What are some common questions you recall from software testing interviews?
AT*SQA asked software testers, QA analysts and test managers for software testing interview questions that they have been asked or use themselves when interviewing testers and analyst. Below are their responses.
| What is a cross browser testing? |
| What are the annotations in testing using Selenium? |
| Regarding automation experience, how would you handle the situation? |
| Do you know backend testing? |
| How will you start? |
| Difference between QA, QC and testing? |
| What is test plan and test strategy? |
| What testing software are you familiar with? |
| Share your responsibility in your current job. How do you overcome conflicts? |
| What interesting bug you found recently? |
| Share examples of how you decided what not to test. |
| ETL testing - query a table for the Nth record. |
| What was a time you overcame a problem? Or, what was a time you failed and then how did you manage that failure? |
| How would you start to test a piece of software, with the piece of software being described in the question? |
| How do you test an application that is given to you? |
| How would you test a vending machine? |
| What are the types of software testing? |
| The difference between white box and black box testing, decision based testing, and negative based testing. |
| Did you deal with any conflicts and if so, how did you deal with them? |
| Why should I select you for this role? What makes you the best candidate overall for this job? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? |
| What is your experience with training others? Where do you see yourself in 5 years? What type of environment do you work best in? |
| What are the most common things people neglect to test? |
| How do you troubleshoot? How do you deal with scope creep or new requirements weren't flushed out during grooming? |
| Describe what is in a bug report? What do you do if a developer says "That is not a bug"? |
| What C# experience do you have? |
| Why are you interested in QA? What is your experience level with MS SQL Server? How do you handle stress? |
| Years of experience and example case when used |
| At what phase of the test cycle do you find the most issues? |
| What are the phases involved in Software Testing Life Cycle? |
| Write test cases for a soda machine. |
| Draw a V model. |
| Explain the framework used in your current project |
| What was the workflow in your company? |
| Why did you pick this profession? |
| At what point do you as a tester say the software is ready? |
| Talk about Automation. |
| What do you do if your boss tells you your defect was not helpful to the customer? |
| Do you know Selenium? |
| What is the purpose or objective of testing software? |
| Defect triage, defect priority and severity, write test cases on objects, test estimation, most challenging defect |
| Simple programming challenges. |
| What kinds of testing are there? |
| When would you use automation? When would you not use automated tests? |
| How do you create a test plan? |
| What are the different types of testing and how are they related to the different parts of the SDLC of a project? |
| What is the difference between verify and validate, testing levels, test types, test techniques, sdlc, stlc, and test plan? What is the process you follow after you get your requirements documents? |
| How would you go about testing this item{list Item}? |
| What is black box testing? |
| Challenges you have faced? How do you handle stress time? Multiple releases handling techniques? |
| Given X system/software/physical item, how would you test it? |
| How do you feel your science background benefits your QA work? |
| What do you enjoy about QA? |
| Tell us about past experiences and accomplishments with fizzbuzz, exploratory and testing exercises. |
| What is the definition of the SDLC process? |
| Why to test, how to test? |
| How do you handle a late discovery of a serious or catastrophic bug? |
| What is regression testing? |
| Do you know what our company does? |
| What are you looking for in this position? |
| What is the most challenging part of performing software testing? |
| How do you plan what to test with a very little timeline? |
| What was your favorite bug you found? |
| What are Test Life Cycle, test phases, test levels, and interaction with stakeholders? |
| How should testers rate with status of the defect? |
| What automation tools have you used? |
| What is the difference between black and white box testing? |
| How would you debug setup X given Y behaviour? |
| What are the most common bugs with system type X? |
| What questions would you ask if we were planning feature X? |
| Why do you want a career as a QA Software engineer? |
| I often present the triangle problem (Myers/Hetzel) or ask candidates how they would test a pencil or pen. |
| What is black testing and white testing? |
| What is the software lifecycle and where does testing happens? |
| What is SDLC? |
| What types of testing tools to you have experience with? |
| Do you have any experience with automation? |
| What have you learned from mistakes on the testing coordinator jobs in the past? |
| What challenges are you looking for in this testing coordinator position? |
| What is regression? |
| What is a situation impacted your customer when you were troubleshooting an issue? |
| How do you approach test case automation for existing manual test cases? |
| What are the principles of testing? |
