Testing a tester with example projects

Question

I'm currently going through the stages of hiring a new junior tester into my team.

I would like to give some of the potential candidates who don't necessarily have much of a testing background an online example project, where they can have a click around and send me their observations. I don't really want to give them much in the way of documentation.

I was wondering whether such a thing exists. e.g. a demo site with known issues for a tester to practice with.

And, if you were tasked with trying to spot if an entry level tester had the potential skills and aptitude for testing. How would you go about it?

--

Just to add, I was thinking that James Bach's Triangle2000 could be a nice little program for someone to play around with and give you feedback on their observations.

Answer 1

The Parking Calculator that is on Markus Gartner's site is a good way to have someone test something, and if they peruse the site as well for interest good for them. The calculator is a well known example you can find more on as well if you want.

It's hard to do auditions, I recently did one for my position and they gave me materials that I needed to present. I was expected to go over my thought process on how I built up a test plan, wrote my cases and what I expected to cover, and not cover, in them. Then I was given questions during the audition/presentation to get more into how I thought about testing. What I would look for:

• Some ability to break down issues, do they think about how things/software may break?
• Are they interested? Is this just a job, or do they have a passion
• Do they want to learn? It's a junior position so they must want to learn more in the position
• Have they read a book or blog? Sometimes I ask who someone reads, and either I find someone new or find they don't really do much on their own
• When presented with a problem do they think critically about it or only deal with the obvious issues? For this, I liked the audition as it showed what I was thinking about and how I broke down the issues and problems

Also see if their personality fits with the team, if you have one. This is someone you will be training and have to work closely with, make sure they mesh well with your environment.

Answer 2

Parking Calculator as said above is an excellent website. Apart from that below are few websites (some belonging to automation tools). I believe these can be used for dummy testing:

1. There is a book named “The Web Testing Handbook” by Steven Splaine and it has a case study. B&D is a fictitious online brokerage firm created with the specific purpose of providing you with the opportunity to practice the Web testing techniques discussed in the book, thereby gaining real-world interactive Web testing experience.

2. The Altoro Mutual website is published by IBM Corporation for the sole purpose of demonstrating the effectiveness of AppScan in detecting web application vulnerabilities and website defects. IBM offers a free trial of AppScan that you can download and use to scan this website. This site is not a real banking site.

3. A kind of similar question on stackoverflow:
   Where can I find a deliberately insecure open source web application? [closed] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/365309/where-can-i-find-a-deliberately-insecure-open-source-web-application

4. A sample insurance company Web application (by Silk Test). Find its documentation here.