SQL Interview Questions: 3 Tech Screening Exercises

Over the last 6 years I’ve been part of many job interviews – on both sides of the table. The most fun, but also the most feared, part of the process is the technical screening. In this article, I’ll show you three SQL test exercises that, in my experience, are quite typical in data analyst job interviews. (And hey, these are “sample” SQL interview questions but they are heavily based on reality!)

Before the tasks – What can you expect in an SQL technical screening?

There are two common ways an SQL tech screening can be done.

The simpler but less common way is that you get a computer, a data set and a task. While you are solving the task, the interviewers are watching and asking questions. A little trial and error is totally fine, as long as you can come up with the correct solution in a reasonable amount of time.

The other, more difficult (and by the way much more common) way is the whiteboard interview. In this case, you don’t get a computer. You have to solve the task and sketch up the code on a whiteboard. This means that you won’t get feedback (at least not from a computer) on whether you made a logical or a syntax error in your code. Of course, you can still solve the tasks by thinking iteratively (cracking the different SQL problems one by one), but you have to be very confident with your SQL skills.

Additionally, usually you have to solve the tasks on the fly. Maybe you will get 3-5 minutes of thinking time but that’s the maximum you can expect. The good news is that because of that you will get relatively simpler tasks. (See the difficulty level below!)

Note: there are other types of tech screening – like the take-home assignment – where you can prove that you can solve more complex coding challenges, too.

Test yourself!

Here are three SQL interview questions that are really close to what I actually got or gave on data analyst/scientist job interviews!

Try to solve all of them as if they were whiteboard interviews!

In the second half of the article, I’ll show you the solutions, too!

SQL Interview Question #1

Let’s say you have two SQL tables: authors and books .

The authors dataset has 1M+ rows; here’s the first six rows:

author_name book_name author_1 book_1 author_1 book_2 author_2 book_3 author_2 book_4 author_2 book_5 author_3 book_6 … …

The books dataset also has 1M+ rows and here’s the first six:

book_name sold_copies book_1 1000 book_2 1500 book_3 34000 book_4 29000 book_5 40000 book_6 4400 … …

Create an SQL query that shows the TOP 3 authors who sold the most books in total!

(Note: I got a very, very similar SQL interview question for a data scientist position at a very well-known Swedish IT company.)

SQL Interview Question #2

You work for a startup that makes an online presentation software. You have an event log that records every time a user inserted an image into a presentation. (One user can insert multiple images.) The event_log SQL table looks like this:

user_id event_date_time 7494212 1535308430 7494212 1535308433 1475185 1535308444 6946725 1535308475 6946725 1535308476 6946725 1535308477 … …

…and it has over one billion rows.

Note: If the event_date_time column’s format doesn’t look familiar, google “epoch timestamp”!

Write an SQL query to find out how many users inserted more than 1000 but less than 2000 images in their presentations!

(Note: I personally created and used this interview question to test data analysts when I was freelancing and my clients needed help in their hiring process.)

SQL Interview Question #3

You have two SQL tables! The first one is called employees and it contains the employee names, the unique employee ids and the department names of a company. Sample:

department_name employee_id employee_name Sales 123 John Doe Sales 211 Jane Smith HR 556 Billy Bob Sales 711 Robert Hayek Marketing 235 Edward Jorgson Marketing 236 Christine Packard … … …

The second one is named salaries . It holds the same employee names and the same employee ids – and the salaries for each employee. Sample:

salary employee_id employee_name 500 123 John Doe 600 211 Jane Smith 1000 556 Billy Bob 400 711 Robert Hayek 1200 235 Edward Jorgson 200 236 Christine Packard … … …

The company has 546 employees, so both tables have 546 rows.

Print every department where the average salary per employee is lower than $500!

(Note: I created this test question based on a real SQL interview question that I heard from a friend, who applied at one of the biggest social media companies (name starts with ‘F.’ :))

Solution of SQL Interview Question #1

The solution code is:

SELECT authors.author_name, SUM(books.sold_copies) AS sold_sum
FROM authors
JOIN books
ON books.book_name = authors.book_name
GROUP BY authors.author_name
ORDER BY sold_sum DESC
LIMIT 3;

And here is a short explanation:

1. First you have to initiate the JOIN . I joined the two tables by using:

SELECT *
FROM authors
JOIN books
ON books.book_name = authors.book_name;

2. After that, I used a SUM() function with a GROUP BY clause. This means that in the SELECT statement I had to replace the * with the author_name and sold_copies columns. (It’s not mandatory to indicate from which table you are selecting the columns, but it’s worth it. That’s why I used authors.author_name and books.sold_copies .)

3. Eventually, I ORDER ed the results in DESC ending order. (Just for my convenience, I also renamed the sum column to sold_sum using the AS sold_sum method in the SELECT statement.)

Solution of SQL Interview Question #2

The SQL query is:

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM
  (SELECT user_id, COUNT(event_date_time) AS image_per_user
  FROM event_log
  GROUP BY user_id) AS image_per_user
WHERE image_per_user < 2000 AND image_per_user > 1000;

The trick in this task is that you had to use the COUNT() function two times: first, you had to count the number of images per user, then the number of users (who fulfill the given condition). The easiest way to do that is to use a subquery.

1. Write the inner query first! Run a simple COUNT() function with a GROUP BY clause on the event_log table.
2. Make sure that you create an alias for the subquery ( AS image_per_user ). It’s a syntax requirement in SQL.
3. Eventually, in an outer query, apply a WHERE filter and a COUNT() function on the result of the subquery.

Solution of SQL Interview Question #3

Solution:

SELECT department_name, AVG(salaries.salary) AS avg_salaries
FROM employees
JOIN salaries
ON employees.employee_id = salaries.employee_id
GROUP BY department_name
HAVING AVG(salaries.salary) < 500;

Note: You can solve this task using a subquery, too – but in an interview situation the committee will like the above solution better.

Brief explanation:

1. First JOIN the two tables:

SELECT *
FROM employees
JOIN salaries
ON employees.employee_id = salaries.employee_id

Watch out! Use the employee_id column – not the employee_name . (You can always have two John Does at a company, but the employee id is unique!)

2. Then use an AVG() function with a GROUP BY clause — and replace the * with the appropriate columns. (Just like in the first task.)

3. And the last step is to use a HAVING clause to filter by the result of the AVG() function. (Remember: WHERE is not good here because it would be initiated before the AVG() function.)

Watch out: in the HAVING line, you can’t refer to the alias – you have to use the whole function itself again!

Prepare for SQL tech screenings by practicing!

If you managed to solve all these questions properly, you are probably ready for a junior or even for a mid-level Data Analyst SQL technical screening.

If not, let me recommend my new online course:Practice SQL!– where you can level up (or brush up) your SQL skills in only a few days. When you finish the course, just come back to this article and I guarantee that you will be able to solve these questions!

Practice SQL! online video course  

And if you are just about to start with SQL, start with my SQL For Data Analysis series on the blog!

Conclusion

The hard part of these SQL interview questions is that they are abstract. The tasks say to “imagine the data sets” and show only a few lines of them. When you get an exercise like that, it helps a lot if you have seen similar datasets and solved similar problems before. I hope solving the tasks in this article will boost your confidence!

If you have questions or alternative solutions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment.

And if you haven’t done so yet, subscribe to myNewsletter!

Cheers,

Tomi