| How would you test this page (shown on projector)? |
| What is your level of curiosity? |
| How do you prioritize testing activities when there is little time for testing? |
| Questions about technical skills like SQL / Unix commands |
| What is scrum? |
| What is a defect lifecycle? |
| How good you are at automation? |
| SQL joins |
| What is the difference between verification and validation? |
| SQL Joins, Selenium Automation, Java, Javascript, Testing terms |
| What is the bug life cycle? |
| What is the SDLC? |
| What is software testing? |
| Why is my testing tool/equipment not working? How can I fix this bug? |
| Do you know this program? |
| What are differences between test phases and test levels? |
| What is testing estimations? |
| When have you tested enough? |
| How does testing fit into the QA picture? |
| Debugging and defect density |
| What is the RTM and how do you use it? |
| What is the waterfall process for software development and where do you see yourself as a tester fitting into it? |
| What is AGILE? |
| How do you see your role as a tester fitting into our team? |
| Explain defect cycle and the tools used for testing. |
| What important info do you need for logging a bug? |
| What was your greatest challenge and how did you overcome it? |
| Describe a strategy for testing software. |
| Describe the software development lifecycle. |
| Identify the common phases of SDLCs, and how testing contributes to each one. |
| Identify the pros/cons of test automation in an Agile environment. |
| Explain test design techniques, ecp, bva, types of testing, levels/phases of testing, sdlc, exploratory testing, Adhoc testing, error guessing, defects life cycle, type of defects with examples, and risk based testing |
| Explain a test plan. |
| What is the difference between functional and regression testing? |
| Do you know what partition testing is? |
| Do you know the difference between QA and QC? |
| Do you typically perform regression testing as part of your test plan? |
| Would you rather log a bug or chat with the developer? |
| Why do you use the automation tool(s) you currently use? How did you pick that tool? |
| What elements comprise a “good” defect report? |
| What testing methodologies are you familiar with? |
| Describe the testing process in your organisation. |
| What are the tools you have used? |
| How do you manage defects? |
| How do you maintain your relationship with the developers? |
| How do you decide what to automate first? |
| What are the traits of a good software tester? |
| Are you familiar with (fill in the blank) testing suite? |
| When to stop test execution? |
| What would you do if a developer refuses your defect in a call along with other people? Would you argue right there? |
| What are level in testing? |
| Explain early testing |
| What is the differences between regression test and maintenance test? |
| What is your goal in testing? |
| Why you choose software testing as career? |
| Why is testing necessary? |
| Test Case Techniques, Testing Methodologies, Difference between Test Plan and Test Strategy, STLC, Bug Life cycle, Difference between smoke and sanity test, etc. |
| What are the phases/types of testing you would perform on a metal toolbox and what tests would you perform for each? |
| Why do you think software quality is important? |
| How do you know whether a feature is good enough to release to clients? |
| Given, you are working with a 9-people team, as a tester (QA engineer) what would you do to help your team keep delivering high quality products? |
| Give candidate a screenshot of the old and the new design of a feature. Ask them what would they test to make sure the quality is good. |
| Functional, Regression, Retesting, Ad-hoc, Somke and sanity, Alpha and beta testing |
| What is the Different type of Software Testing? |
| What programming language are you farmilar with? |
| What is the difference bewtween regression, sanity, and smoke? |
| What is the difference bewtween QA, QC, and TESTING? |
| What is Agile, Scrum? |
| What is the length of your sprint? |
| What are sprint backlog and product backlog? |
| Why do you want to switch from your current company? |
| What is the difference bewtwee cookies and sessions? |
| What are session objects? |
| What are the different types of join? |
| What are inner and outer join? |
| Write queries for the given scenario |
| What are BVA and EVP? |
| Why and how memory leaks occur? |
| How do you catch and track memory leaks? |
| Have you ever used browser stack tool in testing? |
| What is the difference between sdlc vs stlc, regression testing retesting, testcase? |
| How many test cases have you written in your previous project? |
| Do you have experience with SQL? |
| What is the largest geographical area in which you conducted testing? |
| Which steps would you go through while doing user acceptance testing? |
| What is the purpose of having a Testing team? |
| Which is more important — to make release deadline or complete testing with no defects? |
| Tell me about yourself and current project. |
| Boundary Value Analysis, Equivalence partitioning techniques situation based, types of testing. |
| What are the activities a software tester should do during a testing projec? |
| What do you do in a situation where the testing project you're actively working on shortens the timeline and you no longer have enough time to execute all planned tests? |
| How would you test this screen without any documentation? |
