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In all industries seasoned veterans can have a hug amount of experience and knowledge about good and bad practices within their industry

What are some of the questions that you would post to a seasoned QA professional with decades of experience. What things would you help you understand the wisdom gained from their experiences.

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  • Do you mean an interview question?
    – Alexey R.
    Feb 12, 2018 at 21:06
  • Not a new job interview, but an Interview with that person, as a professional in his domain.
    – AndreiT
    Feb 13, 2018 at 9:06

4 Answers 4

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I would be curious to learn:

  • How does one formulates test strategy for an given complex business critical application supporting multiple platforms and consists of complex technology layers ?

  • Also in his strategy where and how does he employs automation wisely .

  • As automation solutions can be designed on multiple levels and in numerous ways using different frameworks/libraries/tools. How does one structures his test pyramid in a given application tech stack?

  • Above all, what bits he still prefers to verify manually and why(my favorite word in English language :))

I also think that with an experienced seasonal professional, in order to have an meaningful conversation, it needs to be more of a healthy discussion rather than an "interview" with series of point-blank questions.

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"May I watch you work, and ask questions about what you're doing?"

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  • This is the simplest and the most useful answer. The beginners can be easily overwhelmed by abstract and too high level about the systems and strategies. So, start by doing what the grey haired wizard is doing and learn and build from that.
    – Mate Mrše
    Sep 27, 2018 at 8:39
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I would ask a seasoned QA professional:

  • How do you stop test engineers from being treated as second class citizens ?
  • How do you know when enough testing has been done ?
  • How do you make the case for testable code in the first place ?
  • How do you stop quality folks from being cut or overworked due to being seen as 'overhead' ?
  • What qualities have you learned to look for in working with or hiring other quality engineers ?
  • What have you learned to test that was surprising to you and others ?
  • What are some of the most interesting bugs you have seen ?
  • What do you think of the huge rise in automated testing over the last 10 years ?
  • What have you learned about different approaches to automation ?
  • How do you motivate quality engineers ?
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  • I downvoted this, as the question ITSELF was tweaked to match this answer.
    – Vishal Aggarwal
    Feb 17, 2018 at 12:57
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    That is true. I modified the question. I did this to improve the question (based on the site guidelines) which was worded badly. Based on the improved (obviously in my opinion) question I provided this answer. I am not actually 'tweaking' the question to match this answer, although it could certainly be seen that way. My intent is altruistic, trying to help the community with an improved question and appropriate answer. Sad u felt the need to downvote but that is your opinion and I respect it @VishalAggarwal
    – Michael Durrant
    Feb 17, 2018 at 13:08
  • btw I have edited hundreds of other questions (where i may or may not have an answer) to help improve them for the community.
    – Michael Durrant
    Feb 17, 2018 at 13:09
  • Michael, you are an senior member on this forum and I respect your judgement however I think my intention was just to discourage people from changing the question to match their answers just because they could.
    – Vishal Aggarwal
    Feb 17, 2018 at 13:26
  • @VishalAggarwal Good point. Certainly worth a comment about that for others. If the downvote discourages them even more I am glad to accept the hit :)
    – Michael Durrant
    Feb 17, 2018 at 14:16
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One of my favorite questions is simply this:

"What are all the ways you can test a login page?"

This question is a judge of if they have the thought process of a QA. A seasoned QA will be able to list test cases for several minutes, and will be able to list many test cases a non-QA would have never thought of.

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    I disagree with how you judge the better answer, an experienced engineer will ask a lot of questions first that will lead her to better and more focused tests. When I interview for more senior positions I will disqualify candidates that jumps into results without showing and being able to explain the assumptions on the way there
    – Rsf
    Feb 15, 2018 at 13:12
  • What if you never tested a login page: does that mean you are a bad tester?
    – Ray Oei
    Mar 5, 2018 at 12:13

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