A little bit about yourself
Hello everyone, my name is Lilia, I am a QA lead and a teacher, for the last 10 years I have been reading testing courses in, so to speak, leading companies in the industry. And of course, I am very interested in how my colleagues teach in online courses and what kind of specialists they get as a result - after all, I often have to interview Juns, including after courses.
About this article
The famous Cem Kaner, the author of many profile articles, courses and books, once talked about his way of hiring inexperienced testers. He just gave them a practical test problem, a whiteboard and a felt-tip pen and suggested that they think about a solution. Without interfering with the process, he watched how the candidate thinks and whether any disparate theoretical knowledge is able to apply in practice. If yes - without hesitation he took him to work.
And the article will be about what you can ask at an interview with a graduate of online courses for testers , how to analyze the answers and why. The article may be of interest to both technical interviewers and HR. Technical and non-technical interview questions are deliberately not separated - after all, the hiring process in a company can be arranged as you like.
So, let's imagine for a moment that an applicant with a diploma from online courses comes to your position as an intern or a junior, but without work experience, and you start asking questions ...
Question: How long was the course?
First answer: two to three weeks
If you get this answer, ask the applicant a couple of simple theoretical questions . Answered - excellent, and now offer a practical task from everyday life . Most likely, difficulties will begin at this stage, because in two or three weeks you can learn a little theory, but with practice, the situation is usually worse.
Of course, there is always an option that the applicant does not need knowledge about testing to work as a tester: for example, he is a developer and wants to understand what these strange people constantly demand from him and why, or, say, he is a manager who grew out of developers and wants understand the basics of another specialization - in this case, two to three-week courses are quite enough, and a couple of theoretical questions will give an idea of whether the applicant has overslept the lecture. But hiring a student who has completed only two-week courses and wants to get a job as a tester is not a very good option (although each rule may have exceptions, of course).
Second answer option: 9 months - a year
Already more interesting. Be sure to ask the applicant what exactly he studied in the course if he suddenly forgot to indicate this on his resume. One-year courses usually cover “everything there is” and do not take into account specialization, and the result is a kind of full-stack QA, which is able to write test cases, and automation, and also a little mobile testing, and a little SQL, and Git from afar. I saw, and WebUI, and also English,
Then you can ask if the applicant thinks that he has already received a year of work experience while studying at the courses - after all, marketers are very fond of writing in bright advertising materials something like “Our school will replace your year of work!” and accompany it with compelling infographics. If the student answered in the affirmative, this should be alarming: perhaps he is too self-confident and will not develop further, relying on his still fragmented knowledge.
In fact, you need a middle , and the student again believes in marketers and considers himself so, showing a certificate of one-year courses?
A student who has completed a one-year course is a good option if you need a junior or an intern who is ready to study further, but you should not expect miracles from them either: theory and a little practice will not make a person middle, this only happens on the battlefields for a real project.
Third answer option: 3-4 months
Do not be afraid of such a seemingly short duration. In our practice, most often there were three-month courses, but intensive. "How is it better?" - you ask. There are not so many long-distance runners who are ready to regularly train for a whole year without weekends, holidays, vacations and procrastination among the representatives of the human race. But to get together and work out for 3 months, promising themselves a bucket of chocolate at the end or a three-day break with friends will be able to many more people.
Ask the applicant why he preferred 3-4 month courses over a year... Perhaps the answer will be “I prefer to work intensively, but I would not be enough for a year” - well, so you will receive important information about the character of your candidate and perhaps you need just such - for a short project with revisions? Or maybe he will say that it was during these courses that he liked the practical work and the opportunity to ask the teacher questions - which means that you have a thoughtful candidate who wants to develop, which, you see, is also not bad.
"Should I hire a student after three months of courses?"- you ask. Why not. If there was enough practice, and knowledge was confirmed by a passed exam, or even better - by a test interview with an expert. In any case, we recruited the best students of our school and never regretted it: the Juns came with a burning gaze, ready to study, work and develop.
Questions and tasks in this case can be given the same as after one-year courses, and of course, you should not expect that a middle engineer will magically appear in front of you.
Question: Did you listen to the recording of lectures or did you study with the teacher in real time?
Answer one: recording lectures
Imagine a situation: you come to your institute for a couple that you are really interested in and on which you did not intend to sleep at all (suppose this is possible), you sit comfortably in the classroom ... and you are shown a film in which the teacher tells something in background slides. In the process of viewing, you have questions, clarifications or criticism, but you cannot do anything, because the teacher is virtual. In what case do you think the assimilation of the material will be more effective - on record or with a live teacher?
If, nevertheless, the teacher was virtual, the following additional questions may be useful:
Was it possible to communicate with the teacher after listening to the lectures?
