One Simple Test Automation Scenario Interview Question that Most Candidates Failed

Simple, yet every candidate I interviewed failed.

This article is featured in Software Testing Weekly #131 and Coding Jag #95

This article is one of the “Be aware of Fake Test Automation/DevOps Engineers” and the “IT Job Interview” series.

After the four quick and casual screening questions, I usually ask one scenario question during the interview (otherwise, too short, not respecting candidates). Personally, I don’t like long, brain-teasers or tricky questions. So, this only test automation knowledge question must be related to real work.

This question aims to determine whether a candidate is a fake (common in the field of E2E Test Automation), similar to Elon Musk’s approach (see video below), but in a more straightforward manner.

The Question

Describe the steps you would write for a common E2E web automated test case via UI: “User Change Password”.

Everyone understands this simple scenario, the explanation for business logic is unnecessary. It is so common that this would be among the first batch of automated tests written for a web app. To assure the candidate, I will tell the candidate: “There is no trick here, and no functional limitations (ignore any password change restrictions). This is simply about test design. Just say or write down the steps, such as a user logs in, click profile and ‘change password’ link, …, etc.”

Before the candidate started, I said: “A reminder, this is an automated End-to-End test via UI (functional testing). Don’t overthink, just focus on designing a good automated test that verifies that the user can change password.”

The Answers: Most Got it Wrong!

It is a quick and easy interview question, right? However, not a single interview…