3

I am recently selected in interview panel for Automation Engineers. As i have never taken interviews till now, i am confused about how to judge a candidate? What kind of question should i ask to him and what i should expect?

Question asked here is something different, He is more into how should i interview if candidate doesn't into testing but he is a coder(exact phrase from question : His question is "besides some basic programming questions, maybe a single very basic testing question, what else should I ask ?") and creating frameworks but my question is if a person knows both testing and fundamentals of automation as well , as per my understanding a test engineer should be aware of manual testing process as well even if candidate is more into automation, What should i ask him and how can i judge him based on those questions.

Improve this question
4
  • Great question ! I am also part of interview panel and Sometimes I am also confused about good candidate in manual but not so in automation. I am requesting you all experience person to provide your precious ideas and ways.
    – Sagar007
    Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 6:44
  • @FDM : I have rephrased my question, i feel that question is more into asking if i should ask the candidate about testing, if he has coding skills. What testing related question he should ask other than code. But i am asking about what kind of questions should i ask and how those questions can help me judge the candidate.
    – Keshav
    Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 7:01
  • I still don't understand how this question differens from the linked duplicate.
    – dzieciou
    Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 12:17
  • His question is "besides some basic programming questions, maybe a single very basic testing question, what else should I ask ?" My Question is "Why a single very basic question for testing? when i am interviewing for a testing position. as per my understanding a test engineer should be aware of manual testing process as well even if candidate is more into automation.
    – Keshav
    Commented Dec 14, 2016 at 12:24

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

To interview a technical tester for automation, I would certainly ask the following:

  • Have you written any frameworks around a specific tool (Selenium, CodedUI, ...)?
  • Which tool do you prefer and why?
  • What approach did you use for the framework? (How does it work conceptually and technically?)
  • How do you feed data to the tests (and why do you prefer XML/Excel/...)?
  • Where do you think the complexity should be (data, test scenarios or framework code) and why?
  • What are strengths and weaknesses of your framework?
  • Lessons learned? Or what would you solve differently next time?
  • What is your opinion on (the practical value of) a BDD framework on top of the core framework?

Especially the second half of the questions are important, because anyone can copy a framework skeleton from the internets. But if they can reflect on the pros and cons of a certain way of working, and improve on that: that's an essential skill, more so if your test automation needs to be set up from scratch.

Improve this answer
1

For automation tester -

  1. Ask questions related to framework he worked or used?

  2. Ask to write a code for some algorithm and check the logic he is applying. Ex - To read data from excel, comparison of data, to find broken link on web page etc.

  3. As per used tool experience, ask how to debug the code?

  4. How To start automation in any new project?

  5. Question related to -- error handling? synchronize? run time object property identification?

  6. automation result reporting way?

  7. experience on Automated Scripts Review (Code review)?

  8. Ask database connection script to retrieve the data?

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.