October 7, 2011 at 5:55 am
codebyo (10/7/2011)
Jeff Moden (10/6/2011)
Ah... yeah... found it...That's brilliant! Thank you.
Bookmarked. 🙂
Best regards,
You bet. Brent did a wonderful job and did a lot of work putting all of that together. Pass your comment on to him... he'll really appreciate it.
--Jeff Moden
Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.
October 7, 2011 at 9:04 am
mendesm,
If you do not know Gail Shaw and Jeff Moden, it would surprise me a lot.
Pei
October 7, 2011 at 9:59 am
JamesMorrison (10/6/2011)
mendesm (10/5/2011)
Don't take this personally, but when a resume comes my way with "MCITP/MCTS" and other MS certifications I pass the resume on to the trash barrel.
These days, the more certification people get, the more it seems they have memorized enough of some training manual in order to pass a test, but when the s**t hits the fan they're clueless on how to use all their certifications to fix the problem.
That has got to be one of the least useful management strategies I have ever read.
Your resume review policy is likely causing you to pass on the most qualified SQL DBAs and developers around your area.
In my experience there are 3 types of DBAs around:
a) Certification with no experience (least useful)
b) Experience with no certification (average)
c) Experience with certifications (above average)
The ones with experince and no certifications typically are the types who get silo'd and limited to just the basics.
This leads to a lack in broad understanding of areas of SQL Server outside their comfort zone.
Staying up to date, with MS certifications for SQL Server, exposes you to features that most people otherwise wouldn't use on a daily basis.
I would say it is fair to trash the resumes of people who are "paper MCTS/MCITP" similar to the criticism that came from the "paper MCSE" issues during 1999-2001.
But if a resume clearly has years of SQL Server experience and also has certifications on top of that, you are beyond foolish to reject those resumes simply because the person validated their experience.
The SQL Server MCM mandates having MCTS/MCITP for both DBAs and development skills.
Under your "trash certs" policy you would be passing on a MCM who could likely run circles around you.
It sounds like you are more scared of hiring someone who might know more than you and make you feel smaller.
That is a major problem I have observed over the years in IT tech interviews. Most techies are not qualified to perform a tech interview. They are too prone to use it as a chest thumping exercise to establish their "IT God" dominance over the potential new hire. The egos in most IT departments are not suitable for management or making hiring decisions.
Sure my policy may be passing on a good candidate here or there, but I have yet to be unhappy with a DBA candidate I was responsible for hiring.
As for the scared part, it's the opposite of that. I truly enjoy working with people who have better knowledge/abilities than I do. I can only learn from a situation like that. Case in point it the last contractor we got for a dev position at my current job. Where before I used to carry a laptop with me everywhere, now this person is totally trusted to be my backup when I'm not around and I have learned lots from him in the six months he has been with us. He's SQL dev here, but his AD account is permanently a member of our production AD SQL Admin group. He has no certifications at all, yet he interviewed like a champion. People were too worried that they might not be able to communicate with him too well due to a very heavy accent, but I insisted it would not be a problem. We're actually in negotiations with his current agency to get him to come on board as a full time employee.
I'm going to try to clarify it again. When it comes to choosing a candidate for a DBA position, neither lack of professional experience nor the amount of certifications play an important role to me. It is what that person demonstrates to me he/she knows and is capable of doing. If I pass on a good candidate because of my resume review habits, that's OK, someone else will hire them and I'll end up finding someone too.
October 7, 2011 at 10:01 am
Pei Zhu-415513 (10/7/2011)
mendesm,If you do not know Gail Shaw and Jeff Moden, it would surprise me a lot.
Pei
I'm horrible with names, unless they're people I interact with a lot. So I'm going to tell you that I do not know them. But I'll google them up right now.
EDIT: Yup, I heard and read about them before, but the names did not ring the bell. Again, I suck with names.
October 7, 2011 at 11:14 am
mendesm,
I am extremely horrible to remember names. But I know them( I meant I know their names). I remembered that Steve Jones posted a daily question to ask if you know these sql persons. I bet you do not read sql books, sql blogs alot. I bet you do not even visit this site a lot either. If you really involved with sql and spend time to learn sql, you absolutely at some points see their names somewhere. I wonder how you could be in position to scan the dba's resume. Sorry to be harsh.
Pei
October 7, 2011 at 11:56 am
Be harsh all you want or need, it does not bother me. I'm a big fan or honest words.
As I sit here, I have no less than 8 books just on SQL Server piled up on my desk, bibles, unleashed, etc. There are some more at home. Honestly, I don't have the habit of memorizing the names of the authors that write the books I read. Should I? Maybe, but I don't. When I buy books such as SQL books, I go by either the people's comments, ratings and recommendations, if it's not a book I've owned a previous edition. For those with few or no reviews, if the subject interests me, I buy them, read and then decide for myself if those wore worth it or not.
No, I'm not a frequent visitor to the forums, except for lately. But I do read the stuff that interests me from the RSS feed from sqlservercentral.com.
How am I qualified to interview/hire DBA, or even work as a DBA? Who knows? I sure will not be the one to convince you and you'll probably agree with me that I'd be a bit biased there =)
Having said that, it has not been just once or twice that past employers have asked if I was interested in going back, or asking if I'd be interested in joining them in their new venture. If not interviewing, I must be doing something else well enough.
October 10, 2011 at 6:47 pm
I dont think having MCTS\MCITP is any disadvantage. We recently interviewed a person with such credential, and reckon he really know his stuffs. Just unfortunately he was planning an overseas trip to take MCM exam but we require a hire pretty urgently. Call me bias, but if you doubt a person with MCTS\MCITP, I reckon you can be stricter with the questions. I would, and I expect any interviewers to be the same when they interview me.
Its very unfortunate there isnt a MCM exam centre in Sydney, Australia. I'm attempting full MCTS\MCITP myself to eligible for MCM exams, so I definitely wouldnt want my resume to end up in a bin. I barely passed 70-450 with 700/1000, but I scored 957/1000 in 70-451 yesterday.. woohoo..
Simon
Simon Liew
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server 2008
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