software testing job

Question

I am about to go for an interview for a software testing summer job. What questions should I ask the professor about this + I have never done software testing before, any good reference material you can recommend will be appreciated. thanks

Answer 1

You should be prepared to discuss a variety of testing terms, such as:

• "black box" testing, "white box" testing, etc.
• unit tests
• functional tests
• smoke tests
• BVTs (Build Verification Tests)
• the differences between stress testing and load testing
• performance testing
• globalization testing
• interoperability testing
• manual testing vs. automated testing (when?, why?)
• api testing
• security testing
• regression testing
• code coverage testing
• (etc...) You likely don't need experience in all of them, but you should express an awareness.

A general knowledge of the following is helpful (refer to IEEE 829 for a start): - test plans - what should be in a good plan? - test cases - what should be in a good test case? - test design specifications - incident reporting (including bug tracking) - software specifications - what does one look for?

You should start thinking about how you would test different things. What are the base cases? Are there any boundary cases? What could be wrong with any given product or item? Think creatively...

For a few starting references on testing, I suggest looking at the following:

• Cem Kamer's book on software testing
• Wikipedia for some more starting points
• IEEE 829 (related articles should be sufficient to get you thinking, as the full spec is good for insomniacs)

Answer 2

Besides the questions you will be asked, don't forget the interview is actually a conversation. And you look much better if you ask questions yourself. So, let me say few things I'd ask if I were you :)

For me, when it comes to working as a tester, most important is communication. How well you can communicate with team members, managers, team that develops the software you test.

Do they use some kind of bug tracking system, if so, what system is it? Is it the same system the development team uses?

Does this tool cover most of communication needs, or there gonna be a lot of calls / email exchanging resulting in a total mess in discussions about issues?

Is there any automated tool used for testing? This gets you quite close to what are your responsibilities on this position, so will probably be covered in the interview anyway.

Do you get 2 monitors ;) ? (Really, getting a second display was like a huge improvement for me in tester job). Do you get the tools that make your work faster and more effective?

Answer 3

If you've never done software testing before, it would be a good idea to learn some things quickly.

I'd recommend checking out the Black Box Software Testing course, available free (without an instructor) at http://www.testingeducation.org/BBST, or in an instructor-led version that is free to members of the Association for Software Testing (http://www.associationforsoftwaretesting.org). This is a university-level course, hours and hours of video, supplementary materials, quizzes, self-tests, and pointers to other information.

James Bach and I co-author and teach a course called Rapid Software Testing (http://www.developsense.com/courses.html). The course notes for that are available for free at James' Web site, http://www.satisfice.com/rst.pdf.

I've written a lot of articles on testing for Better Software magazine. They're available free at http://www.developsense.com/publications.html.

In addition, there's a blog post for you: http://www.developsense.com/2009/02/how-can-trainee-improve-his-her-skills.html

There are several testing communities online where you can ask questions and get mentorship. http://www.softwaretestingclub.com and http://www.testrepublic.com are two of them.

Best of luck.

---Michael B.