Interview

[NotAGolf]

Hey all. Managed to bag myself an interview next tuesday for software tester at a local company.

I was prepping all the normal questions like; "tell me about yourself", what can you do for this company", why should we hire you", "what are your weknesses" etc.

However, yesterday I found out that the interview was going to be with the test team manager rather than someone for HR.

I'd imagine this will change the format of the interview quite a lot. He might ask a couple of the generic questions but then get down to nitty gritty technical stuff. Do you think this sounds about right, or do you think it will still be fairly generic?

The main thing I'm wondering about is about when I ask questions. If he asked me where I see myself in 5 years or whatever I'd perhaps ask him about the possibility of moving up in the company or maybe moving across to design/development. Or if I were to ask him what are the upcoming projects etc.

Do you think I should still ask those types of questions or try and stick to questions within the testing department?

Thanks.

 

[NotAGolf]

Thanks for the advice.

I have one more little dilema. I'm pretty good with the theory behind testing; why you test, dynamic/static testing, black/white box, inspections/reviews, boundary/partionion tests, knowing what goes in test plans, control graphs with branch/decision coverage etc. I'm fairly confident about most of this but will need to brush up a bit

However, the technology they use and test on I have very little idea about. They do most of their stuff on web based apps so are heavily into PHP, Javascript, ASP.NET etc. They also use a variety of different server and database technologies. My knowledge of these things are basic and I have virtually no experience about actually coding in any of these environments. I know my job isn't coding but knowing the environments would surely be a massive help.

Do you think I should spend my time between now and the interview on:
1. Completely nailing the testing theory side of things but leave the technology alone
2. The opposite (learn the basics of a couple of scripting languages for example but leave the testing theory alone)
3. Bit of both

Personally I think i should perhaps do 1. I'll look at the technologies and understand what they are, what they do etc but I don't think I have enough time to really get involved and learn something.

I'm just worried that at the interview I'll have to do the complete opposite and talk for an hour about PHP, SQL and Apache!

What do you suggest?

Thanks again.

 

[NotAGolf]

Thanks very much Smit. That's a great help.

The only thing in the spec that it says users must have is awareness of test dosumentation (plans, matrices etc). It also says knowledge of Linux and/or bug tracking systems would be and advantage. That's it.

I do need to look into bug tracking so I'll definetley have a look at those you mention. I'll try take a look at some of the other tools you've mentioned as well.

Thanks very much again for your help, it's greatly appreciated.