Interview journey at Kona Software Lab Ltd for the post Junior Engineer(SQA)

I was then working as a project engineer at Robi Axiata Ltd., when I applied at KonaSL for Junior Engineer, Software Quality Assurance Department. This position requires 0-2 years of experience and I was fresher then. There were two vacancies for Jr. Engineer post. I read the job description carefully and prepared my resume as relevant. Then submit application quickly before the deadline.

There are four steps of test at KonaSL - Written test , Hands-on test, Technical Viva, Final Viva. So I started planning for the preparation of written test after submitting my application. I read about the important topics of software testing, software development life cycles as I had very little knowledge about software testing domain. I also practiced some SQL queries and some programming problems with C programming.

Written test

After getting phone calls from HR, I was informed about the written test schedule. Written test was held on three sections - programming, analytical, QA knowledge and 90 marks there in total. In programming section there were some easy problems but the solution demanded were tricky; for example - Multiply a number without using multiplication operator. There were also an SQL query problem. And in analytical section there were some problems math related like combinations and some other analytical problems. There were 60 marks for the QA and CS related questions. Here the questions were from the basics of QA domain - alpha-beta testing, thread, stack, heap-memory, test case design for login a website...

My exam was slightly above the average line, I answered well on programming and analytical section and average at QA section. May be I passed the first selection stage because of programming and analytical section.

Hands-on test

16 candidates were selected for hands on test and luckily I was one of them. Hands on test and technical viva were held at the same day. I was bit nervous about coding test because of having no prior experiences about unit testing or test automation. Just with the basics of programming knowledge, SQL knowledge sat for test. There were two problems on hands-on test. 

The first problem was about log file processing. There were 12 files with extension .log under a given directory and contained server logs each of the files. Question here was

- Merged all the logs into a new file named "merged-log.log"

- Find a given string from "merged-log.log" file

- Replace string "abc" by "def"

I used shell script for solving this problem as shell is powerful for log processing and I have some experience of log processing from my first job experience. Here is  a small project of shell scripting I did during my first job: https://github.com/3024k/Server-Log-Parser

And the second problem was about unit test of a given function. Given function was written on Java.  One sample was written as sample. I have no prior experience of unit testing, but try to write  code to verify the given function following the sample one.

Technical Viva

After the hands on test, on the same day technical viva was taken. There were three senior engineers from Konasl side and they took around 30 minutes of viva. They asked questions from different domain of CS, from QA domain some analytical question plus other questions generally asked.

The questions I can recall are:

• Would you please introduce yourself?
• What are the roles at your current job?
• Then asked me some questions from my resume - about my thesis, projects
• Why do you want to leave your current job?
• Then asked from my answer sheet of written exam: again asked me to write the sql query
• What is validation and what is verification?
• You entered our office by lift, right? How you would test the lift system of our building?
• You completed some online courses [was mentioned on resume], so actually why you take this course? What can I learn from doing this course?
• Do you have any plans for going abroad for higher study?
• Do you know about OOPs? What are the features of OOPs?
• Explain abstraction, you can use pen-paper if you need.
• Do you know about data structures? What is linear data structures? Name some linear data structures
• A stack has a size of 50 unit, how do you test this stack
• Why do you not consider a job as a developer? Why do you want to build career as a QA Engineer?
• Suppose your team lead is a bad person and he let you stay after your office hours continuously, how would you behave in this situation?
• Suppose you and your friend works in a team together. On a random day at 6 pm there's a ICC cricket final match of your favorite team and on that same day, your friends got urgent call because of his mother got sick. There's a project deadline also. So what you would do in such situation? What would you do if the person wouldn't be your friend and just a colleague?
• Do you have any questions to ask?

Final Viva

May be 3 or 4 candidates got selected for final viva, on that final day HR asked some questions. Why do I want to switch? Why do I choose career as QA engineer? Where do I live here? 

Expected salary and basic info form was submitted before the written exam. HR didn't ask about any salary negotiation. Then he deliver some aspects of Konasl. I left after the discussion over with HR.

After 2 days, I got call from HR that I finally selected as Junior Engineer.