As a test team leader, the success of your testing projects hinges on assembling a skilled and cohesive testing team. When you interview a tester, the process becomes the compass that guides you toward the ideal candidate. Finding the perfect fit requires a combination of technical expertise and the ability to gauge a candidate’s potential to thrive in your team’s dynamic.
In this article, we’ll explore the best ways to interview candidates for a software testing role, empowering you to unearth the hidden gems that will elevate your team to new heights.
Keep in mind that there are many different approaches which you can take to interviewing a tester. We’ll cover the traditional approach first, which is what I’d expect most people to use. Next, I’ll dive into my personal approach. Make sure you pick the approach which is most suitable to the type of tester which you need to recruit.
The Traditional Way to Interview a Tester
Know Your Requirements
Before diving into the interview process, define your expectations for the role clearly. Understand the specific skills, experience, and qualifications you’re seeking in a software testing candidate. Develop a comprehensive job description that outlines essential responsibilities and desired traits. Having a crystal-clear understanding of your needs will help you assess candidates more effectively.
Carefully Craft Your Interview Questions
Crafting well-thought-out interview questions is essential to assessing a candidate’s abilities comprehensively. Blend technical questions with behavioural inquiries to gain insights into their problem-solving skills and team dynamics. Consider questions that revolve around test case design, test strategy, defect management, and automation to gauge their expertise accurately.
Behavioural Interview Techniques
Behavioural interviews delve into a candidate’s past experiences, enabling you to assess their approach to challenges, teamwork, and adaptability. Present scenarios and ask how they handled similar situations in previous roles. This technique provides a glimpse into their thought process and reveals how they might tackle challenges in your team.
Practical Tests and Case Studies
Supplement traditional interviews with practical tests and case studies that simulate real-life testing scenarios. These exercises allow candidates to demonstrate their problem-solving abilities, attention to detail, and overall testing approach. Analysing their test design and execution provides valuable insights into their potential to contribute to your team’s success.
Team Collaboration Assessment
Software testing teams thrive on collaboration and effective communication. Include team-oriented activities during the interview process to gauge how candidates interact with others. Group discussions, role-playing exercises, or team problem-solving tasks offer valuable insights into how well they align with your team’s dynamics.
Assessing the Cultural Fit
Beyond technical competence, cultural fit is vital for a harmonious team environment. When you interview a tester you’ll need to assess whether the candidate aligns with your team’s values, work ethics, and long-term goals. Gauge their enthusiasm for learning and their willingness to adapt to your team’s culture.
My Way to Interview a Tester
When I’m interviewing a tester, I take a very different approach to what you’d traditionally expect.
As someone who has interviewed for many roles, I understand how intimidating the hiring process can be. As a result, I don’t like to make interviews a worrying situation for candidates. If I’m interviewing them it is because they have shown potential from their CV, so they’re already a good potential candidate.
I like to keep the hiring process to a two-stage interview. The first stage being a “conversation” and the second stage revolving around how well they’d fit into the team.
I use the word “conversation” rather than “interview” because it is a lot less formal. At the start of the conversation I let the candidate know that the interview isn’t going to be formal and it’s going to be more of a chat. Instantly, this puts them at ease. If you’re interviewing a tester and they feel that the meeting is formal then their stress levels are likely to be elevated and their answers are less likely to be succinct, accurate and, often, honest. If they’re at ease then you have a much better chance at reading who they are and what they’re like as a person and a tester.
Anyway, here is the process I use when I interview a tester.
Know Your Requirements
As with the traditional approach to interviewing a tester, you have to know your requirements. Are you looking for a candidate who is experienced in the areas in which you work? Or are you looking for someone who has the potential to excel in the way you work and the tools you use, but who doesn’t have all of the skills and knowledge yet? If it’s the latter then you’ll likely be able to hire a less experienced candidate with a high level of potential without having to propose an extortionate salary. On the flipside, though, this does come with a level of risk, as they haven’t proven themselves to be skilled in the required tools/processes which you need.
Carefully Craft Your Interview Questions
As far as the interview questions go, I like to focus on what experience they have of the languages, tools and processes which we employ. It’s not a quiz to catch them out, the questions are purely to get an understanding of how much of my time it’d take to get them up to speed.
I also like to ask questions around their future ambitions. It’s important for me to know whether the candidate is looking to quickly move up the ladder as a tester or whether they’re keen on taking on a leadership role. Often this isn’t what I’m looking for – I’m looking for someone to do a specific job for a number of years. So, this lets me know fairly quickly whether a candidate is going to be a suitable fit.
Behavioural Interview Techniques
It is extremely useful to understand the past experiences of your candidate. I present scenarios and ask how they handled similar situations in previous roles. This is a useful way to understand the candidate’s thought process. Subsequently, it reveals how they might tackle challenges in my team.
Practical Tests and Case Studies
Providing your candidate with a practical test is a useful way to measure their abilities. But that can also be an issue. What if the candidate is knowledgeable, eager to learn, but doesn’t currently possess the skills required to successfully complete the test you have planned? You could be writing off a good tester due to a lack of knowledge that they could build up pretty quickly after starting in the role.
So, what’s my alternative? I prefer to test someone on how they think rather than what they know. To me, anyway, that’s a much more useful metric.
A prime example is that I may share my screen and show the candidate a login screen and ask them to talk me through how they’d test it, without being given requirements. They’d then proceed to tell me about their thought pattern. Are they going to think about just the obvious things? Or are they going to think outside of the box and think about cross-browser testing? Are they going to ask whether the page is localised and then discuss testing with the browser set to a different locale?
How someone thinks tells me a lot about whether they’d be a suitable candidate!
Assessing the Cultural Fit
As discussed previously, I like to split my interview process in two. The first interview is focused around finding out more about the candidate’s career history, understanding how they think, assessing their potential to learn… all of those good things.
If that first interview goes well then we proceed to a second interview stage. The focus of the second interview is to get a feel for how they interact with others on the team. This will generally involve a manager and some of the candidate’s potential peers. It’s not structured as an interview – it’s merely just a chat to see how personalities gel.
Interview questions aren’t necessary at all at this stage, as I’ve already decided that they have what it takes to make it, but making sure that they fit culturally is the next essential step.
Interview Questions
When you need to interview a tester, there are many, many different questions which you could ask. It all depends on what you’re looking for.
We have collated a number of questions which you can ask when interviewing a tester, depending on the level you’re recruiting for, so feel free to check these out and use them for inspiration:
- Entry-level test engineer interview questions
- Test engineer interview questions
- Senior test engineer interview questions
Conclusion
As a test team leader, mastering the art of interviewing candidates for a software testing role is the key to building a cohesive and high-performing team. By setting clear expectations, preparing well-crafted interview questions, and employing behavioural techniques, you can assess candidates’ technical expertise and problem-solving skills. Practical tests and case studies offer a deeper understanding of their proficiency, while team collaboration assessments and cultural fit evaluations ensure that your team thrives harmoniously.
Embrace the interview process as an opportunity to discover hidden gems among the candidates. Look for those with the potential to elevate your team’s capabilities and contribute to the success of your testing projects. By nurturing a team of skilled and motivated software testing professionals, you set the stage for the continued growth and success of your team. Happy interviewing!
