Automation Testing Interview Questions: Prepare For Your QA Position Today

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If you’re looking for a career in web development, game development, software development, quality assurance, and any other tech-related field, there’s a chance you’ll need to know a thing or two about automation testing. You’ll need to know the hows and whats of load testing, browser automation tools like Selenium, and more.

You can use this guide as a handy reference for sample automation testing interview questions and answers, plus helpful resources like this formal course on software testing.

Explain load testing on websites.

To access a website, a user sends a “request” to that website’s server, and the server sends back a response in the form of the website you want to access. To load test a website, quality assurance engineers and automation engineers just need to multiply the number of responses sent to simulate different traffic loads. The web server’s response to the influx of virtual users can then be measured. This is used to determine performance issues and server capacity.

Are you familiar with Selenium? If yes, what is it?

Selenium is a suite of software testing and automation tools built for web applications. Using Selenium, software tests can be written in languages like Java, Perl, Python, and more. The framework itself can be deployed on the three major operating systems: Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Not familiar with Selenium? If you’re pursuing a career in automation testing, you should be! Check out this Selenium course on web application testing for help.

What kinds of tests can be run with the Selenium framework?

Selenium can be used for load testing, regression testing, and functional testing of web applications.

Can you list some other automation testing tools that you are familiar with?

Besides Selenium, there is Load Runner, Sahi, Silk Test, QTP, Jmeter, WinRunner, etc.

What kind of tests would you automate?

Load tests, sanity tests, and regression tests are the sorts of tests a quality engineer would typically automate.

Explain some disadvantages to manual software testing.

Manual software testing takes huge amounts of time and resources, both human and machine. It’s a potentially exhausting process that can end up costing more time and money for the company than if the process was simply automated, owing to employee fatigue and its consequences: inaccuracy, missed issues, lack of clarity.

Learn more about software testing with these sample interview questions.

Is automation testing a complete replacement for manual software testing?

No. Proper automation requires as little intervention from humans as possible, since the tools used are built to run tests once they’re setup. As convenient as this might be, it should not be a complete replacement for manual testing – only for repetitive tasks like load testing, where thousands of virtual users are required. Engineers should not automate things like test scripts, if those scripts can only be expected to run occasionally, nor should they automate code reviews, or bug testing for new builds of software that might require human interaction to detect specific issues. Large-scale, repetitive tasks are better fit for automation.

Does automation testing have any disadvantages?

Designing the tools and tests to run software through takes a lot of manual, human effort, though there are frameworks and tests ready made for engineers to use. Even with automated testing, human error is still a factor – tools can be buggy, inefficient, costly, and sometimes even technologically limited in what kinds of tests they can run on their own.

Want to know more about software testing? Check out this software testing tutorial for an in-depth look into the world of quality assurance, and the processes that go into it.

What are the differences between open source tools, vendor tools, and in-house tools?

Open source tools are free to use frameworks and applications. Engineers build the tool, and have the source code available for free on the internet for other engineers to use. Vendor tools are developed by companies that come with licenses to use, and often cost money. Because they are developed by an outside source, technical support is often available for use. Example vendor tools include WinRunner, SilkTest, Rational Robot, QA Director, QTP, LR, QC, RFT, and RPT. An in-house tool is a tool that a company builds for their own use, rather than purchasing vendor tools or using open source tools.

How do you choose which automation tool is best for your specific scenario?

In order to choose the proper automation testing tool, you must consider:

the scope of the project

the limitation of the tool

how much the tool costs

the tool’s usability and convenience

the testing environment

compatibility

Project management and good judgment are important skills in software testing and quality assurance positions. Check out this course on IT project management to learn how to make good, effective decisions for your team.

What are the different types of scripting techniques for automation testing?

Test automation scripting techniques include key and data driven techniques, shared, structured, and linear.

Check out this course on software testing basics for a more in-depth look at the fundamentals of quality engineering and automation.

What is the Selenium WebDriver?

The Selenium WebDriver is used for automating tests for websites.

What is the Selenium IDE and what is it used for?

The Selenium IDE is an add-on for Firefox that includes numerous features for quality assurance and engineers to record and play back browser-based actions, such as typing and mouse clicks. Some of these particular features are: debugging functions, record/playback ability, user add-on capability. Users can speed up and slow down executions with the use of a built-in slider. They can also use the Selenium IDE as a side-bar, or as a separate pop-up window.

Does the Selenium IDE have any drawbacks?

The Selenium IDE lacks conditional statements, logging and reporting functionality, loops, database testing, and it can not handle exceptions or automatically re-run tests that have failed. It also can’t take screenshots. Another downside is that it’s Firefox only. If the Selenium IDE is used in the Firefox browser’s side-bar, then the quality engineer can’t use it to record any actions undertaken by a user in a separate window.

List the elements locators that Selenium comes with.

HTML name

HTML id

CSS locators

XPath locators

Can you list some technologies that support QTP?

.NET

Delphi

Web

Java (Core)

Java (Advanced)

Windows Mobile

Oracle

SAP

WPF

Siebel

PeopleSoft

Flex

Silverlight

What are some test assets and related extensions of QTP?

test batch runner .mtb

results .xml

test file .mts

recovery scenario .qrs

shared object repository .tsr

local object repository .mtr

function library .qfl

What environment does QTP run in?

Windows only.

List the five essential types of test steps.

Test object

Functions

Utility

Comment

Programming logic

Explain how QTP identifies objects.

For each object class that QTP identifies, it has a set of properties stored. These include mandatory properties, which is essentially a description of any given object, which checks if it’s a child or parent object as well. Next are the assistive properties, which QTP resorts to only if the mandatory properties are insufficient at identifying the object. If all else fails, QTP resorts, finally, to its ordinal identifier.

For more software testing and automation testing interview help, check out this course on software testing basics. Looking for a job in QA? Start preparing for a career in testing with this software testing and quality assurance beginner’s training course. You might also want to prepare for an interview in quality assurance itself by taking a look at this guide. These fields overlap, so it’s important to know it all!