I'd say the OP is not a complete beginner. Anyhow, people should provide more context when asking technical questions. Your approach will get him to pass a standard interview for a DB dev role. However, if one wants to understand how to map a domain model to a DB model and gain knowledge transferable between roles and teams - learning how to model data properly is the only way to go. In the end, not every data storage is a SQL DB. When it clicks, everything else will be much easier.

To be more to the point: OP, if you just want to pass the interview take the advice from 0x54MUR41