Interview questions / Foundations
Test design, defect reporting and exploratory skills are still the core of every QA interview, even for automation roles. These questions cover how you think about risk, coverage and communication.
6 questions · 3 beginner· 2 intermediate· 1 advanced
beginner 0–2 yrs
Severity is the technical impact of a defect on the system; priority is how urgently the business needs it fixed. They are set by different people for different reasons, so they can diverge: a typo in the company name on the home page is low severity but high priority.
Full answer with examplesbeginner 0–2 yrs
A good bug report lets someone who has never seen the issue reproduce it on the first try: a specific title, environment, minimal numbered steps, expected versus actual result, evidence such as screenshots, logs or a HAR, and an honest severity. One defect per report.
Full answer with examplesbeginner 0–2 yrs
Clarify requirements first, then cover functional cases (valid, invalid, empty, case sensitivity), validation and error messages, security (lockout, generic errors, HTTPS, password masking, injection), session behaviour, usability and accessibility, and cross-browser or mobile checks. Prioritise by risk.
Full answer with examplesintermediate 2–5 yrs
Exploratory testing is simultaneous learning, test design and execution, guided by the tester's judgement rather than pre-written scripts. It becomes accountable through charters, time-boxed sessions, notes, heuristics and a debrief, often called session-based test management.
Full answer with examplesStay factual: re-verify on the latest build, isolate the environment or data difference, add evidence such as logs, network traces and a video, and reference the requirement. If it is a disagreement about expected behaviour, take it to the product owner rather than arguing. Pair with the developer when possible.
Full answer with examplesUse risk-based testing: estimate likelihood and impact of failure per area using what changed, business criticality, usage, defect history and complexity. Test the highest risks deeply, smoke the rest, lean on automation, and make residual risk explicit so stakeholders can make an informed go/no-go decision.
Full answer with examplesEven automation-heavy SDET roles open with manual testing interview questions, because automation only encodes the tests someone designed. Interviewers use them to see how you think: do you look for risk, do you consider users other than the happy-path one, and can you communicate a problem so that it gets fixed? These questions are usually open-ended, and the structure of your answer matters as much as its content.
The classic is "how would you test a login page?". A strong answer groups ideas instead of listing them: functional cases (valid login, wrong password, locked account, password reset), input validation (empty fields, length limits, whitespace, Unicode), security (error messages that do not reveal whether the email exists, rate limiting, HTTPS, session expiry), accessibility (labels, keyboard navigation, screen reader announcements of errors) and compatibility. Close by saying which you would test first and why. That last step shows judgement.
For a fresher or junior role, interviewers mainly want clear definitions with an example and a methodical approach to scenario questions. With two to five years of experience, they expect stories from real projects: a bug you found that others missed, how you handled a disputed defect, how you planned regression for a release. Senior candidates are expected to talk about test strategy and risk: what you would not test and why, how you report quality to stakeholders, and how manual and automated testing divide the work in your team.
Whatever the level, use the STAR structure (situation, task, action, result) for experience questions and keep each answer to about two minutes.
Answer each question aloud, then compare with the model answer. To practise the written side, draft a report with the bug report generator and design cases with the test case generator. The software testing fundamentals questions cover the terminology that manual testing answers rely on.
