HR and Interviewing

The IT job market is on the rise again. It’s been ramping up for some time, but the clear sign, is the “movement” on the companies, people leaving and new people getting in, and the blogoshpere with articles about interviews.
Employers can no longer be laxist about the employees, or they will leave. And everyone wants to find the best people.

To Joel Spolsky, from the famous Joel on Software, hiring is about getting the best people. Period. As the gap between excellent and average programmers is 10x, it pays up to find the best. The best people, are not only very smart but people that gets things done (pragmatic). And that’s what his company tries to do. They interview by phone, and the smartest are flown to New York, with everything paid, for a personal interview.
(http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html)

To Mini (from Mini-Microsoft fame), the solution to overcome the peak in the competition for talents between employers, that leads to hiring of not so good programmers, would be to create a Microsoft Academy, to teach the main technologies used inside MS. That way, people with potential and motivated would graduate and be ready to integrate the team that best fits them, while other people would wash-out (the course would be very hard and intense).
Even to switch groups inside Microsoft, people could get the training and skills from the courses teached, giving microsofties a real chance to control their careers, and Microsoft a chance to internally reorganize, getting people in their correct positions and motivated.
(http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/11/microsoft-academy.html)

On the employers side, HR is getting even harder.
As the demand goes up, so goes the salary. And with big payments, everyone tries their hardest to make the cut. Embelishing the resumé, or even outright lying! To counter that, employers are paying detectives to investigate references, neighbours and past employers to check CVs, references and even neighbours.
(http://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/opinion-pieces/the-cv-detectives/)

To end up, here are some links related to interviewing for DBA, questions:
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones/2686.asp (interview questions)
http://www.geekinterview.com/articles/sql-interview-questions-with-answers.html