If not, has the student read additional materials, or searched the Internet for an explanation of incomprehensible terms? (of course, ask for some examples, because the socially significant answer in this case is obvious)
If it was possible to communicate, did the student use this opportunity? How often? (well, and examples, of course).
I think in this case it would be superfluous to emphasize that a student's attention to detail and a desire to clarify incomprehensible places are excellent qualities that every tester needs.
The second answer: lectures were delivered by the teacher in real time
Obviously, this option is more correct for understanding the material. However, for some students, listening to a "live" lecture may not be any different from watching a video, as they sleep or correspond with a friend about a fun weekend like a boring couple.
This means that additional questions will not hurt either.
How often did the student ask questions during the lecture? (with examples, of course)
Was everything clear from the teacher's explanations? - it is interesting that the answer “everything is clear” in 99% of cases does not mean that you are a genius. Rather, such an answer suggests that either the course was chosen incorrectly and it is too simple for the student, or that the student was simply inattentively listening to the lectures.
Did the student read additional materials, did he look on the Internet for an explanation of incomprehensible terms? - regardless of the method of presentation, reading additional materials for the lecture speaks of the student's thoughtfulness and the desire to understand everything thoroughly.
Q: what did your homework look like?
First answer: repetition assignments or tests
If a student has taken such courses, there is a danger that we are faced with a "theoretician" who does not correlate knowledge with practical tasks. Imagine a situation that such a tester on his first day of work will encounter, say, a non-standard defect recorded by technical support from the words of an angry user - and will not know how to act, because in the course he was shown only “combed” defects and was not taught practical behavior skills in difficult situations. He, of course, is not to blame for this, but still it is worth checking his ability to apply knowledge in practice.
Additional questions:
What do you think your homework was missing? - an adequate student will answer that he would like more practice and promise to study without fail. A student who is not too thoughtful will probably answer that everything was fine.
Practical assignments - of course, during interviews you give tasks or descriptions of non-standard situations, the applicant must offer ways of getting out of them. In this case, it is useful to see how a person thinks and whether he can compare theory with practice, even if he was not taught this in the courses. Help him and do not wait for an immediate correct answer, act like Kaner mentioned in the introduction.
Second answer: practical tasks, life situations
Unfortunately, there are very few such courses, because it is much easier to develop a test or ask to repeat a theory than to come up with a “life story”. But if your job seeker is lucky and he is faced with just such a technique, you can move on to the following additional questions:
What practical task did you like the most? Why? - this way you can find out how much your candidate loves challenging tasks. Eyes lit up, tells with enthusiasm how he googled midnight and wrote to the teacher or fellow students, clarifying incomprehensible places? Or does he say that it was easy to solve such a problem, that's why you liked it?
Well, of course, offer the applicant your version of practical problems . Without this there is no way ...
Question: was there an exam or a thesis? What was required of you?
Knowledge testing is always good. First, it helps students: remember how many times did you finally understand the topic just when you started writing spurs? Secondly, the training center needs it, because it excludes situations when a certificate issued to an unprepared student damages the reputation of the courses.
First answer: there was no exam or diploma
Not a very good situation, extremely typical for short-term courses and completely atypical for long-term ones. You can ask an additional question, how the student repeated or systematized the material at the end of the course , well, and ask more technical questions, of course.
The second answer: the exam or diploma
What to include in the exam and is the simple test that some courses offer enough? In our captious opinion, an exam or a diploma should simulate as much as possible the situation that an unlucky student will face when he sits at a real desk. Let's give the students a “real” project and “real” requirements for it on the exam and play the roles of a test lead, business analyst and customers? Well, of course, if we talked about it during the courses. Such life experiences will certainly count towards your hypothetical applicant - after all, he is not only able to answer theoretical questions by rote, but he will not be afraid of practice. Of course, such an option may not be encountered in practical life, so you can simulate the situation right at the interview,inviting the future tester to analyze the “customer requirement” in the form that is customary in your company, ask questions to you as a business analyst or product owner, and then tell you how he is going to test it, and so on - in a word, check whether he understands the applicant, how he has to work. (Of course, if the time allotted for the interview allows it).
Outcome
It's great that there are so many training centers on the market now that offer their services for training testers. It is gratifying that most of them work online, which allows students to gain knowledge even in the context of the coronavirus. The courses are very different and they approach students in different ways. This does not mean that some of them are good, some are bad - after all, they are targeted at different target audiences and pursue different goals. But in any case, do not be afraid to invite graduates of the courses for an interview, because an intelligent graduate with burning eyes and a desire to learn can bring no less benefit to your company than a June with formal work experience and a dead gaze. The main thing is to recognize the right graduate, which, we hope, this article will help you with.