How to hire good Testers – Conducting effective Testing Interviews.
Introduction:
Conducting testing interviews is one of the most important part of the project. One hiring mistake leads to a make or break situation within the team / project. One has to understand that Interviews are particularly useful for getting the story behind a participant's experiences. As this decides the success of your project, testing interviews should be conducted with great care. Below are some points that will help you conduct an effective interview and make your hiring decisions easy.
Preparation:
Before you start to design your interview questions and process, clearly articulate to yourself what problem or need is to be addressed using the information to be gathered by the interviews. This helps you keep clear focus on the intent of each question.
Define Job Requirements. Have your job requirements defined before you start interviewing. Define and prioritize what you are looking for. Just focus on your requirements and keep them handy through out the interview. Amazingly, I have not seen this in many of the interviews where I was shadowing my hiring managers. Many managers don't fully understand the skills and talents they want and/or need to get the job done well. If you don't define what you're looking for upfront, you won't recognize it when it walks through the door.
Prior to your interview, read the candidate's resume and take notes on specific areas you want to address. This again helps you to take a right decision.
Execution:
Starting: Introduce yourself as a hiring manger and explain the purpose of the interview.
Explain the format of the interview.
Explain the type of interview you are conducting and its nature.
If you want them to ask questions, specify if they're to do so as they have them or wait until the end of the interview.
Indicate how long the interview usually takes.
Next 15 mins: From the above whole list of questions, priorities and select the most important questions. Fire them in the first 15 mins. This is generally done when you are having mass interviews and you - as a hiring manager are cautious of your / candidate’s and the organizations time. This list of questions should let you decide if you want to invest another 75% of your time on the candidate or not.
Never start the interview by asking the candidate to tell you a little about herself. I find this request is too vague and too broad. People rarely know where to begin and what to respond. A better way to start would be to ask the candidate to give you a brief summary of her professional experience over the last years and how that experience can serve him / her and the organization in the position applied for.
Do’s
· Listen more than you talk - Keep the candidate talking.
· Questions should be asked one at a time.
· Questions should be worded clearly
· Ask questions based on the answers you receive
· Don't count on your memory to recall their answers. Ask for permission to record the interview or take notes with the interview
· Write down any observations made during the interview
· Sell the Opportunity! – Share with the candidate the reasons why the company is successful and why the role would be a potential good move. Be passionate in explaining why you enjoy working there.
· Ask open-ended questions – Your job, as a hiring manager, is to gain as much information about the candidate as possible. Ask open-ended questions. Make notes of how the candidate responds to questions. Do they talk incessantly? Do they answer everything "yes" or "no"? This gives you vital information about their interpersonal skills in the work environment. Asking a tester, "Have you ever written a test plan?" gets you nothing. Changing the question to, "Tell me your definition of a test plan and why it's significant to the testing process" will give you much more information. One of our favorite questions to ask testers is, "What are some of the challenges you've faced as a tester and how did you overcome them?" This single question can give you volumes of information about the candidate. In case you are looking to hire a tester who can "hit the ground running" might want to ask candidate testers to review a specification and describe what test cases they would write or what strategy they would use for testing. In order for this approach to work, the specification must be of a general enough nature that each candidate can understand its meaning.
Don’ts:
Do not discuss compensation – The purpose of the initial meeting is to evaluate the basic skill and culture fit on both ends, not the time to discuss salary and benefits.
Closure:
Allot 5 minutes for questions at the end – You can tell quite a bit about a candidate by the quality of their questions. This closing part of the interview should help you understand their interest in pursuing the role. Tell them how to get in touch with you later if they want to. Answer the candidate's questions. Near the end of the interview, you should ask the candidate if he or she has any questions for you. Make sure you understand the inner workings of your organization so that you can accurately address any questions. This is a good time to get them excited about working with your organization. As a hiring manager, you have a responsibility to sell the candidate on your position.
Final Decision:In case you have followed the above process diligently, this gets a simple phase to execute. This also matters in case you are hiring a contractor or a permanent employee. In case of a permanent employee few more steps should be included while taking a hiring decision. Be ware of the consistency and stability of the resource along with the technical and communication skills.
Finally A good working tip:
Some test managers employ team interviews as a way of selecting new testers. This is done because these test managers realize the need for the new candidate to "fit in" with the rest of the group. When team members participate in the selection process, they have a vested interest in helping the new team member be successful. Using team interviews does not, in any way, relieve the test manager of the responsibility of the selection.
Thanks for reading my blog.
Cheers
Anupreet Singh Bachhal
A Testing Novice
asbachhal@yahoo.com
