This was during the spring, and I'm in the MT zone, thus it was an hour earlier in AZ. The recruiter didn't seem to care and called me after 7 PM repeatedly. She definitely let on that she had technical experience. It took me a while to realize she was just an average recruiter. I felt like she didn't want me to know that, so at one point I asked her the question: “Do you have some DBA experience?”

The issue was that she would ask a technical question, like: “What is the difference between a RIGHT and LEFT outer join?” I’d answer, and it wasn’t fitting into her script exactly. It was very annoying.

The next interview was with my future manager. That interview was great. I nailed all but one question. I owned up to it. It was about SQL Profiler, and I answered, “Yeah, I’d have to resort to Google on that.” They actually liked that answer and told me how much they appreciated it later.

A few days later, they asked to schedule a flight to AZ. I said yes and got one day off from my current employer. They picked me up in a car and brought me to corporate in Scottsdale. I was an hour late due to flight delays. I sat at corp. security for a good 15-20 minutes while they figured out what to do with me. Finally, I was led to a small room in HR. Another 10 minutes passed, then the recruiter came in. She talked for a minute mostly about Bob Parsons and how much of a god he is, then went over a mission statement on the wall written by Bob.

She then gave me a timed test: 15 minutes, 100 questions. It was a stupid IQ test. It mostly used a lot of old English and word association. I wasn't told there would be an IQ test, and I wasn't prepared at all – I left at 4 AM to get there that morning. Anyway, I ended up running out of time at question 65 and failed it. That being said, I got 63 out of the 65 questions correct. I chewed the recruiter out for not telling me I “had” to finish it to pass (opposite of most IQ tests – it’s more important to get correct answers), and she let me re-take it. Of course, I passed. She did apologize for not explaining it.

Then, there was a code test. It was easy, but there were a few cryptic questions, which I left question marks in. Example: "What is the difference between a batch and inline query?" I basically wrote down the definition of an inline query, and since “batch” is too vague, I just wrote "too vague" or something like that. Also, the recruiter wouldn’t stop talking about how amazing the job is but how I’m going to work harder here than anywhere else. I kept saying, "Really? Is this job over 100 hours a week? I certainly hope not!" At this point, I felt like this was completely not for me.

Finally, I interviewed with my future manager and a peer in person for the rest of the day. This went much better. He apologized for the pointless test, and we actually got down to some real Q&A. Turns out I was a good fit. Although, I wasn’t sure my hiring manager would get past HR after what happened and how I basically dissed their entire process.

Two hours later, at the airport bar, I got a phone call with an offer. The letter came two days later with a salary amount which was more than reasonable. The bonus amount was stated as a straight percentage. Later, I found out it’s only 50% of that for the first year. I signed the offer letter and faxed it back. However, by this time I was dealing with a new recruiter for some reason, probably because I pissed off the other one. The new recruiter asked for a start date; I told her two weeks. However, they did not tell me it was more than just a criminal background check. This is where some issues started…

They did call all of my old employers – every single one. One of them didn’t exist anymore, and I had to explain that. Also, they didn’t call my references until this point. They ignored my instructions for calling them, so they could only get a hold of one – no surprise.

Then we got to the drug test. I was on prescription drugs (painkillers) and knew the test would fail. I made them aware of this, and they seemed very annoyed about it. I told them I had a prescription. They said that after I failed the test, it would delay the hire process and I’d have to present the prescription once they asked for it. BS!!! I had already given notice at this point and was considering a lawsuit. But instead, I went off the meds for four days (painful) and took the test after that to avoid the complications. Luckily, I passed and didn’t have to deal with this.

Another week went by, and everything came back okay. However, during this time they went ahead and scheduled air travel and hotel for new hire training. The reservations were to a nice place, etc. However, this is where I started to get pissed again. The recruiter sent me the reservations and gave me a brief (one paragraph) copy/paste of part of the travel policy. I asked for the reimbursement policy and what’s okay to expense for meals, etc. I never got an answer. It turned out to be fine; I just assumed some things and was mostly correct.

All aside, I love working here. Just not going through their interview/hiring steps.

If you have an application hitting a database, and you have no access to its source code, how would you figure out what tables it's using for a certain record?