An Essential Plan to Get Your SQL Knowledge Ready for Interviews

SQL is the cornerstone of a wide variety of data-intensive roles, and it is not going anywhere soon. Loads have been written about its usefulness already, so this post is focused on getting your skills from C to A+ for your interviews. No knowledge is assumed, and I feel comfortable promising that your level will be more than enough for what will be asked in interviews if you follow this game-plan.

Get comfortable with quarrying data from structured tables.

Guidelines:

I assumed limited or no knowledge at all on your side. The fact is that anyone can master SQL, if they choose to do so. No need for a bootcamp, tutoring, or a GPU — an average laptop will do.

This is a process, therefore don’t expect to get it all done in a week. A month is a reasonable time for a complete rookie, 2 weeks if you have some experience.

The following curated resources and plan were tested by people I mentor and have been working well. Anyone makes their own modifications as needed but the overarching idea is to practice practice practice. You would need to start from day one with at least 40% of your time spent solving questions hands-on.

Here we go:

This is your plan, ordered chronologically. 

How to use this plan?

Follow these simple rules to ace the SQL interview:

1. No one plan fits everyone — use it as a template and iterate as needed.
   
2. Remember that the SQL flavor does not matter.  some functions exist only for some flavors — it is not likely that your interviewer would care what flavor you know. The syntax is easy to learn — logic is not that easy to improve.
   
3. The rule of thumb should be: lectures/videos and theory is only good if you can translate them to hands-on practice.
   

Your plan to ace those SQL questions.

This notion page is available here. Feel free to use this notion page I put together for you and let me know how it goes!

More analytics gems available for you on my site. My twitter account is open for DMs, feel free to ask away.

Good luck with your interviews!