QA director interview questions

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We are trying to put together an interview process for a QA director role. We believe this person should be able to have strong opinions about software testing and guide the team when needed on testing philosophies and techniques. We are trying to design a question where the director helps solve a disagreement between 2 testers on their test approach but inspiration hasn’t struck beyond that. Can anyone think of any interesting scenarios for discussion. Thanks!

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Welcome @vidyaprasanna

This is an interesting one, as its at a much more senior level.

At a director level role, I’d ask questions around stakeholder engagement, as there should be some focus on selling testing to the wider org. How do they advocate for testing where other senior leaders are questioning the cost/value/benefits of testing.

Setting out the testing strategy is another area - how do they determine the most appropriate strategy for the testing function?
How do they see testing in relation to the wider org? Separate or integrated, and why?

These are just a few pointers off the top of my head - I’m sure others will contribute as well.

Let us know how you get on.
Steve

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It sounds like the skill(s) you are looking for are more about mediation and maybe even facilitation. In other words you want the director to be able to work with the 2 testers who are in disagreement and get them into agreement. (Rather than have the director impose his/her will on both of them.)

For this I recommend a role playing situation where you have 2 interview subjects who each have opposing views on something. See if you can find an example from work where there was an impasse and have director candidate work with the 2 subjects to see if they can come to some sort of resolution. Then end the role play and ask questions to the director candidate about the process and why they did one thing and not another.

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Thanks @ckenst . This is the exactly what I was trying to do but I’m still struggling to think of a specific disagreement and I want this to be something related to QA because there’s a separate round of interview to gauge managerial skills. Through this exercise I want them to showcase their QA knowledge or beliefs. For context, our QA team is super small, which means the director also has to be hands-on in testing, coach the team and also be responsible for hiring skilled testers to the team.

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Thanks @sjwatsonuk . There will be 2 separate rounds of interview – one with the other department heads/executives which will focus on cross departmental collaboration, managerial skills. We want our round to be focused on QA skills so that we are confident of getting someone who can also be hands-on and not just a people manager.

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This one might have some ideas: Top-27 QA Director Interview Questions (+Answers) - testRigor AI-Based Automated Testing Tool

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You could have a scenario which is based on the time allocated for QA on a project being stripped back (or cut) and how the QA director could then spin that from a negative perception amongst the team to a positive and empowering situation?

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Thanks for your help! I was just watching an MoT called Speed vs Quality. Very much in the same line of thought.

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I could see a disagreement between one tester who primarily automates and one who primarily explores. Where they both want to test a new application being built from their comfort zone: the automation engineers wants to build automated tests while the explorer doesn’t. How does the director handle this? What kinds of background/ context will the director dig up that will help them understand how to mediate this problem?

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Hi
One situation I can share of was about selection of the tech for writing a test framework between java and python, the team was asked to present pros and cons for both. In reality there was no diff between the 2 given the use case \ applications in scope for testing. This went on for for some time and there were 2-3 discussions between the team also. The Director took the decision to have 2 frameworks looking at the strong interest in the team members to use a particular technology.

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Would something like this blog post help? Generally I speak about the types of behaviours you want from someone at that level:

  • are they opinionated about testing?
  • are they fluent in all types of testing strategy?
  • can they talk to testing in the small and big?
  • are they a leader?
  • have they picked things themselves or been led?
  • can they tailor an approach or is everything the same solution?
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