SQL Retention Over Six Months | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is SQL Retention Over Six Months. Start with the requirements and the two tables on the right.

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Problem

Thumbtack wants to measure whether service professionals who completed a job during January 2025 continued completing jobs over the following five months. Write a PostgreSQL query that calculates monthly retention for this January cohort.

Requirements

Define the cohort as distinct professionals with a completed job from January 1 through January 31, 2025.
Return one row for each month from January through June 2025, including the cohort month.
Calculate retained professionals, the fixed cohort size, and retention rate as a percentage. Count a professional once per month, even if they completed multiple jobs.
Include months with no activity and order the output chronologically.

Schema

professionals

Column	Type	Description
professional_idPK	INT	Unique Thumbtack service professional identifier
service_category	VARCHAR(50)	Primary service category listed by the professional
onboarded_at	DATE	Date the professional joined Thumbtack

jobs

Column	Type	Description
job_idPK	INT	Unique job identifier
professional_id	INT	Professional assigned to the job
status	VARCHAR(20)	Current job status
completed_at	TIMESTAMP	Timestamp when the job was completed