Codemify Interview guide (Behavioral + Technical Q&A)

Question 1

WHAT ARE YOU MOST PROUD OF?

Answer 1

As a manual tester, you can say things like: I’ve improved our release process by running a smoke test in production. We use to see some bugs appearing there but not in a QA env. But now we test it right away to find it before customers do!

Question 2

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST WEAKNESS?

Answer 2

Every one of us has a weakness, as no one is perfect. But the difference is that some people don’t work on their weaknesses, and some do.
Myself, for example, use to be pretty bad with saying no, and would often get burned out because of that. But after months of work that is not the case anymore.

Question 3

WHAT IS YOUR LONG-TERM / 3-YEARS / 5-YEAR PLAN?

Answer 3

You can make a joke here: Oh man, I don’t even know what I gonna do tomorrow :)

But honestly, I would like to become the best of what I do now, and then it will likely lead me into the area of my interest. But it’s hard to be exact right now.

Question 4

WHY SHOULD WE HIRE YOU?

Answer 4

It’s a good question, and I can either try to describe my best, or simply be honest and say that It’s not only about you hiring me but also about me choosing to work for you. I think both of our sides are looking for a good team to work with. My self, I’m not looking to jump into any job, but rather to find a good team where I will be able to make a difference, grow, support others, and simultaneously bring value to the company. And I really hope you guys are looking for exactly the same thing :)

Question 5

WHY DID YOU LEAVE YOUR LAST JOB? WHY ARE YOU CONSIDERING A NEW JOB?

Answer 5

The most important here is not to mention anything negative about the previous company, and on the other side to even say how thankful you are for such an experience.

I wanted to explore a different industry.

Question 6

WHAT IS YOUR SALARY EXPECTATION?

Answer 6

Salary isn’t my main consideration when making this decision, but currently, I’m making +15k to what you are really making. Feel free to add more if you feel confident, that you can deserve that much, and that the company will be ready to pay that much

Question 7

WHAT ARE YOUR STRENGTHS?

Answer 7

Attention to details

Question 8

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO BECOME A TESTER?

Answer 8

The usual answer will be: I think QA Engineers play an important role in the development process.
It is impossible to identify the true state of the product being produced, and how much it meets the expectations of the consumer without testing. That’s why I’m passionate about this field.

Question 9

TELL US ABOUT THE MOST INTERESTING BUG YOU FOUND?

Answer 9

Since there are so many bugs I’ve discovered in my testing career that I can’t really remember most of them. One of the most recent ones would be the username boundary bug. When I was able to register with 18 characters username but wasn’t able to log in as 15 characters were max.

Question 10

TALK ABOUT A CONFLICT OR CHALLENGE YOU FACED AT WORK, AND HOW YOU HANDLED IT?

Answer 10

Nothing is personal at work. We all do our best in order to bring value to the company. If I will ever have a conflict with anyone, I would simply listen to that person, see why there is a conflict, and would try to solve it myself as I’m not a conflict person. And if for some reason the other person would still think we have a conflict, I would contact my manager and ask for assistance.

Question 11

DO YOU HAVE ANY SITUATIONS IN THE PAST WHERE YOU HAVE HAD SOME ARGUMENTS WITH YOUR TEAM MEMBERS?

Answer 11

From my experience, I don’t have any situations where I had some conflict with my team members.

Question 12

DO YOU HAVE ANY SITUATIONS IN THE PAST WHERE YOU HAVE HAD SOME ARGUMENTS WITH YOUR TEAM MEMBERS?

Answer 12

From my experience, I don’t have any situations where I had some conflict with my team members.

Question 13

HOW TO DEAL WITH YOUR TEAM MEMBERS?

Answer 13

Every one of us comes with different lifestyles, hobbies, tastes, and so on. From my experience, the first step of the establishment of nice relationships with your team is to cope with them during the coffee break.

Question 14

ARE YOU BETTER WORKING IN A TEAM OR WORKING ALONE?

Answer 14

I get along with other people very well and I like to work in a team. I’d say that I’m a team player. To my mind, the tasks may be done more efficiently when you have several meanings concerning some of them.

Question 15

WHAT DID YOU DO IN YOUR LAST PROJECT?

Answer 15

In the last project, I was the only QA in the team, so I was responsible for all of the QA processes including but not limited to: tickets testing, test case creation, running regression upon every release, automating test cases. I did attend everyday daily stand-ups to share our updates, and would often help new team members to learn our application.

Question 16

WHY QA?

