SQL interview question: Org Chart Hierarchy With a Recursive CTE
Full Organizational Hierarchy Depth
The enterprise team needs a complete organizational chart showing each employee's full reporting chain up to the CEO.
Write a recursive CTE to show every employee with their level in the organization (top executives = level 1, direct reports = level 2, etc.).
Return employee_id, employee_name (full name), org_level, and reports_to_chain (e.g., "Alice Chen -> Sarah Johnson"). Order by org_level, then employee_id, and return the first 15.
Skills: recursive CTEs for hierarchical data traversal
Tables
employees 37 rows
- id integer PK
- first_name text
- last_name text
- email text
- department_id integer → departments
- salary integer
- hire_date text
- manager_id integer → employees
- title text
| id | first_name | last_name | department_id | salary | hire_date | manager_id | title | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alice | Chen | [email protected] | 1 | 250000 | 2015-01-15 | NULL | CEO |
| 2 | Robert | Martinez | [email protected] | 2 | 180000 | 2016-03-20 | NULL | CEO |
| 3 | Sarah | Johnson | [email protected] | 1 | 150000 | 2017-06-10 | 1 | VP Engineering |