Prepare for a SQL Interview with LearnSQL.com

You've been working hard to get a SQL interview at your dream company. Now they’ve called – and you need to prepare if you’re going to ace it. In this article, I’ll show you the most efficient way to prepare for a job interview using the interactive SQL courses at LearnSQL.com.

SQL is an essential skill for anyone working with data. Wanna be a data analyst, data scientist, software engineer, or tester? You’ll need to learn SQL.

This language also comes up in a lot of today’s job interviews. If you are applying for a job as a data analyst or software developer, you will likely be asked about your SQL skills. And interviewers love to quiz you to be sure you know what you claim to know; if you don’t want them to catch you out, you’ll have to practice!

This article will show you three ways to prepare for a SQL interview:

• A fast track for those who need to review their SQL knowledge quickly.
• An optimal way for those who have an upcoming interview, but are not pressed for time.
• The ultimate path for those who have plenty of time for interview prep.

3 Ways to Prepare for Your SQL Job Interview

1.   Fast Track

Were you unexpectedly invited to an interview on short notice? And you just found out that this interview includes a SQL section? Don’t worry – we’ve got you covered. If you have only a little time to prepare, here’s what you can do.

First, take our interactive SQL Basics course. This course is designed to teach beginners the foundations of SQL, but it’s also a great way to refresh your SQL knowledge. It will help you review all important SQL topics: selecting from a single table, joining multiple tables, sorting data with ORDER BY, grouping data with GROUP BY and HAVING, and using subqueries and set operations. There are 129 interactive exercises, each with a little bit of reading and a task to solve. You write real SQL code, so you refresh your skills through practice while building up your confidence.

When you finish this course, you will receive a SQL certificate that you can publish on your LinkedIn profile. It’ll let your future employer know that you are serious about preparing for a job interview and that you have done your homework.

Next, we recommend you do some reading to review popular SQL interview topics. We recommend these articles for a quick recap before a SQL interview:

• Complete SQL Practice for Interviews
• The Top 10 SQL JOIN Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
• Top 9 SQL GROUP BY Interview Questions

This, of course, is just the tip of the iceberg. We have many interesting articles on our blog. Remember to subscribe so you don’t miss anything (and you’ll get our newsletter, too!).

2.   Optimized Prep

If you’re not as pressed for time to prepare for the interview, we recommend a longer interview preparation path. This will help you to review more SQL topics, and in more depth.

We still recommend that you start your preparation with our SQL Basics course and review the same SQL interview articles:

• Complete SQL Practice for Interviews
• The Top 10 SQL JOIN Interview Questions and How to Answer Them
• Top 9 SQL GROUP BY Interview Questions

Next, take our How to INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE Data in SQL course. SQL is not only about SELECT queries. This course will refresh your knowledge of INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE – SQL commands that modify data in a database. These topics can occasionally come up in a SQL interview, so it’s good to refresh all SQL’s different concepts. This course contains 52 interactive exercises for working on data in a SQL database.

Finally, take our SQL JOINs course. It helps you deepen your knowledge of SQL JOINs (beyond what’s in the article; the 93 exercises will give you plenty of hands-on practice). You’ll review the most common SQL JOIN topics: different JOIN types (INNER JOIN, LEFT JOIN, RIGHT JOIN, FULL JOIN), joining multiple tables, and joins with complex conditions. You might want to review the SQL JOINs Interview Questions article again after you complete the course, just to consolidate your knowledge.

3.   Complete Path

If you don’t have anything scheduled yet – giving you a lot of time to prepare for a SQL interview – we recommend an even more in-depth review path.

First, take our SQL Basics, How to INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE Data in SQL, and SQL JOINs course. With a total of almost 300 exercises, you’ll practice all the foundations of SQL: SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and JOINs. To consolidate your knowledge, read the SQL interview articles mentioned above.

Next, take our Standard SQL Functions course. This course teaches the most commonly-used SQL functions. A SQL function is a predefined piece of code that you can use in your queries. SQL functions are essential for anyone doing data analysis and can sometimes come up at a SQL interview. The 211 exercises in this course cover functions that handle text, numeric, date and time, NULLs, and more.

Finally, take our Creating Basic SQL Reports course. The course contains 97 exercises that let you practice common patterns used in creating reports. The dataset for this course comes from a fictional store, and the queries you’ll write resemble real-life reports. You’ll also be able to refresh various SQL clause nuances that often come up in an intermediate-level interview.

As with all our courses, these are fully interactive. And you’ll get a certificate of completion at the end.

Bonus: LearnSQL.com Practice Track

So, you’ve completed one of the SQL interview paths outlined above and you’re looking for even more practice. We can help you there, too.

First, we have the SQL Practice track, which has 6 interactive SQL practice courses and over 600 exercises. The practice courses focus on a specific SQL topic, such as SQL JOINs. You can also get an all-around review in our SQL Practice Set. Or you can focus on a specific business domain, such as analyzing store sale data in Basic SQL Practice: A Store. Or you can analyze results of a track competition in Basic SQL Practice: Run Track Through Queries! In addition to the SQL Practice track, each month we publish a new SQL practice challenge in our Monthly SQL Practice track.

We’ve shown you how to use LearnSQL.com interactive courses to prepare for an SQL job interview. LearnSQL.com offers over 60 interactive SQL courses in 4 different SQL dialects at various levels of proficiency. On our platform, you can learn new SQL concepts, practice your SQL skills, or refresh your SQL knowledge before an interview. Sign up for a free LearnSQL.com account today.