1. Reliability

As a QA professional, you are the last and most important barrier between the evil, destructive bugs and the users. It might be disguised under some else’s title, but it is your thumb, pointing up or down that says if a version is getting released or not.

Stressful? Sure it is!.
Now think about the person that is interviewing for this position.
What do you think will be the absolute deal breaker? The slightest whiff, the fastest flicker, the faintest hum in the vibe if reliability might take you off the list.
I will never hire someone that I don’t trust, on both measurable and downright intuitive levels, for a position that places my bacon on the line.

So what does it means for you?

First make sure your CV are not misleading, hyped, or down right selling something you cannot deliver at a moment’s notice. Same goes to the interview itself: it is perfectly well to describe yourself in a highly favorable manner, but never say you know something when you do not. You can never know, the next questions might be very specific regarding your this very “something”.

 

2. Passion

This is easy to explain, and very hard to fake.
This is what your interviewer is looking for, so make it your daily affirmation:
You want to be a QA professional. You want to advance in this discipline. This is not a gateway position,
nor a compromise for failed career elsewhere. You love doing it.

If this is not the case, I suggest looking for alternative paths, or have some kick butt ace to play (“I got bored with my job as director of research at the centre for theoretical cosmology,Cambridge, so I decided to give QA a little try” will probably do the trick).

3. Learn the lingo

If you have any former practical experience, you already know a lot. It will be a shame not to have this experience
working for you, just because your interviewer used a technical name for it. Everybody is using equivalence partitioning,
everybody is using edge case testing, everybody is doing some sort of non functional tests. If you had to have it explained,
you lost points. Plenty.

 

4. Training is golden

I can go on all day here, but you have an interview to prepare to, so here are three short points in favor of inverting your $ to train yourself on technical fields relevant to QA:

  • Training makes you more equipped to handle the challenges you encounter. I really hope this one was not a surprise.
  • It’s a good CV filler and show you are passionate about QA.
  • When you lack years of experience, it give you the edge over the equally inexperienced competition. Remember, it’s not the lion you need to outrun.

5. Do your homework

QA interview, as all others, requires preparation and etiquette. I’m not going to into all the details, but here are some useful resources:

  • qaquestions.net – a non-nonsense single page collection of interview questions and answers.
  • Go over john sonmez’s simpleprogrammer.com there is a metric ton of useful information there, and you can search for “interview” if you are pressed for time.
  • If you really want to go “all or nothing”, Google “Ramit Sethi briefcase technique”.
    I can’t wait to be in a situation where this is applicable…..