How to Explain Roles and Responsibilities of Automation Tester

In this video, Mukesh Otwani from Learn Automation answers the most frequently asked question in interviews “ how to explain roles and responsibilities of automation tester?” 

Interviews are an assessment tool to judge 54 your knowledge, confidence, and communications skills. These are the most critical stage to win the vote of the interviewer and consequently the job. This question is tricky, especially for the freshers who find it hard to answer it effectively. 

At 0:14 Mukesh calls it a very basic and easy question however people find it hard to answer it in a structured way. Irrespective of whether you have mentioned your roles in the resume or not, you’ll be asked this very question. Mukesh says, they still ask you this to check your familiarity with the process and interestingly test your communication. 

Mukesh shares in the video at 1:15, a generic template of the answer which you can customize concerning your routine and experience. When you talk about your role as automation, don’t only mention yourself only doing automation, instead include all other small tasks you do along.

Generic Answer to the roles and responsibilities of Automation

(1:30) So a most generic answer should be like, 

“Hi, my name is Mukesh. Currently, I’m with XYZ company. When you talk about my roles and responsibilities, I’m majorly involved in all test activities that we are doing. So generally, I’m also participating in scrum ceremonies where we daily standup, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective meeting. I’m majorly involved in all the major testing activities happening and I’m also actively involved in the automation activities.”

Major Automation Activities

1. Development

At 2:20, he further explains the development phase which mainly involves the following: 

1. Development of the scripts
2. Development of the framework
3. Execution of the scripts
4. Maintenance

So mainly my role, you’ll say, is to maintain the script so that whenever we have a new build, we run over our test cases and regression test cases. And if theirs is a failure, we analyze the results to check what caused the failure, remove the failure and re-run the tests. This is how I’m actively participating in all three areas of automation.

A framework is the type of platform which can be used to create software applications. If you want to become a good programmer, you should also know one or more frameworks along with programming language as well.

A 2:50, he suggests that whenever talking about the development of the framework, don’t say that I’m working alone on this framework rather your answer should be like we have a team and I’m actively participating in the building of this framework. And when we build the utilities, we consume the same. In addition, he says if you are experienced, you can say that we have developed the framework and these are the enhancements we are doing in each phase.

2. Execution

At 3:27, while talking about execution, your answer should be like we are running the tests using Jenkins or whatever server you’re using and we are consuming the results.

Type of Testing Tool

The success of test automation is dependent on the selection of the right tool for automation. The right automation can help you save time, money, and overall quality.

 At 5:13, he says that you can also mention what kind of testing you’re doing like web testing, web automation, or mobile automation. If you are not doing automation, you can mention how you’re testing applications manually and what kind of tools you’re using. And if you’re using some third-party tool, you can also mention the tool. In this way, they will have a clear that you’re focusing on the complete process.

If you’re someone going for lead architect level, then at 6:02, Mukesh suggests t change your answer a little bit because you’re the person who is guiding the team, building the framework, and having a bigger vision of that particular project and in any case of problem, you’re the person guiding the team.

At 7:07, he says that in each area of development, execution, and maintenance, you can go a little deeper. Just touch one point from each area unless they start cross-questioning like tell me about your framework? And if they do not, you can continue that this is what I have been doing regarding the development of the script. Whenever a test fails, we analyze it and we run it again.

3. Maintenance

Maintenance is just as important as any other phase. You cannot ignore maintenance because it is a part of automation. Proper maintenance can reduce the risk and also increases efficiency.  

At 7:45, he explains how important maintenance can be. He says that maintenance is the key. According to Mukesh, it is unfair to not spend much time on maintenance. He says that failures are also part of success as 100% automation is not possible. Sometimes you might get a 95% success rate, sometimes 98%, and even 100% but that’s very rare.100 % success means you have a very good team but he also encourages us that if it fails that’s also fine.

Stability Comes with Time

At 8:25, he concludes that stability takes time. Once you have automation for at least 6 months, you will see some kind of stability. He says that stability will come after a time, a 100% success rate will come after a time but initially, you won’t get it, so based on that experience, you should

Key Takeaways

Your interview is a check to know your involvement on the worksite, your experience of a job, and your communication skills. This is a general layout of what your answer should be however you’re open to adding anything you do or, you think, is important to mention.