How Do We Interview Testers at MoEngage?

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Any organization’s success primarily depends on the quality of its employees. Finding and retaining the right people is becoming a critical competitive differentiator. Scaling your testing team becomes vital when the workload becomes too much for your team members to handle.

As teams grow and scale rapidly, there are chances that hiring managers end up making wrong hiring decisions that could often be expensive. They lower productivity and hurt your organizational culture. Additionally, they increase the costs involved in hiring, recruiting, training, and onboarding substitutes. Above all, finding skilled testers is always tricky.

Are you a QA leader or a hiring manager looking to hire talented testers? If yes, then you should not miss this article. And if you are interviewing with our testing teams, this could be your cheat sheet to crack a MoEngage interview 😉

The right way to interview a Tester – we ask them to test.

In the traditional software testing interview setting, the majority of the interviewers focus on asking definitions of testing terms or buzzwords. At MoEngage, we are not a traditional software testing company, and so we do not ask for software testing definitions, buzzwords, or terminologies. We realize that these questions are not helpful to evaluate the competency of a tester.

Our approach is simple; we ask the candidates to test an application. We ask them to think aloud. When the candidate thinks aloud, we get insights into their thought process and testing mindset.

Similarly, we share a practical use case with the candidates for automation roles and ask them to automate. We are not tool-specific; we offer flexibility for the candidates to use the preferred tools to solve the problem. We make an effort to understand the candidate’s thought process and then challenge their approach.

Takeaways 💡

• Prepare for the interview  – The biggest sin of an interviewer is not preparing for the interview.
  • Have a clear understanding of what you need in a candidate.
  • Please do your homework look up the candidate on LinkedIn, their website, and other social media platforms. This exercise will give you helpful information about their skills and background.
  • Have a look at the job description and prepare the list of competencies to assess the candidate.
• Create an intentionally buggy app to evaluate testers – If you do not code, take the help of your developers to design a faulty application for your interviews. Induce deliberate bugs in the application.
• Find real websites/Apps with bugs – The internet is full of buggy applications. Several applications exist for practicing exploratory testing, security testing, automation. Curate a list of such applications, pair up with your team to list all possible bugs, keep updating the list as and when you uncover more bugs. Automation Panda has curated such demo websites to practice testing/automation safely.

We value attitude as much as any other skill

A positive attitude is the key to success for every tester. While the testing and job-relevant skills for the role are essential, we equally value the attitude and soft skills that the candidate brings to the table. We believe in hiring the right person who fits our company cultures and shares our values. Assessing attitude saves you time and costs in the long term.

Pro Tips 💡

Assessing attitude is not as complex as often perceived; you need to ask the right questions. Ask open-ended questions that encourage the candidate to answer using more than monosyllables. These questions help you understand the candidate better.

There are no right or wrong answers. Please pay attention to their words which give you hints about the candidate’s attitude and personality. Look for passion, growth mindset, problem-solving skills, decision making, willingness to learn and grow. Assess if the candidate can handle difficult situations without hand-holding. Though attitudes can be faked, with experience, you can identify the fake behaviors relatively quickly.

We strive to ensure a pleasant interview experience

MoEngage can attract top talent and keep potential candidates in our talent pool by providing a superior candidate experience. Furthermore, it has helped us reduce time-to-hire and has increased job acceptance rates.

Candidate experience is how candidates feel about your organization during your hiring process. It’s how candidates perceive your brand when they apply from your career page until they get the offer letter or a rejection mail. Candidate experience directly impacts your organization’s brand. Whether the candidate gets the job or not, the impression you create during the hiring process remains long.

Pro Tips💡

Provide meaningful feedback

The most significant responsibility of an interviewer is to provide specific, meaningful, and actionable feedback. Several hiring managers refrain from giving feedback to the rejected candidates.

At MoEngage, we provide genuine and personalized feedback to every tester we interview. At the end of the interview, share our evaluation. We discuss their strengths and areas of improvement. We also put aside time for the candidates to ask questions and resolve their queries. We also give them a glimpse of our company’s culture, perks, and benefits. We guide the rejected candidates on how they can ace their upcoming interviews. Furthermore, we direct the candidates to relevant resources like training, courses, books, blogs, mentors, communities that can help testers learn and upskill.

Candidate experience is a continuous process; it does not end when a candidate becomes an employee. We continue our efforts in the form of employee experience. Remember that there is no perfect hiring process. Learn from your mistakes and constantly improve to provide a pleasant and smooth candidate experience

Conclusion

Interviews are equally challenging for the interviewers and candidates. It is a skill you can master with the proper preparation,  time, and practice. We believe a good interviewer can identify the right blend between the role’s demands and the candidate’s aspirations. Above all, the interviewer should ensure a fantastic experience for the candidate.

Diversity and inclusiveness are the cornerstones of our thriving culture MoEngage. Be a part of a culture that encourages learning, innovation, and fun. Join us and build a world-class product that touches millions of customers and drives revenue for some of the largest brands in the world.

What can you do next?

• MoEngage is hiring testers! Find the open positions here.
• Take a look at 2021: Year In Review for Engineering@MoEngage.
• See how MoEngage helps global enterprises delight millions of consumers.
• Learn about our vision, culture, and leadership.