Excel and SQL Foundations | Dataford Interview Questions

Tell me about your experience using Excel (PivotTables, IF/AND/OR formulas, and VLOOKUPs) and SQL (joins, primary vs. foreign keys, and core clauses like SELECT, FROM, WHERE, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, and CASE WHEN).

For the SQL portion, use the provided department and employee tables to produce a department-level summary. Identify the primary and foreign key relationship and account for departments without employees.

Output

One row per active department with department_name, employee_count, high_earner_count, average_salary, and salary_profile.
Include departments with no employees. Classify profiles as No employees, High, or Standard.
Order by employee count descending, then department name ascending.

Schema

departments

Column	Type	Description
department_idPK	INT	Unique department identifier
department_name	VARCHAR(100)	Department name
is_active	BOOLEAN	Whether the department is active

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee name
department_id	INT	Employee department identifier
salary	NUMERIC(10,2)	Annual salary
employment_status	VARCHAR(30)	Employee employment status

Your question is Excel and SQL Foundations. Start with the requirements and the two tables in the Question tab.

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Problem