8 Tenneco SQL Interview Questions (Updated 2024)
Tenneco employees use SQL daily for analyzing production efficiency data across multiple manufacturing units and for optimizing supply chain operations based on real-time inventory datasets. That's why Tenneco almost always asks SQL query questions during interviews for Data Analytics, Data Science, and Data Engineering jobs.
To help you ace the Tenneco SQL interview, we'll cover 8 Tenneco SQL interview questions – scroll down to start solving them!
8 Tenneco SQL Interview Questions
SQL Question 1: Identify the Top Spending Customers at Tenneco
Assuming one of Tenneco's primary businesses is selling car parts, you've been asked to identify users that consistently contribute high revenue to the company due to frequent purchases of high value parts. Based on the transaction history, identify these "whale" users for Tenneco. To do this, determine the top 5 users who have spent the most at Tenneco within the past 12 months.
Example Input:
| order_id | user_id | purchase_date | item_id | item_price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1001 | 123 | 09/08/2021 | 50001 | 125.0 |
| 1002 | 456 | 09/10/2021 | 50002 | 150.0 |
| 1003 | 789 | 10/20/2021 | 50003 | 200.0 |
| 1004 | 123 | 11/02/2021 | 50002 | 150.0 |
| 1005 | 456 | 12/25/2021 | 50004 | 300.0 |
| 1006 | 789 | 01/01/2022 | 50005 | 100.0 |
Answer:
This SQL query will calculate the total amount spent () by each user () on Tenneco's items in the past year. The data is ordered in descending order, so the users who spent the most will be at the top. With , only the top 5 users (or less if there are fewer than 5) will be returned.
To practice another SQL customer analytics question where you can code right in the browser and have your SQL solution automatically checked, try this Walmart Labs SQL Interview Question:
SQL Question 2: Employees Earning More Than Managers
Assume there was a table of Tenneco employee salaries. Write a SQL query to find all employees who earn more than their direct manager.
Tenneco Example Input:
| employee_id | name | salary | department_id | manager_id |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emma Thompson | 3800 | 1 | |
| 2 | Daniel Rodriguez | 2230 | 1 | 10 |
| 3 | Olivia Smith | 8000 | 1 | 8 |
| 4 | Noah Johnson | 6800 | 2 | 8 |
| 5 | Sophia Martinez | 1750 | 1 | 10 |
| 8 | William Davis | 7000 | 2 | NULL |
| 10 | James Anderson | 4000 | 1 | NULL |
Example Output:
| employee_id | employee_name |
|---|---|
| 3 | Olivia Smith |
This is the output because Olivia Smith earns $8,000, surpassing her manager, William Davis who earns 7,800.
Test your SQL query for this interview question and run your code right in DataLemur's online SQL environment:
Answer:
First, we perform a SELF-JOIN where we treat the first table () as the managers' table and the second table () as the employees' table. Then we use a clause to filter the results, ensuring we only get employees whose salaries are higher than their manager's salary.
If the code above is confusing, you can find a step-by-step solution with hints here: Employees Earning More Than Their Boss.
To learn more about Tenneco read about the Tenneco commitement to sustainibility.
SQL Question 3: In the context of database schema design, can you give an example of a one-to-one relationship vs. a one-to-many relationship?
When designing a database schema, a one-to-one relationship between two entities is characterized by each entity being related to a single instance of the other. An example of this is the relationship between a car and a license plate - each car has one license plate, and each license plate belongs to one car.
On the other hand, a one-to-many relationship is when one entity can be associated with multiple instances of the other entity. For example, a person can have multiple email addresses, but each email address only relates back to one person.
SQL Question 4: Finding the most commonly purchased product in each quarter
The Tenneco company sells automobile parts. One important analysis they do is to determine the most commonly purchased product each quarter.
The Purchase table below records all sales. Each row represents a single product purchase by a customer.
The task is to determine the product with the most purchases for each quarter of the year.
Sample Tables :
Example Input:
| Purchase_id | Customer_id | Purchase_date | Product_id | Quantity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1001 | 123 | 2022-02-15 | 20001 | 1 |
| 1002 | 124 | 2022-03-20 | 20001 | 2 |
| 1003 | 125 | 2022-01-30 | 20002 | 1 |
| 1004 | 126 | 2022-04-16 | 20003 | 1 |
| 1005 | 127 | 2022-05-11 | 20003 | 3 |
| 1006 | 128 | 2022-06-09 | 20004 | 2 |
| 1007 | 129 | 2022-07-15 | 20002 | 1 |
| 1008 | 130 | 2022-08-21 | 20001 | 5 |
Answer:
This query extracts the quarter of the year from the purchase_date and groups by both the product_id and the extracted quarter. It also counts the number of purchases of each product within those groups. This should give the number of purchases for each product in each quarter. Finally, it orders by the purchase_count in descending order to get the most purchased product in the first row for each quarter.
The output of the query will give us the product_id along with the corresponding quarter of the year and the number of purchases for that product in that specific quarter.
To practice another window function question on DataLemur's free interactive SQL code editor, try this Google SQL Interview Question:
SQL Question 5: Why are stored procedures useful for analysts?
