I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Povio (Pristina) in Aug 2022
Interview
The overall interview process was below average. They did reach out to me initially without an offer or job description. I did open up the conversation about my financial expectations and they were okay with it. I did explicitly ask to save me time in case they cannot match my expectations.
On the first meeting with HR, I explained my experience and area of expertise and they were completely fine with it. We agreed to move on with the next processes, and complete two QA-related projects:
1. Manual QA project
2. QA Automation project
I agreed to start working on those projects and managed to deliver both projects. The QA Automation project had no restriction on what technologies can be done (Selenium, Cypress, or PlayWright). I chose to work with Selenium and put some extra effort into it to prove my skills and experience (I had implemented reporting, CI/CD integrations, and pipelines).
Then I was invited for a screening interview over the work I had done.
After one week I got a negative response from them with the main reason as stated in their email "While your experience with Java and Selenium is commendable and your work with performance testing is quite extensive, currently we are looking for candidates with more on hands experience in Cypress/Playwright and Appium".
The entire process has cost me a lot of time and stress. Since the first meeting, they never mentioned that they're specifically looking for people with experience in Cypress/Playwright or Appium. Being told just in the end that your expertise is not what we're looking for, makes me wonder why they accepted and insisted to start the interview process with me.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Manual QA: First of all the interview started badly as they changed the manual QA interviewer at the last minute. The new interviewer did not interview my work prior to the meeting. We had to improvise with screen share and I was put in the position to read out loud and have him listen to me. We didn't have much time to go through each topic, and the interviewer started to make wrong conclusions about the work I did claiming it isn't done.
QA Automation: The interviewer was claiming I had done some weird implementations without any specific reason. I believe a lack of proper understanding and experience on Selenium Explicit Waits and Serenity BDD is the only indicator for putting out such comments.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Povio in Mar 2022
Interview
First a pretty generic HR interview, nothing really special to say about that. HR person was super friendly and nice.
Technical interview:
1. Manual part:
Exploratory testing of dummy website. I just had to spend an hour or two to go over the website and sum up my findings in a readable manner. Also I performed exploratory testing on multiple browsers and platforms (desktop + android).
2. Automation part:
Write framework and couple of E2E scenarios for a simple web app. Task wasn't difficult at all, but I found the interview in this part to be very strange.
Bummer #0: I did my automation task specifically as requested, but interviewer found it lacking because I didn't overengineer it enough. They wanted to see me show off. I felt like they understood that that was the full extent of my automation knowledge and skills.
Bummer #1: At one point my interviewer even said he must focus on what I wrote only, otherwise I might just be a guy saying I have experience and knowledge in some areas. This really shocked me, and it felt like he just called me a potential liar. Usually in interviews, I'm asked about my experience and my skills, after which I'm asked to somehow prove it (answer questions, do some coding etc.)
Bummer #2: Another shocker for me was that my interview had a remark that my code didn't make sense because after test failure I capture a screenshot, but I don't save it anywhere. I showed my code and explained where exactly my screenshot gets attached to the report, and that it does get saved, but my interviewer insisted that my code doesn't work.
Bummer #3:
Bummer #3: In the end I was rejected because I don't have real world experience in some tools which aren't in my CV and I wasn't really asked about.
Candidates applying for Senior QA Automation Engineer roles take an average of 21 days to get hired, when considering 2 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Povio overall takes an average of 24 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Povio as a Senior QA Automation Engineer according to 2 Glassdoor interviews include:
Skills test: 25%
Group panel interview: 25%
Presentation: 25%
Other: 13%
One on one interview: 13%
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