My secret of near 100% interview success in 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.

Update (2023–10): Appium Automation Script to launch and drive TestWise IDE to create a new web test automation and script a user login test script, all under 58 seconds.

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 in the interviews was near 100%. The reason I did not say affirmative 100%, is because human beings tend to forget unhappy endings. Anyway, I encourage you to read this article as the interviewer and ask yourself, “would I hire someone who can do these during the interview”?

Moreover, it was like a copy-and-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 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…