| How do you interact with a developer who is defensive about a logged defect? |
| What do you do if you are going to miss a deadline? |
| Describe a situation where you had a serious bug in production and how you handled it. |
| How do you define "done" when testing software? |
| What things should be included in a defect? |
| Have you ever missed a defect that made it to production? |
| Can you work on multiple projects at the same time with minimal supervision? |
| Test scenarios for testing various products, functionalities like image file upload, severity/priority, test case design criteria |
| What is the biggest challenge you faceed in your past projects and how did you resolve it? |
| How many years in the industry? |
| What is your testing background? |
| What is your test automation experience? |
| What types of testing are you experienced with? |
| How/Where did you learn to test? |
| Have you had formal test training? |
| What test methodologies have you followed? |
| How many years of automation testing experience do you have? |
| What percentage of your overall test budget should be spent in each phase of the software development lifecycle? (Likely this question should be modified for a more agile methodology, but can lead to a discussion about user stories, unit testing, integration testing, system testing, user acceptance testing, non-functional testing.) |
| What are some important skills a test manager should have? |
| How would you organize the test process in this project? |
| If the test team you are in charge of is located overseas, what particular challenges does that give and how do you want to handle it? |
| What is the difference between smoke testing and sanity testing? |
| What is the difference between retest and regression? |
| What is the difference between severity and priority? |
| What is the difference between validation and verification |
| What are the difference between bug, defect, and issue? |
| Many want you to have technical skills now, or to be more like a project lead. True QA jobs appear to be disappearing. [Discuss] |
| What type of automation have you done? Can you code on the board how to reverse a string? |
| How do you test an API? |
| Principles of testing, SDLC and STLC, methodologies, v model popularity, agile experience bva and ecp partitioning, non functional testing, usability testing, difference between system testing and UAT |
| Who is responsible for beta testing? |
| What the difference between QA and tester? |
| Please describe how you would convert a manual test to an automated test? |
| I have encountered a variety of questions, but the ones that I remember that stand out were related to marital status, what I like to do on my freetime, and questions asking me how I see myself in terms of good and bad. |
| What kind of tests available and explain each test for purpose? What's the element of test plan, test case, bug filing? |
| Test a microwave, but you can only interact with it by putting objects inside it. This question tests whether candidates understand properties and state change in a system. |
| How do you do Defect Life Cycle? |
| To write possible test-cases for a Vending machine, Problem solving about a bouncing ball from 102-floor of a building, the hardest challenge I faced so far in meeting deadline, difference between fetch and pull (.git concept) |
| What is the difference between Validation and Verification? |
| What is Cloudcomputing? |
| Testing life cycle, severity and priority of defect. |
| How would you organize a UI testing framework? |
| You have to test a web page that has 15 fields with 3 possible choices for each field. You have to have 100% test coverage. How many test cases are required for 100% test coverage? |
| How many test cases are necessary for minimal coverage? |
| How do you know when to stop testing? |
| What are the benefits of using automated testing and what pitfalls have you experience using them? |
| Explain exploratory testing and how you approached it and if it was successful? |
| What is a test oracle? |
| What is a scatter diagram and how is it used for testing? |
| What is a fishbone diagram and how is it useful for testing? |
| Explain why cyclomatic complexity is useful for testing? |
| Explain OAT (orthogonal array testing)? |
| Based on your experience, how would you characterize the teams relationship to other development teams, customers, stakeholders and support? |
| Do you prefer to work as an individual contributor or as part of a team? Explain your answer. |
| How do you keep your testing knowledge current? |
| Which people have had the strongest influence on your testing and quality philosophies and why? |
| About candidate testing experience and certifications obtained. |
| How would you go about selecting a tool for automating manual test scripts? |
| Tell me about a time that you planned the assignments and coordinated the completion of tasks or duties performed by others. |
| Tell me what your 30-60-90 day plan would be? |
| What accomplishment are you proudest of? |
| What agile metrics do you use? |
| Requirement tracebility matrix. |
| You appear overqualified for the position, why do you want to work here? |
| What is the difference between verification and validation? |
| SDLC and Exploratory Testing. |
| Do you know SQL? Provide an example of a basic lookup. |
| A user story requests a login modal with a username, password and submit button, how would your test cases look? |
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