Stored procedures are a lot like functions in programming. They're used to encapsulate and organize business logic into one unit of code, and they can accept multiple input parameters and return multiple output values.
For a concrete example, suppose you were a Data Scientist on the Marketing Analytics team at Tenneco. A task you would encounter freqently would be to calculate the conversion rate for Tenneco's ads over a certain time period, for which you would write the following stored procedure:
To use this conversion rate stored procedure, you could call it like this:
SQL Question 6: Search for Customers with Specific Details
Given a database table named that contains basic customer information of Tenneco, we need to return all customer records where the customer's first name starts with "Jo" and the customer's city contains "Lon".
The table has the following schema:
Example Input:
| customer_id | first_name | last_name | city | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 123 | John | Smith | London | johnsmith@gmail.com |
| 254 | Joanne | Symes | Stoke-on-Trent | joannesymes@gmail.com |
| 672 | Sam | Brown | London | sambrown@gmail.com |
| 789 | Jo | Williams | Bristol | jowilliams@gmail.com |
| 890 | Joan | Jones | London | joanjones@gmail.com |
We want to find customers whose first name start with "Jo" and the city contains "Lon".
Answer:
Here's a PostgreSQL query that would solve the problem:
Expected Output:
| customer_id | first_name | last_name | city | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 123 | John | Smith | London | johnsmith@gmail.com |
| 890 | Joan | Jones | London | joanjones@gmail.com |
This query uses the keyword to find matches based on our criteria. The percentage sign () is a wildcard character that matches any sequence of characters. When used before a string (like in ), it will match any characters before "Lon". When used after a string (like in ), it will match any characters after "Jo". This way, our query will return all customers whose names start with "Jo" and live in a city that contains "Lon" in the name.
SQL Question 7: What does the constraint do?
The UNIQUE constraint makes sure that all values in a column are distinct. It is often paired with other constraints, like NOT NULL, to ensure that the data follows certain rules.
For example, say you were an analyst on the marketing team at Tenneco, and had access to a database on marketing campaigns:
In this example, the UNIQUE constraint is applied to the "campaign_name" field to ensure that each campaign has a unique name. This helps to ensure the integrity of the data in the table and prevents errors that could occur if two campaigns had the same name.
SQL Question 8: Analyzing Customer and Purchase Data
Tenneco, an auto parts manufacturing company, wants to analyze their database to understand their customer's buying habits and the performance of their products. They have a table containing customer information, and a table containing purchase information.
The task is to write a SQL query that will join the two tables to find out: For every customer, what is the total sum they have spent till now and what is the count of unique products they have bought till now.
The tables' structures are as follows:
Example Input:
| customer_id | first_name | last_name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | John | Smith |
| 2 | Jane | Doe |
| 3 | Bob | Johnson |
| 4 | Alice | Williams |
| 5 | Charlie | Brown |
Example Input:
| purchase_id | customer_id | product_id | purchase_date | purchase_amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 101 | 1 | 201 | '2022-01-01' | 500.00 |
| 102 | 1 | 202 | '2022-02-01' | 200.00 |
| 103 | 2 | 201 | '2022-03-01' | 300.00 |
| 104 | 3 | 202 | '2022-03-01' | 800.00 |
| 105 | 4 | 201 | '2022-03-01' | 150.00 |
Answer:
Here is a PostgreSQL query to solve the task:
This query will join the two tables based on the , and for each customer, it will sum up all their purchases (total_spent) and count the distinct products they bought (unique_product_count). These results will be grouped by the , and columns.
Since join questions come up routinely during SQL interviews, try this Snapchat JOIN SQL interview question:
How To Prepare for the Tenneco SQL Interview
The best way to prepare for a SQL interview, besides making sure you have strong SQL fundamentals, is to practice a ton of real SQL questions that were asked in recent job interviews.
Besides solving the earlier Tenneco SQL interview questions, you should also solve the 200+ SQL questions from real Data Science & Analytics interviews which come from companies like Netflix, Google, and Amazon.
Each problem on DataLemur has hints to guide you, detailed solutions and most importantly, there's an interactive SQL code editor so you can easily right in the browser your SQL query and have it executed.
To prep for the Tenneco SQL interview it is also wise to solve SQL problems from other automotive companies like:
But if your SQL query skills are weak, don't worry about going right into solving questions – improve your SQL foundations with this SQL tutorial for Data Analytics.
This tutorial covers SQL concepts such as CASE/WHEN/ELSE statements and creating pairs via SELF-JOINs – both of these show up often during Tenneco SQL interviews.
Tenneco Data Science Interview Tips
What Do Tenneco Data Science Interviews Cover?
In addition to SQL interview questions, the other question categories covered in the Tenneco Data Science Interview include:
- Statistics & Probability Questions
- Python or R Programming Questions
- Product-Sense Questions
- Machine Learning and Predictive Modeling Questions
- Resume-Based Behavioral Questions
How To Prepare for Tenneco Data Science Interviews?
To prepare for Tenneco Data Science interviews read the book Ace the Data Science Interview because it's got:
- 201 interview questions taken from companies like Google, Tesla, & Goldman Sachs
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