[anshumanravi]

Hi, Agree that interview should be less academic, but academic knowledge does matter. it’s not really about how much candidate can answer , for that written/technical test is enough, IMHO Personal interview meant to find out how candidate approaches to solution, And thats when its disappointing when candidate would say I know what “db indexing” does but do not know how. If one do not know how, it signifies candidate is not interested( or capable) enough to know problem and thus if selected chances of him/her writing erroneous code would be more. .

[r2dnb]

I understand where you're coming from, but the thing is asking :

- What is DB indexing

- Can you think of any impact when indexing in this situation

- What are you general thoughts about indexing, can you think of an example when you used it and how it helped.

Will indeed give you insight into how he approaches problems and his maturity. But the difference with this and : tell me how indexing works behind the scenes, is that you focus on what really matters.

With that there is no right or wrong answers, there's just insightful answers.

I do not disagree on the fact that fundamental knowledge is important, but I disagree on the way you assess it. I disagree on the notion that there is an equivalence between fundamental knowledge and formal knowledge. One can be comfortable adding things up without knowing that it is called an addition.

If he does : great, if he doesn't it doesn't matter as long as he has the insight.

More generally the majority of our knowledge is not formal.

[anshumanravi]

> - What is DB indexing

Yeah I asked exactly same question, And instead of answering what it i, candidtate told me why they used it.

> - Can you think of any impact when indexing in this situation

That's Why I want to know if candidate understand what really index does, One cant tell a realistic answer of this question until S(h)e knows how index works.

> - What are you general thoughts about indexing, can you think of an example when you used it and how it helped.

Even if one used it in some situation in pastm and it helped, I would consider it not enough as it could be possible S(h)e used it by reading some blog/tutorial etc without understanding it fully, it's like ok switch it off and on, did it work? well forget about it then.