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N037-E1 Tier 3 · Intermediate · easy hr · Helix Systems

Return the ID, name, and title of every employee whose title contains the word `Account`, regardless of capitalization

Part of Pattern Matching (LIKE, ILIKE, SIMILAR TO, Regex) in SQL

The problem

Helix Systems' CRM team is pulling a list of customer-facing roles — anyone whose title mentions an Account function.

Write a query to return the ID, name, and title of every employee whose title contains the word Account, regardless of capitalization.

Assumptions:

  • The employees table has one row per employee with an id, a name, and a title.
  • A qualifying employee has a title that contains account somewhere in the string, with case ignored.

Output:

  • One row per qualifying employee, with columns id, name, and title.
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
FROM
  employees
WHERE
  title ILIKE '%account%'

The shape

ILIKE '%account%' is case-insensitive substring matching. The leading and trailing % wildcards let the word account sit anywhere inside the title, and ILIKE (instead of LIKE) folds the case on both sides of the comparison so Account Executive matches the same as account executive would.

Clause by clause

  • SELECT id, name, title returns the three columns the CRM list needs. Showing the matched title alongside the ID and name lets the reader see why each row qualified.
  • FROM employees reads the employee roster.
  • WHERE title ILIKE '%account%' keeps only the rows whose title contains the substring account somewhere, with capitalization ignored. The two % wildcards anchor nothing, so the match can occur at the start, middle, or end of the title.

Why this and not LIKE '%Account%'

LIKE is case-sensitive. LIKE '%Account%' would catch Account Executive but miss account manager or ACCOUNT REP if either spelling slipped into the table. The prompt says capitalization should be ignored, which is exactly what ILIKE was added to the language to do. Writing it as LIKE plus LOWER(title) works too, but ILIKE is the single-word spelling for the same intent.

You practiced ILIKE '%pattern%' — case-insensitive substring matching, the standard tool for free-text searches that should not be tripped by capitalization.

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