Technology & Data

The £80k data hire who can't write a WHERE clause

Ella Alexander · 26 Jul 2026

We've just had our third mid-level data analyst in 18 months walk in with a stellar CV, FTSE 250 experience, Python expert, the works, and they've completely crumbled when asked to pull a basic cohort retention query from raw event logs. Not a pipeline issue, not BigQuery nuances, just fundamental SQL logic that you'd expect from someone on £35k, never mind £80k. My CTO's pushing to scrap technical assessments altogether because they put good candidates off, but I'm starting to wonder if that's madness. How's your org validating real technical competence mid-hiring-market right now without making the process so onerous you lose people to faster-moving competitors?

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5 replies

Musa Brennan · 26 Jul 2026

I've actually seen some really strong candidates get put off by lack of technical assessment, they want to prove themselves. Maybe we're just looking at this from the wrong angle, and it's not about putting people off but about finding people who are genuinely passionate about the work.

Rabia Ross · 26 Jul 2026

I made a similar mistake at my old company, we hired someone who looked great on paper but it turned out they were relying on tools to generate their SQL. Now I'm at a new place and I'm doing things differently, I'm involving the team more in the hiring process to get a better sense of the candidate's actual skills.

Luna Thompson · 26 Jul 2026

Fundamentally, it's about finding the right balance between CV screening and practical testing, I've found that pairing a technical task with a mock project can give a much clearer picture of a candidate's abilities, and it's something we've started doing with great success.

Ira Wu · 26 Jul 2026

Given the current market, I'm worried we're not just hiring people who can't write SQL, we're also hiring people who are really good at faking it, and that's a whole other level of risk. If someone's managed to bluff their way into an £80k role, what else are they going to pretend to be able to do, and how's that going to affect our team's workload. We need to think about how we're going to support our existing staff when they have to pick up the pieces from someone who can't deliver on their promises.

Ronke Cook · 26 Jul 2026

Somewhere along the line we've got to consider the impact on our existing teams, I've seen it take around 6 months to get a new hire up to speed, and if they can't even write a basic SQL query that's a huge burden on the rest of us. We're using Tableau to visualize our data, but if the person pulling the data can't filter it properly the whole thing falls apart, it's not just about the new hire, it's about the quality of the insights we're getting.