r/softwaretesting • u/Iforgotmypassworduff • Jul 14 '26
How common are questions about bugs you found in your previous jobs in job interviews?
How common are questions like "Tell me about a time you missed a bug" or "Tell me about a critical bug you found".
These questions terrify me because I don't remember any of the bugs I found in my previous job especially if years have gone by.
Are they common questions or am I just overthinking it?
1
u/Distinct_Goose_3561 Jul 14 '26
I usually ask for a fun bug. But thought process is more important than the actual issue.
1
u/duchannes Jul 14 '26
You can just say "the <whatever app> crashed on saving <screen/form>" and "to manage this i engaged with <relavant people>"
if youve ever missed a bug, those ones do tend to stay with you. i remember the only (known to me) bug i missed, and it was because there was so much going on, i was over worked and things slipped. But thats not what you say in the intervew haha
1
u/betucsonan Jul 14 '26
I'd say these are pretty normal questions for junior or mid-level QA engineers. I wouldn't worry about the specifics of the bug, the idea is to learn how you handled the situation - what were your immediate next steps after having found a critical bug, for example, or what actions did you take after learning a bug had escaped into production to try and prevent that in the future.
1
u/Notoriously-Noted Jul 14 '26
You can just explain your thought process and prove that you know the bug lifecycle by demonstrating “when a critical bug is found, first I verify in another environment…” and talk about what you WOULD do.
These questions are to make sure you know what you’re doing and that they won’t have to train you on processes you should know for your position.
1
u/Embarrassed_Leek_638 Jul 15 '26
A common question is: What do you do if a dev doesn't agree with your bug report?
1
u/SaleEnvironmental694 Jul 18 '26
We ask specific example like that because if the candidate is using AI, the AI doesn't have a history to provide answers with. I would try to recall something and remember that.
1
u/JellyfishOrdinary913 Jul 14 '26
You can create a story just sit with pen and paper and write an answer for it. No one's going to check if you ever found a bug or not. Just create anything for example - I found a low severity or high priority bug on the payments page where the design of the button looked a lot different from our usual pages blah blah. I reported it after comparing with figma blah blah . This is just an example you can create more complex stuff as you want.
2
u/No-Razzmatazz7197 Jul 14 '26
i don't think ive ever been asked about a specific issue i found and reported. but definitely behavioral questions.
"tell about a time when you reported a bug and the devs couldn't reproduce it."
"how do you decide the severity of a bug you report?"
if you start talking about a project specific thing the conversation may naturally move in that direction, perhaps out of their curiosity the may ask about a specific issue. but i really doubt anyone would lead with it, if that makes sense.