Wednesday, February 28, 2007

How good IS good?



I've been interviewing loads of candidates recently (you may have seen my ads on Jobserve and LinkedIn) for Siebel Analytics consultants.


By the way, if you would like to connect on linkedIn (www.linkedin.com) please send an invite to adrian.ward@majendi.com; in the note say you are reading the blog.

Most of the interviewees have stated that they are pretty good at developing Analytics applications. One said that he was an expert and knew all of the components in detail.

So, to test this I ask a few simple questions (see my previous blog for some examples). Before long it becomes obvious that they have over estimated their own ability. This makes for an awkward end to the interview because it's obvious that they have been exposed. So why do they do it? Do people really believe that they know the system like the back of their hand, or is it bluff to try and get past the interview and into the job where they will learn?


Perhaps my questions are too difficult?

Try this one, and see what you think.

Q. What Types of Physical Table are there?

A. There are 4 types of Physical table

- Ordinary
- Alias
- Stored Procedure
- Select

Not really a difficult questions, is it?

But no-one could answer it.





Whilst I’m on the subject of tables, the new OBI EE has a slightly different way of creating Aliases.


You now have to include the Orignial underlying Table in the model (something I always do but found others do not). Right click on the table and select New Object.. Alias.


4 comments:

Unknown said...

That's a good question - must admit if I was asked I think I would be stumped too! - but then I don't think I'm an expert!

We use a lot of aliasing in our build (we're on 7.8) but tend to keep the original physical model alone so we tend to have the original table in place.

The new version's add alias would be a speeder solution - as we tend to dup and mod the exisiting table

Adrian Ward said...

So, who is lost in space.

Do they work at Cattles?

I'll add you to my blogroll.


Reveal yourself!

Unknown said...

Yes - I work at Cattles

And Am an aspiring analytics bod - thou still on the steep learning curve!

Unknown said...

and thanks for adding me to your blogroll

I hope my mad mutterings are worthy!

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