I’ve heard it both ways — Shawn Spencer, Psych

I Was Disqualified From A Job For Not Knowing How To Pronounce SQL

I’d somehow never heard of see-quil

Photo by Campaign Creators on Unsplash

Note: This is a slight expansion (with grammar correction) of an answer I wrote on Quora to Have you ever said something in an interview that immediately disqualified you from the position?

My long career in IT started in programming.

I joke that I was a mediocre to a below-average programmer. The truth is, I wasn’t bad, I just lacked real-world experience. I‘d taught myself to program, along with learning bad habits. Fortunately, I picked up good ones in college.

College isn’t the real world though.

An internship followed by a full-time programming job provided programming experience. However, I displayed an aptitude for other IT skills and that’s the direction my career took.

Still, a few years ago I decided to get back into computer programming.

A ColdFusion job had come open in my area. I had all the technical requirements, including some programming experience. I just didn’t have any…