and answersThe job interview process is likely to be a minimum of two face to face interviews, usually comprising elements for HR, Technical suitability, and manager level final interview.

It would be natural to focus all your SQL interview questions and answers revision and preparation work on the technical interview, as clearly this is going to be the area your work will focus on, but the other two areas, are the ones where I have seen technically strong candidates come unstuck most often.

In general terms the HR interview is normally described as an informal interview to review your past performances, and exchange information to make sure both parties are happy with each other.

It is my belief that the difficulty of the HR interview is often very much underestimated. I also feel that in many large organisations HR representatives have a lot more power to veto candidates than they did say 10 years ago.

The modern HR professional, has most likely been through a professional interviewing course, and will probably use a structured behavioral interview process, that will be targeted to verifying the facts detailed on your CV / resume, as well as gaining a good understanding of your personality and motivations.

Structured interviewing techniques such as behavioral, or competency, based interview questions are designed to get you to open up about yourself and your experiences, from which point the interviewer, will look to dig deeper on aspects of your answers that interest or concern them.

To answer these types of questions well, you will need to have done your interview preparation, and ideally also understand a behavioural interview answering strategy such as the star method.

The star method is a technique that ensures your SQL interview answers will contain all the critical elements; skills used, personality attributes, and commercial understanding, all wrapped in a compelling experience based story. Follow this link to find out more about the STAR Method for answering tough interview questions.

I will deal with the technical aspects of the interview later in this article, but really wanted to emphasise the point that excellent technical ability is rarely enough to win job offers for highly competitive roles.

This is because your SQL technical ability may well enable you to be considered able to do the job, but the person getting the job offer will ALSO be considered the best fit for the team / culture. Or put another way they will have scored high on “likability” with everyone that they meet.

It is for this reason I recommend the STAR method as it will help you develop answers that are strong on factual content, but also include the personality elements that make for likability.

The senior level interview, sometimes called the executive interview, is often the final interview in the process, this maybe with the person likely to be your direct boss, or possibly someone more senior.

If you’re comfortable with a method such as the star method, and you have done your preparation you should well prepared. Just be mindful these folks tend to be more concerned with the commercial outcomes than the deeply technical.

SQL interview questions and answers – The technical interview


The SQL technical interview could be with your potential direct boss or team leader, a technical subject matter expert or maybe someone at peer level. Though I have interviewed hundreds of technical experts, I do not consider myself to be capable of doing a deep technical interview.

So at this point for real expert advice regarding SQL interview questions and answers I strongly suggest following this link as Pinal Dave is a real subject matter expert and his fantastic blog on SQL interview questions and answers should give you everything you need to research for your SQL interview.

I hope this article proves helpful and wish you all the best with your own SQL interview questions and answers, and search for great SQL roles.


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