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Once, when I was working in one small company, I was offered to
conduct an interview with a candidate for the QA engineer position.
At that time I did not have experience in that, and naturally, the
first thoughts were “What to ask? What to do?”.

After some time, after a large number of interviews in QA
sphere, I can say with confidence that the interview is, first of
all, very interesting. This is a unique opportunity to learn about
what processes, methods, approaches work on real projects, what
problems arise and what solutions are applied.

For the candidate – everything is obvious, he wants to get a job
and must put his best foot forward. Most candidates try to answer
all the questions, even if they don’t know the answer. And
different ways usually used – like inventing an answer based on
conjectures, google search on the fly or something else. All of
this, of course, is not comme il faut and definitely not
beneficial. It is very important to be yourself and to answer as
honestly as possible. For example, if a candidate was faced with
stress testing in a way that someone in the team conducted it, and
the candidate was standing beside, then there is no need to write
in the resume that “I’m an expert in stress testing”. After all,
there will be no answers to the in-depth questions. It is obvious,
but a huge number of candidates do just that.

If you want to know, it is also rather hard for the interviewer
– he needs to evaluate the candidate objectively and eventually
make a very important decision. The first interviews that I
conducted were very dry and academic. At that time it seemed to me
that this is how it should be, after all, the interview is a
serious process 🙂 But over time I realized that the first thing
that should be done is to win the person over. It is important at
the very beginning of the conversation to remove tension and show
that the interview will be easy and friendly, regardless of how the
candidate will cope with the questions. For example, it is not
superfluous to ask some informal questions, like “How’s the weather
now at your homeland” (if the candidate is from another country or
city), to find out the interests of a person, in addition to the
main job, something like that. And of course, a smile and
appropriate jokes will also help to relieve tension. The more
relaxed the atmosphere of the interview, the more objective and
adequate will be the impression of the candidate.

It often happens that the candidate is not prepared, responds
poorly and at the very beginning, it becomes clear that he is not
suitable for the position. Earlier I tried to just finish the
interview as quickly as possible, saying the trivial phrase “Thank
you, HR will contact you” so as not to waste my time and time of
the candidate, but then came to the conclusion that something is
wrong. Now I think that in cases like that it will be more useful
to honestly tell what kind of specialist we need and why the
candidate does not suit. If it is clear that a person has very
little experience and this is one of his first interviews, it will
not be superfluous to advise the candidate about useful information
to read or to study in order to fill in the gaps and become more
prepared for interviews in the future. The candidate, realizing
that he is not suitable, would still be grateful for advice and
information, and there’s a high probability that the conversation
will end on a positive note. Who knows, maybe the same person will
come back for an interview again and brilliantly pass. And everyone
will win.

Do not discuss issues that are not your area of expertise. For
example, you do not need to answer questions about salary, if there
is a person within the company who deals with this issue
directly.

The checklist of questions should be well adapted to the
experience and knowledge of a particular candidate, as well as to
vacancy requirements. For example, if a person was engaged in
management tasks for some time, and the last time he was dealing
with automation testing was a few years ago, then there is no need
to ask deeply about automation – he hardly remembers the topic.

It is necessary to clearly understand what is required from the
candidate and to compare it with not only his experience, knowledge
and role in the latest projects but also to find out what interests
him most; how he wants to develop in the future.

Of course, there are times when the candidate has a very high
opinion of himself, behaves defiantly, emphasizing his
individuality and uniqueness. Yes, it happens and in this case,
it’s better not to waste time.

There is no doubt that it’s much more comfortable and effective
to work with an adequate and decent person than with a ‘difficult’
person, even if he has great experience and skills.

Understandably, to get a good look at the set of the candidate’s
human qualities during the interview is not really possible, but if
there is even the slightest doubt; if the intuition says “there’s
something wrong” despite the person having good experience and
skills, it is better to say no. It can spare your nerves and save
your time in case that person goes to work and you realize that
doubts were not in vain, and it was better to trust your
intuition.