My co-professional Abhijeet Vaikar from Singapore asked a question in Twitter about how to assess in a Software Testing interview, a candidate’s ability for empathy towards the users of a product or a solution. That was a pretty interesting and thoughtful Software Testing related question. I had known Abhijeet as the co-organizer of the Taqelah Software Testing and Quality meetups in which I had presented a talk on Modern Software Testing practices.
The empathy towards the users of the product is always the ability to see and empathize from an user’s perspective. To put this in practical perspective, this translates to how well the interview candidate is able to identify the various persona that will be using the product or the solution and their associated actions. If the candidate is able to do this well while looking at the product or the solution, it’s a good milestone, because this aspect includes several aspects like Software Requirements.
The second aspect would be the candidate’s ability to identify users’ journeys through the product. This is a critical aspect towards identifying the end-to-end test cases from a solution perspective, with the added benefit of ability of foreseeing acceptance tests done by the users.
The third aspect would be the ability of the candidate to comment on the UI/UX aspects. This is not necessarily limited to the GUI elements, but also includes all aspects of user interface like CLI, GUI, and API, how the user would use the product from these aspects, and thoughts about effectively designing these aspects for a great user experience. A candidate who is strong in doing this would be able to effectively discuss these things with the development team and identify potential pitfalls right while the product is being designed.
The fourth aspect is the ability to comment on what the candidate likes or dislikes in an existing product, so that the company can judge whether they will be able to do the same in a similar product or solution.
To summarize, empathy towards a product/solution users has many facets. While the questions to ask and probe the candidate during these interviews is really context-sensitive and also depends on the interviewer’s abilities and competency, using the above tips can help in conducting a structured interview towards assessing empathy.
For more detailed insights into assessing a Software Testing candidate’s ability in an interview or to design a blueprint for an interview for your specific situation, feel free to set up an introduction with me so that we can discuss further.