Answer 16

I never thought I would be an Engineer until my friends told me that based on my curiosity I would be an amazing QA Engineer. So I decided to give it a shot and I do agree with my friend now :)

Question 17

WHAT PERSONAL QUALITIES MUST BE PRESENT IN YOUR POTENTIAL MANAGER?

Answer 17

When communicating with the QA manager on a daily basis, the employee should feel confident and comfortable.
A good skill for any manager is the ability and experience in managing a group of people who are united to solve a specific problem. In my understanding, this is a person who can correctly prioritize and, with the help of his colleagues, achieve all assigned tasks.

Question 18

TO WHAT EXTENT SHOULD DEVELOPERS DO THEIR TESTING OR DO YOU BELIEVE TESTING IS THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE QA TEAM?

Answer 18

The answer to this question depends on the business environment you work in. In today’s emerging test scenario, it is also the developer’s responsibility to perform at least some of his code testing.

Though it is not expected that he will have the capacity or that his focus should be to run through large test plans or test on a large stack of devices. However, without the responsibility to review and test his code, a sense of ownership will not develop.

We believe that results will improve if all parties have access to test cases and can run and access them regularly to verify if the latest changes brought any regression.

Question 19

HOW BIG IS YOUR TEAM?

Answer 19

• Cross-functional team:
• We were working on redesigning the website
• 12 devs, 3 designers, 3 QA, 2 product owners
• You report to your lead

-Weekly releases:

-Monday, we will get a new build and test it.

-Thursday at noon is a production release time

Question 20

DESCRIBE A CHALLENGE YOU FACED DURING YOUR LAST PROJECT?

Answer 20

During the last project, we had biweekly releases, which would carry sometime hundreds of tickets. And every time, we would find, on average, 10- 20 bugs. That was not a very efficient process, so after brainstorming, we decided to do daily releases, which have decreased amount of tickets tremendously and made everyone’s job easier.

Question 21

CAN YOU START TOMORROW?

Answer 21

It won’t be fair to my current company, and My team won’t be happy with me if I leave tomorrow, and I don’t think it is professional, and I have never done that before. I am so sorry I cannot start tomorrow.

Question 22

WHAT IS A BUG?

Answer 22

The bug is a mismatch between expected and actual behavior of the application

Question 23

HOW DO YOU WRITE A BUG REPORT?

Answer 23

In my company, we use Jira as a bug report tool. There we create a new ticket and fill out textboxes :

• Write the Title
• Detailed description including Steps to reproduce, actual and expected behavior
• Specify the Environment
• Set the Priority - How fast does it have to be fixed
• Set the Assignee(if you know who is responsible for that part of the application)
• Attach the screenshots, videos, or log files

This list can be much bigger depending on the Jira flow setup. It will be different from company to company.

Question 24

WHAT IS BLACK / WHITE / GRAY BOX TESTING?

Answer 24

Black box testing - a methodology in which the tester does not have access
to the source code (UI \ UX testing, installation testing, localization testing)

White-box testing is a methodology in which a tester (more often the developer himself or an automated tester) has access to the source code of the product (Unit testing).
As a rule, in this case, a bug report reflects exact errors in the code and not in functional behavior.

Gray-box testing is an extended black-box methodology, but at the same time, the tester also does not have access to the source code (or has very limited access), but represents how the system is arranged logically, can divide it into modules and look for errors in them using special techniques (for example, the interaction of web applications over the network).

Question 25

WHAT IS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE TESTING?

Answer 25

“Positive” testing is aimed at executing test cases in which the user’s behavior does not go beyond expected results. For example - We opened the browser, entered the username/password, pressed the button, and saw the Home window.

“Negative” testing is aimed at checking the behavior of the product/system (shows an informative error) in case of incorrect user actions. For example - Opened the browser, entered the username/password (but not the correct username/password consisting of forbidden characters), pressed the button several times, and saw the Home window.

Question 26

BUG REPORT PRIORITY CAN BE MARKED AS EITHER OF THE FOLLOWING STATES, What are they?

Answer 26

Low - This defect can be fixed after the critical ones are fixed.

Medium - The defect should be resolved in the subsequent builds.

High - The defect must be resolved immediately because the defect is affecting the application to a considerable extent and the relevant modules cannot be used until it’s fixed.

Urgent - The defect must be resolved immediately because the defect is affecting
the application or the product severely and the product cannot be used until it has been fixed.

Question 27

WHAT IS THE TESTING PROCESS/LIFE CYCLE?

Answer 27

Compilation:

• Test plan
• Test scripts
• Test cases Executing test cases Checking the results Bug reporting
• Bug tracking
• Bug closure
• Test release

Question 28

WHAT IS A TEST CASE?

