Microsoft Tech Test

artful_codger

if anyone is interested, i've attached a technical test from Microsoft. This is sent to the applicant before they even get an interview. They have lofty standards for a QA role :rolleyes:

The_Conductor

It actually looks fairly reasonable.
Obviously it makes a number of assumptions about your skillset- but surely these are prescribed in the job specification?
Personally I think it looks like an interesting exercise- but there is no way on earth it would take you two and a half hours.......

KamiKazi

Not too bad, I assume they advertised that you need coding experience etc.

tHE vAGGABOND

Must say, I do like question 3 in terms of asking anyone for any kind of QA job..

0utshined

artful_codger wrote: »

They have lofty standards for a QA role :rolleyes:

But not for writing the instructions it seems. Someone really should have proofed that before sending it out.

Looks like an alright test at any rate.

artful_codger

KamiKazi wrote: »

Not too bad, I assume they advertised that you need coding experience etc.

probably, i can't remember, but my point is the coding experience required for a QA role is not a whole lot. QA generally report the bugs to developers, and they fix it. I've never seen anyone in QA make design or coding recommendations to the programmers. In a company the size of MS, they'd probably never even meet each other. I can only go on my own experience which is that i worked in a QA role after leaving college, and the job spec had lots of technical requirements like C/C++, makefiles, unix, SQL etc. Then once u sit down to do this technical sounding job... you spend your days running automated builds and automated regression tests :rolleyes:

ButcherOfNog

artful_codger wrote: »

probably, i can't remember, but my point is the coding experience required for a QA role is not a whole lot. QA generally report the bugs to developers, and they fix it.

QA people need to be able to code, otherwise they'll not be able to handle automated testing and the scripting type coding needing for using these tools. If you want to do automated testing, load testing and penetration testing then coding is necessary.

Q1 Is asking you to write a script to find something that's missing. The sort of thing testers should be doing rather than reading through a list of numbers.

Q2 This is another test script, testing for duplicates.

Q3 Is a general testing question, "how would you organise and plan your testing in this scenario". Also includes some security testing.

It's a well thought out test, aimed at finding good QA people with well rounded skillsets.