Interview experience – Automation testing (Selenium, Java)(BA4- position)The first round was an online HackerRank assessment, which consisted of 19 MCQs and one Selenium-based coding question with four tasks. After successfully clearing this round, I received an invitation for a face-to-face interview.

The interviewer was highly knowledgeable and technically strong. Throughout the discussion, he also suggested optimized approaches and best practices while solving problems, which made the interaction very insightful.

Below are some of the key questions and topics discussed during the interview: Explained the Page Object Model (POM) by defining a page object class on paper and detailing what components should be included in a POM class. Explained the test runner, including what is written in a runner class and whether JUnit or TestNG is used. Questions on abstraction, including whether an object can be instantiated for an abstract class, with discussion around this and super. Wrote a Java program to extract and sum digits from the given string:"name surname224 surname 2011". Explained the BDD Cucumber framework, including drawing and describing the complete project framework structure. SQL questions covering all types of joins, their differences, and use cases.

Wrote an SQL query using two tables (employee and salary) joined on employee ID to find the count of employees whose salary is between 10,000 and 50,000. Discussed innovations or utilities created that are useful for automation or AI-related work. Question on why Barclays over my current organization. Questions related to Azure, including upstream and downstream data flow and data formats such as XML and JSON. Handling dynamic XPath, especially for tables containing mixed data types (strings, numbers, and empty cells), and writing XPath to validate the presence of data. Automation scenario where a dropdown is not a tag (implemented using ul/li or custom UI elements): Selecting Maharashtra from a list of Indian states.

Validating that another dependent dropdown appears after the selection. Overall, the interview was detailed, technical, and focused heavily on real-world automation scenarios, framework design, and problem-solving skills.