What do They Look for in a New Hire?
As a hiring manager, there have been times when I have had two very qualified DBA’s sitting in front of me. Both of them are looking for a position on a team and both of them know their stuff. How do you make a decision between the two?
As a hiring manager I have hired Jr. DBA positions as well. How do you make a decision on a role like a Jr. DBA that is really defined as someone who is starting to learn about being a database administrator and not a seasoned professional?
I have been in both of the above situations more than once. It is a difficult decision to make when you step back and realize that, if the DBA stays with the company for at least one year, you are trying to make a decision that will last 2,000 hours just based on a couple interviews and a resume. The people that I end up with in the long run have given me every reason to hire them. They have participated in a local user group and they are members of professional organizations. People that go out of their way to become better professionals are worth their weight in gold.
I cannot help but to remember that people can learn a number of technical skills but they have a harder time learning the desire to better themselves or to put in the extra hours to make sure something is just right. Consider this as an example:
About 5 years ago I received an e-mail that was sent to me when I was the local user group president. The person who sent me the email wanted to know how to get their first time DBA job. I had lunch with her and another friend of mine and she talked about how she had paid to go to a conference and how she had been studying at the same time she was going to school.
She became a regular at the user group meetings and today she is starting what I believe to be her 5th year as a DBA. She really put forth the effort to make sure she was learning and doing everything she could to become a better DBA.
Did You Know?
SQL Server 2008 has a new feature called the resource governor. This feature will allow you to manage resources based on connection to the SQL Server. This can really help when a reporting team is on the same server as production and the reports could take away from production processing.
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