Welcome to another edition of T-SQL Tuesday! This month’s blog party is hosted by Kevin Feasel (b). Kevin also happens to be the maintainer of Curated SQL, which is an excellent resource to keep up on current trends! Anyway, in this month’s edition, Kevin has asked us to write about our favorite job interview question(s).
You Know Everything… Right?
In my personal opinion, a strong candidate for just about any position, isn’t one who happens to be a walking encyclopedia with a photographic memory. In fact, I really do NOT want a “know-it-all,” even one who truly DOES “know-it-all.” K.I.A.’s (a rather unfortunate acronym yes, but I’m feeling lazy so will keep using it) are oftentimes arrogant, lack empathy, and generally difficult to work with. They bring a library of knowledge to the table, and they know it… and unfortunately act accordingly. This has just been my unfortunate experience with K.I.A.’s, and there’s absolutely exceptions out there… and if you DO find one of those exceptions, well, make that exception!
Seek… and You Will Find Answers…
Anyway, I’d far rather find someone who is resourceful, especially when faced with something they do not know. So I will often ask questions that will test that resourcefulness. I’ll ask for stories or anecdotes, when a person got thrown into something and had to “figure it out.” What did they do? Where did they look for information? Did they turn to others? If so, who? I might also vary it, by asking hypotheticals. If you had to learn technology X tomorrow, where would you start? How would you go about it? What would be your learning process? And even better, have you had to do something like this recently?
Reading Between the Lines
The nice thing about questions like the above, is that one can also read between the lines and learn other things about a candidate. Are they excited when they answer? Do they have personal stories to draw upon or are they just giving generic answers like “I’d find a book.” Does being thrown into something unknown make them uncomfortable or excited? You may be able to glean what type of learner they are as well; some folks prefer to read, some prefer to dive in and get hands on first.
TL;DR – What Is Your Favorite Interview Question Andy???
One whose answer contains multiple insights. One where I can learn something about a person by their verbal answer, but also learn more deeply about them by their non-verbal answers.
Thanks for reading!
Every Byte Counts 
Thanks for your contribution. Learning how to learn is a crucial skill. And one core failing of the know-it-all type is a brittleness of that knowledge: I know that X is the best strategy because it was the best strategy in 2007 and therefore, I don’t need to read anything else about it—it is known. I think that’s where you get a lot of the fervency in things like “Of course page life expectancy is fine in production–it’s 408 seconds, which is clearly above 300 seconds!”