My secret of near 100% interview success on Test Automation Engineer roles

Demonstrating Test Automation and Continuous Testing, live, and related to the company.

This article is one of the “IT Interview” series.

After leading a very successful agile project in 2010 as the tech lead (with the capability to release to production daily. In a sense, we implemented DevOps, though there was no such term then), I took a number of contracting roles as a test automation engineer to further grow my Test Automation and Continuous Testing skills (testing different apps).

Between 2010 and 2016, I had a number of job interviews (for test automation engineers or consultants). From my memory, my success rate of the interviews was near 100%. It was like a copy-n-paste process to me, as the interviewers usually did not have much time left to ask their prepared questions. I mostly controlled the interview process, and the interviewers were quite usually excited. I will share this simple and easy-to-apply tip with you today.

This tip is simple: show the interviewer a live demo of test automation, and execute automated tests in a CT server. Why does it work? The reason is simple: End-to-End (UI) Test Automation is practical and applicable to all web apps (the same way). Commonly, the interviewers are facing software issues that are related to inefficient testing every day. People are interested in real test automation, even though they were fooled by fake test automation engineers before.

Of course, I would do some hands-on preparation for the interview, typically under 10 minutes. Instead of memorizing answers to so-called Selenium interview questions, I created a couple of working automated tests (that related to the company) and ran them in a BuildWise CT server on my laptop (which I bring to the interview). On top of that, I will show screenshots of test reports of running hundreds of Selenium tests in a CT server.

A typical interview is like below:

Interviewer: “Can you tell us a bit about yourself?”

Me: “I … (standard intro). My interest in test automation started in 2005, after seeing its great benefits to the project, ….. Besides work, I have been practicing test automation in my spare time. I have set up a CI/CD process to run 200+ Selenium tests that run daily. Do you want to have a look?”

Take out your laptop before they have the chance to say no. Few people saw real test automation and Continuous Testing with 50+ automated tests via GUI. The interviewers would be either Curious or Skeptical. Either way, they tend to want to see something different (if you have interviewed others, you would know that reading similar resumes and standard interview Q&A were quite boring).

Now, it is showtime: Run automated tests!

Tip> Many managers/tech leads have seen fake test automation demos. Do it real, or as much as real that you can think of to them.

Depending on the nature of the roles, you may decide what to demo first.

1. Run an existing test that is similar to the company’s product

For example, if the company is doing eCommerce, you prepare a couple of automated tests on Shopify, or just drive the company’s website. The point here is to try to make your sample tests related to their work, and your possible future job. Most people have seen HelloWorld type tests, which are not good enough, do make yours relevant and impressive.

Things to show:

• Quick navigation (using keyboard shortcuts, which will give a really good impression) of tests in the test tool.

• Run a single test but leave the browser open (a tester’s debugging mind, not a programmer’s), which is a built-in feature of TestWise IDE

• Run a test script file with multiple test cases, and the browser close afterward (emphasize the importance of leaving the browser open for debugging)

• Run selected test steps against the current browser (with great developing/debugging efficiency)

• JIRA integration (not really useful, but it might get some interest)

2. Develop a brand new test from scratch.

You need to be very efficient at this. Check out my “Step by Step Showing Why Selenium WebDriver is the Easiest-to-Learn Web Test Automation Framework” and its video. With practice, you can do that too. The point here is to engage the interviewer’s attention. If you are not confident, don’t do it.

Things to show off:

• Snippets or known as keyboard abbreviations (for efficiency)

• Page Object Model (for good test design)

• Test Refactorings (for test maintenance and productivity)

3. Trigger a run of a few tests sequentially on a CT Server