Monthly Hiring Analysis in Oracle SQL Using EXTRACT and TO_DATE

Posted by Rakesh Men on

Total Hiring per Month in Oracle SQL with Clean Date Extraction

There are days in data work when a simple question ends up revealing the entire discipline behind SQL. One such question came up while studying hiring trends inside an employee table. The task looked easy at first glance: find total hiring for each month and show it in ascending order. Yet the moment I looked at the date column, the story expanded.

The hire_date field was stored in character format. A small detail, but as we say, “boond boond se sagar banta hai” — the smallest part decides the clarity of the whole picture. Converting a character date to an actual date type was the first step. Once that was done, extracting the month and grouping it became as smooth as turning a page.

Table of Contents

Converting Character Date to Date Type

Whenever a date sits inside single quotes as plain text, Oracle Oracle does not recognise it as a date. It behaves like a word instead of a timestamp. Converting it using TO_DATE brings it to life. This conversion is your entry gate for all further analysis.

TO_DATE(hire_date, 'mm dd yyyy')

It tells Oracle exactly how the date is structured and ensures accurate extraction later.

Extracting Month from the Hire Date

The EXTRACT function is the quiet hero here. When you use EXTRACT(MONTH FROM date), Oracle pulls out the month number cleanly. It transforms a complex timestamp into a simple integer between 1 and 12. This number becomes the anchor for grouping and ordering.

EXTRACT(MONTH FROM TO_DATE(hire_date, 'mm dd yyyy'))

It is one of those tools that looks tiny but carries the weight of many analytical patterns built on top of it.

Grouping and Counting Monthly Hiring

Monthly hiring analysis helps identify recruitment cycles. Some organisations hire aggressively during the first quarter, while others pick up pace after mid-year. By grouping on extracted month, those patterns become visible. The COUNT function then tallies the total employees hired in each month.

This type of query often becomes a building block in dashboards, staffing forecasts, and skill-gap studies. People rarely realise how much insight comes from a simple group-by, but this is where SQL shows its elegance.

Complete Oracle SQL Query

SELECT
  EXTRACT(MONTH FROM (TO_DATE(hire_date,'mm dd yyyy'))) AS "Month",
  COUNT(*) AS "Total Hiring"
FROM employees
GROUP BY EXTRACT(MONTH FROM TO_DATE(hire_date,'mm dd yyyy'))
ORDER BY "Month";

This gives a neatly ordered month-wise hiring summary. It is clear, readable, and ready to be used in any analysis.

Employees Hired in the First Half of a Month

A natural extension of this analysis is understanding hiring patterns within a month itself. Sometimes managers want to know whether most employees join in the first fifteen days or later. The first half represents days 1 to 15, which can be captured using a simple condition.

If you want to explore this kind of pattern, or see how ranges can be applied to dates for deeper analysis, stay connected. Queries like these open doors to more advanced problem-solving in Oracle SQL, and it becomes easier when someone shows all the hidden layers behind them.




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