Answer 28

A test case - is a detailed step-by-step instruction on how to test a certain feature/function of the software.

Question 29

WHAT DOES A TEST CASE CONTAIN?

Answer 29

1. Title - a short description of what needs to be tested
   Example: “User should be able to login with valid credentials”
2. Preconditions - a setup that we need to have in order to perform the test
   Example: “We need to have a registered user to be able to log in”
3. Steps - steps on how exactly the feature should be tested
   Example:
   ⁃ Navigate to website name ⁃ Click login
   ⁃ Type in username
   ⁃ Type in password
   ⁃ Click “login” button
4. Expected result - describes what is the expected condition of the passed test
   Example: “User was able to login successfully”
5. Type - which is either automated, needs automation, needs automation update, or always manual.

Question 30

WHEN SHOULD YOU START THE TESTING PROCESS?

Answer 30

Testing should begin from the inception of the project. Once you get the requirements baseline, the System testing plan and test case preparation should start. It also helps in exploring any gaps in the functional requirements.

Question 31

WHAT ARE THE CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD TEST CASE?

Answer 31

Characteristics of a good test case:

1. Title: A clear and one-liner title to show the intent of the test case.
2. Purpose: A brief explanation of the reason the test case is getting created.
3. Description: A representation in words of the nature and characteristics of the test case.
4. Test objects: An unambiguous feature or module getting tested. 5. Preconditions: The conditions that must get satisfied during test execution.

Question 32

WHEN SHOULD YOU STOP THE TESTING PROCESS?

Answer 32

1. Test case execution: The successful completion of a full test cycle after
   the final bug fix marks the end of the testing phase.
2. Testing deadline: The end date of the validation stage also declares the closure of the validation if no critical or high-priority defects remain in the system.

Question 33

GIVE AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT CAN BE DONE WHEN A BUG IS FOUND.

Answer 33

When I find a bug the first thing I do is try to reproduce the bug multiple times. Once I can reproduce consistently I will create a ticket with detailed steps to reproduce, the data that was used, which specific environment, and necessary screenshots. I would like to make sure the bug does not get rejected in the first place. We can save QA managers and developers time by doing so. If I am not sure it is a bug or not I will talk to SME(subject matter expert it means the person who knows the application better than anyone).

Question 34

ASSUME YOU HAVE A TEST PLAN WITH OVER 1000 TEST CASES. HOW WOULD YOU MAKE SURE WHAT SHOULD BE AUTOMATED AND WHAT TO TEST MANUALLY?

Answer 34

In such a situation, I will focus on test case priority and the feasibility of automation for the test cases

There can be many other things that can make a difference:

1- The complicated scenarios are tedious and take a lot of time in manual execution.
2- The test cases missed in the past.
3- The parts of the application that need regression testing.
4- The test cases which are hard to automate.
5- The features which are still under development. (If certain parts of the app are about to be changed, I recommend not to start with automated testing for these cases.)
6- The test cases that are part of “exploratory” testing and assessing the user experience.

Question 35

What is Risk Management?

Answer 35

Risk management is the process of identifying, assessing, and prioritizing the risks to minimize, monitor, and control the probability of unfortunate events.

Question 36

WHAT SHOULD BE INCLUDED IN A TEST STRATEGY?

Answer 36

The test strategy includes a plan for how to test the application and exactly what will be tested (user interface, modules, processes, etc.). It establishes limits for testing and indicates whether manual or automated testing will be used.

Question 37

WHAT IS A RELEASE CANDIDATE?

Answer 37

Release Candidate (RC) is the build released internally to check if any critical problems have gone undetected into the code during the previous development period. Release candidates are NOT for production deployment, but they are for testing purposes only. However, in most cases, there are no differences between the final build and the last release candidate.

Question 38

REQUIREMENT TYPES:

Answer 38

User Requirements - It is a detailed description in natural language along with diagrams of the services the system provides and its operational constraints. It is usually developed by end-users.

System requirements - It is a structured document detailing the descriptions of the system’s functions, services, and operational constraints.

Functional Requirements - It describes the services of the system, how the system should react to particular inputs and how the system should behave in definite situations.

Non-functional Requirements - It describes the attributes of the system.

Domain Requirements - Requirements that arise from the domain of the application and that reflect characteristics of that domain. It can be either functional or non-functional specifications.

Question 39

WHAT IS THE BUG LIFE CYCLE IN YOUR COMPANY?

Answer 39

1.Bug found

2.Bug verified

3.A bug report was filed

4.bug fix in progress

5.Bug was fixed

6.Bug fix verified or reopened(back to in progress)

7.Bug fix was released

Question 40

HOW DO YOU TEST AN APPLICATION IF THE REQUIREMENTS ARE NOT AVAILABLE?

