1.4Hiring QA Engineers

What to Look For Beyond Technical Skills

Technical skills are necessary but insufficient. The best QA engineers combine technical ability with a set of qualities that are harder to assess but more important in the long run.

Quality	Why It Matters	How to Assess
Curiosity	QA engineers who ask "what if?" find more bugs	Ask about a time they discovered something unexpected
Communication	Bug reports, test plans, and stakeholder updates are all writing	Review a writing sample or ask them to explain a concept
Empathy for users	Understanding how real people use software reveals realistic test scenarios	Ask them to describe how they would test a familiar product
Systematic thinking	Exploratory testing requires structured approaches, not random clicking	Give a small testing exercise and observe their approach
Comfort with ambiguity	Requirements are often incomplete; QA must fill the gaps	Ask how they handle unclear requirements
Resilience	QA often involves repetitive work, political friction, and pushback	Ask about a difficult situation and how they handled it
Collaboration	QA works with every role; adversarial testers create friction	Ask about their relationship with developers

Interview Questions for QA Candidates

Exploratory thinking:

• "Here is our login page. You have 15 minutes. Walk me through how you would test it." (Observe: do they start with a plan or dive in randomly? Do they consider edge cases, security, accessibility, performance?)

Communication and prioritization:

• "You found a critical bug 2 hours before a major release. The developer says it is not critical. Walk me through how you handle this."

Technical depth:

• "Describe a test automation framework you have built or significantly contributed to. What were the design decisions and trade-offs?"

Process and strategy:

• "You join a team with no test automation, no test documentation, and a history of production bugs. What do you do in your first 90 days?"

Self-awareness:

• "Tell me about a bug that escaped to production on your watch. What happened and what did you learn?"