All Employees with Titles — FROM Clause in SQL

The problem

Helix Systems' HR team is preparing an onboarding package for a new department manager who needs to review their inherited team.

Write a query to return every employee's ID, name, job title, and hire date.

Assumptions:

The employees table contains every active and former employee at Helix Systems.
Each employee record has an id, a name, a title, and a hire_date.

Output:

One row per employee, with columns id, name, title, and hire_date.

Schema · hr 4 tables

departments

id integer

name text

location text

budget numeric

salaries

id integer

employee_id integer

amount numeric

effective_date date

end_date? date

employees

id integer

name text

email text

department_id integer

manager_id? integer

hire_date date

title text

is_active boolean

job_history

id integer

employee_id integer

title text

department_id integer

start_date date

end_date? date

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Solution query

SELECT
  id,
  name,
  title,
  hire_date
FROM
  employees

The shape

FROM employees pulls the workforce roster, and the four columns in the SELECT list shape every row into the onboarding-package format: who the person is, what they do, and how long they've been there.

Clause by clause

SELECT id, name, title, hire_date returns four columns per row, in the order written. That order matches the way a new manager would read the roster: identifier first for cross-referencing, then the name they'll greet, then the title that tells them what the person actually does, then the hire date that tells them how senior the person is on the team.
FROM employees reads every row in the employees table. The prompt is explicit that the table contains both active and former employees, and there's no WHERE clause here to narrow it down — so the result includes everyone the table holds. For an onboarding handoff, that's worth noticing: the new manager will see former employees in the list alongside current ones unless the query learns to filter them out.
The column names land in the result exactly as they appear on the table: id, name, title, hire_date. No AS aliases, because the table's existing names already read clearly enough for an onboarding document. Aliases earn their keep when the underlying name is cryptic or when a computed column needs a label; for straightforward reads from a well-named table, the defaults are fine.

Why this and not `SELECT *`

The employees table likely carries more columns than these four — department references, salary fields, contact information. The new manager needs the basics to start, not the full HR file. Listing the four columns explicitly gives them a clean roster they can scan in one sitting, instead of a wide sheet that scrolls sideways.

You practiced reading several columns at once without aliasing — the column names in the result match the names on the table. Default column names are the cheapest reasonable choice when the table's column names already read clearly.

Return every employee's ID, name, job title, and hire date

The shape

Clause by clause

Why this and not `SELECT *`

Reading explains SQL. Writing it, over and over with instant feedback, is what makes you fluent.

The shape

Clause by clause

Why this and not SELECT *

Reading explains SQL. Writing it, over and over with instant feedback, is what makes you fluent.

Why this and not `SELECT *`