Answer 40

If the requirement is not available we have to do our best to
gather as much information as possible from the end-users, clients,s and similar applications from competitors. Based on our research we can still test the application.

For example, if we have to test an e-commerce
application without requirement we can analyze amazon.com to gather basic requirements and perform our testing accordingly.

Question 41

HOW CAN YOU TELL WHEN ENOUGH TEST CASES HAVE BEEN CREATED TO ADEQUATELY TEST A SYSTEM OR MODULE?

Answer 41

You can tell that enough test cases have been created when there is at least one test case to cover every requirement. This ensures that all designed features of the application are being tested.
But its always better to increase test coverage based on time/resource availability.

Question 42

WHAT CAN BE DONE TO DEVELOP A TEST FOR A SYSTEM IF THERE ARE NO FUNCTIONAL SPECIFICATIONS OR ANY SYSTEM AND DEVELOPMENT DOCUMENTS?

Answer 42

When there are no functional specifications or system development documents, testers should be familiar themselves with all of the tickets that were used during the app development. It may also be helpful to research similar products on the market.

Question 43

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QA AND TESTING?

Answer 43

The goals of QA are very different from the goals of testing. The purpose of QA is to prevent errors in the application while the purpose of testing is to find errors.

Question 44

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN QUALITY CONTROL AND QUALITY ASSURANCE?

Answer 44

Quality control (QC) and quality assurance (QA) are closely linked but are very different concepts. While QC evaluates a developed product, the purpose of QA is to ensure that the development process is at a level that makes certain that the system or application will meet the requirements.

Question 45

IN WHICH PHASE SHOULD TESTING BEGIN: REQUIREMENTS, PLANNING, DESIGN, OR CODING?

Answer 45

Testing should begin as early as the requirements phase.

Question 46

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DEBUGGING AND TESTING?

Answer 46

The main difference between debugging and testing is that debugging is typically conducted by a developer who also fixes errors during the debugging phase. Testing, on the other hand, finds errors rather than fixes them. When a tester finds a bug, they usually report it so that a developer can fix it.

Question 47

HOW TO DEAL WITH A NOT REPRODUCIBLE BUG?

Answer 47

If the bug is not reproducible we have to always take a screenshot of the issue and note it down. In the later testing process, we have to keep our eyes open to see if there is a way to reproduce the bug. Also, it is good to let colleagues know as well. They can keep their eye open on that issue.

Question 48

WHEN DO YOU CHOOSE AUTOMATED TESTING OVER MANUAL TESTING?

Answer 48

If the test cases are high-priority test cases.
If the functionality is critical functionality.
Shakeout or smoke test cases.
If the test cases are too long and too difficult to execute. The regression test cases are based on priority.
We should automate as much as possible.

Question 49

WHAT ARE THE KEY CHALLENGES OF SOFTWARE TESTING?

Answer 49

1. Application should be stable enough to be tested.
2. Testing always under time constraints
3. Understanding the requirements.
4. Domain knowledge and business user perspective understanding.
5. Which tests to execute first?
6. Testing the Complete Application.
7. Changing requirements

Question 50

WHERE IS THE REQUIREMENT COMING FROM?

Answer 50

Usually from product owner who is responsible for creating them

Question 51

HOW LONG IT WILL TAKE TO RUN YOUR REGRESSION SUITE?

Answer 51

This question will have different answers depending on your company. For example, if you are the only QA in a small startup, and let’s say you have 200 test cases. If all of the teams are manual, it will take possibly around 3 hours to execute them. If automated, 10-30 minutes depending on if you run them on local or powerful CI/CD

Question 52

WHAT DO YOU AUTOMATE FIRST?

Answer 52

Regression + most repetitive tests and time-consuming tests

Question 53

WHAT IS YOURS DAY WORK TIME?

Answer 53

Check email and slack to see if there are any critical things I need to know about. I start at 9:00 am and finish tasks I had from yesterday(writing test cases, automating them).
Morning standup at 10:30 is where everyone shares updates of what has been done yesterday, what are we planning to do today, and if anyone has any blockers.
Then I proceed to ticket testing for the upcoming release. After release, I write test cases and automate them.

Question 54

HOW OFTEN DOES RELEASE HAPPEN IN YOUR COMPANY?

Answer 54

We release every day at 3pm

Question 55

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT LIFE CYCLE (SDLC) IN YOUR COMPANY?

Answer 55

• Planning
• Analyses
• Design
• Development - Testing
• Maintenance