How do I interview testers?

How do I interview testers? ?

?This is a question I was asked often.

?I have been in the IT space for 16 years. I have been doing interviews for more than a decade now. From hiring people from internal candidate pools within the organization to hiring people online, the experience range varies.? Most of my interviews were for QA/Testing Roles, and sometimes for Project Management roles, developers, and Scrum masters, at some point, I was on the interview panel for Executive roles too.?

In Addition, looking back, most of the people reaching out to me through various channels, Asking for “help” can be, to some extent generalized into, How do I land my next job? That question may be wrapped as “What do you suggest for a first-time manager” “Do you know interview questions of company X” or “If I have this issue, how do I fix it”

There are different schools of thought in this case. Here are some.?

Some go around the theoretical knowledge. It’s understandable. Real issues can be taught, but it’s hard to teach the basics. So we want to make sure the candidate is aware of the basics, theoretical knowledge on the basics of what we need. There is a slight flow. The technology field is ever-changing, but the product field is not that much. Say, someone started a Java-based system, like 3-5 years back, in practice, how long would you think that would be transformed into a different stack? Scala or Rust for example. Probably never. Once we get the basics done, it’s a “don’t touch something working” case.? The ripple effect of doing something on a specific tech stack is the whole engineering org is built around the tech stack, we hire people close to the tech stack and train other people to the “organization” ’s tech stack.? Another effect of this on the interview pattern is its so bloated, systemized questions, answers, and at some point, you can even get the questions and answers online. Search for any popular company name with “interview questions” and you will get into a big pile of questions and static answers. Then it becomes a tango, the person hired used a question bank, and they use the same question bank to conduct the interviews for the next set of candidates.?

On the other hand, the school of thought I belong to, is, switching the focus from the company`s POV to the candidate. The candidate has the higher quotient in the interview formula. While you as an interviewer checking the candidate for the role, the candidate also interviewing you. The interview is the “first impression” of the company’s culture to the candidate.? You might belong to a Top-rated workplace, but if you ask a candidate to write code on a piece of paper, for a decade-old problem, It implies there is a problem with expectations. Programming knowledge is a given, implicitly expected of most of the streams in Engineering. These days, even PMs and POs who used to manage their project plans a few years back are now expected to deploy to upper environments. But an interview of 30-60mins is not the right place for coding exercise in my opinion. What else I would look for? An interview with me mostly would be a conversation, a fireside chat, about the resume the candidate submitted.?

Usually, they might list a bunch of techs, projects, and companies. I would be more interested in, which of these techs are they self-taught vs company-required. Switching from companies, what would be the reason? Well, I get it. Money. Promotions. But is there anything else other than these basics? “Why you leave the current company” gets a small portion, whereas the majority focus goes around, what would you expect from the new company.?

To me, coding interviews conforms to just a portion of a candidate’s resume. The Skills sections. What everyone does daily is beyond the skills. Its adaptability. changes. learning continuously. growing. Finding out the growth potential of the candidate is what interests me, that’s what I would recommend for my organizations, after all, the companies/projects/products looking for growth. The like-minded people get us there.?

Does this system work? Yes, it did. 1000’s of interviews, at least built 8-9 teams in the past. A total of 35-40 candidates. I built the teams, I left the projects, and I see the team I built to stay there for longer periods and thrive.

Does this system fail? Yes, It did. Out of 30-40 candidates I recommend hiring, at least 3-5 candidates dropped or switched to other companies in short spans. 1-2 miserably failed, we had to let go.?

However, I take pride in the 20-25 candidates I had the companies hired, thrived on the ladder, and made the company a better place, with a better quality assurance team. I still cross paths with some of them. May be a conference, or an online event, reach out for guidance and whatnot.?

Here is a quirky part. when I say “How do I interview testers” I am sure a bunch of readers dropped off, and a bunch got more interested, assuming, I am going to talk about “What” questions. What is Testing, What is Selenium, What is Risk-based Testing? Or a bunch of How questions.? My point is exactly the opposite of that. What and How comes later. Why we do something defines the Next step. And then What, how, when, and then Why again, the questions go on in a spiral motion.?

Questions or thoughts? Drop a comment, and we will discuss it in the next post.?