Today I came across some questions I'd written down nearly 2 years ago. I was looking to hire someone to replace me as QE Lead . Here are the questions I came up with.

After reading the questions, I realized I only wanted to know 2 things.

1. Is this person a good, creative tester with interest and experience in this area?

2. Can this person work well enough with different types of people to be a lead?

I guess those are the top things I consider "must have" items for a QE Lead. A pretty short list. The round of interviews resulted in a good hire. The person has worked out really well in that role. They had much more than my bare bones hope that they could "do the job". I'm glad it turned out, but I've been thinking about how to incorporate questions to find out if I can get what is "ideal" for the job, not just functional.

The most hilarious thing about the person we hired is that on paper, they had the resume that annoyed me the most of any resume I'd ever seen. It did stop slightly short of saying they invented  the entire Internet, but it came across as over the top. I was shocked to meet a humble and intelligent person who was anything but a bragger in person. It just goes to show you that you can't tell everything from the written word. Once I got to know the person better and they'd been on the job while, we discussed what my impression of the resume was and why I interpretted it that way. We both thought it was pretty funny and laughed about it.

So, I ask you, what do you think are important qualities for a QE Lead? What questions would you ask to find out if a candidate had those qualities?

Questions I Had Prepared

1. Have you ever used (product under test) before? Describe what it does.
2. Describe your experience with (Technology area) so far. What do you enjoy working on the most that is (technology) related? Why do you want to work on (Specific Technology)?
3. What is the most difficult bug you've ever isolated?
4. What is your greatest strength/weakness where testing is concerned?
5. Do you believe that natural talent plays a role in the performance of testers? What role does it play and how would you maximize it?
6. How would you go about isolating the following bug? Note: This is an actual fixed bug from the database. Xml file crashes application if imported with "(Edited for privacy)" option is selected. (note: Removing certain tags causes the problem.) How would you verify the fix?
7. Describe a situation where you worked with a difficult developer.
8. What kind of a boss works best for you and why?
9. Describe a situation where the analysis that you performed was incorrect.
10. If someone on your team was a solid contributor, but not developing the technical depth you might expect or product knowledge, how would you react?
11. If you had someone on your team who needed improvement and wasn't meeting deadlines or communicating with the rest of the team, how would you respond?
12. If massive lay-offs happened and your team lost both engineers and QE members, and all of your milestone dates and features we being reconsidered and scheduled, what would you do to keep your team productive during this time of transition?
13. What are the best uses for test automation? Where is it not effective?
14. Provide us with an example of how you’ve asserted yourself in an emergency or high-pressure situation?
15. What is the greatest risk that you've taken which resulted in failure?
16. What decisions are easiest for you to make and which ones are the most difficult? Why?
17. You have been asked to schedule and conduct a meeting with a several groups to discuss common issues on a shared technology component. What steps will you take to insure that the meeting is successful?
18. How is productivity measured?
19. What steps can be taken to improve the quality in any product we ship?
20. Tell us about a situation in which you were required to analyze and solve a complex problem.

The question that still interests me to this day is "How is productivity measured?" I think that if you don't consider that question on a regular basis, as well as "What steps can be taken to improve the quality in any product we ship?" that you aren't doing a good job as a QE Lead. If I get to the point where I no longer ponder those points, it will be time for me to move on. It will mean I'm burned out and just wasting space in a chair. When I ask these questions and don't expect any particular answer. I mean, I only expect the answer to make sense, the person to be open to discussing these ideas with me, and to see that they have given these questions thought. Anyone in QE who doesn't have an opinion on these matters or gives me a robotic company line about how productivity is currently measured in their little corner of the world scares me.

So, I don't interview much, but I'm always looking for ways to improve. Interviewing is hardly an accurate science.