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In our company, we think that some of the key skills for a tester are the attention to detail and observation skills, these are some of the major things we are looking for in the interviews.
What kind of questions can be asked in an interview to detect if a candidate possesses this kind of skills? What are some of the "red flags" that might indicate a lack or weakness in this area?
Great Question
As per my experience, it's very difficult to get a right employee who has very good judgment, sharp focus, attention & great observation skills.
Earlier it was very difficult to filter right candidate but our team come with some solution for that We made some minor changes in our interview process as follows:-
Now before conducting F2F interview We give some Android/iOS application's & instruction sheet to the candidate and ask to perform any type of testing(functional, GUI, Usability, Security....etc ) & find any kind of the bug based on this instruction. We give around 1 hour time to the candidate to find bugs as much as He/she can find. If the candidate is able to find even a single bug then we go for next round F2F interview otherwise we don't proceed with the candidate.
This small change saves a lot of time of our working employee & it helps us to figure out these basic qualities of the candidate like.
Then in the F2F interview, we start to ask the question-related to AUT we ask about his experience about that hour and Other skill sets (In resume) And try to judge the above properties in a good candidate.
I can't say that it is a standard procedure but its help us a lot to filter out a very good candidate from crowed, for our work.
I think most important part of interview to check whether a tester have skills of attention to detail and observation should be his/her way of approach to any tricky question rather not emphasizing on correct answers only!
Questions may be technical or non-technical but if he takes time to think and tries to approach in a systematic way, then this is an indication of his/her patience and judgement. But if she/he panics out after hearing the question and tries to answer ASAP, then this is not a good skill for him even though he managed to give correct answer lately.
'Attention to detail', I strongly think is one of the most important traits in an effective tester in general.
I usually ask the person, the (little) things which caught his/her's attention after entering the company premises. If I don't get much, then I start discussing their opinion on one of my favorite paintings hanging on the company reception to see how much they have observed it.
This always gives me a true indicator of somebody's natural instincts to 'attention to detail' instead of something imposed.
