Common QA Manager Interview Questions (And Good Answers)

QA Manager jobs are vital to any company with significant output. The position may also represent a good opportunity for advancement for an experienced QA engineer. As of April 2022, the average QA Manager's salary is about $83,000 per year.

Like most management positions, a good quality assurance manager needs a dual skillset including a firm grasp of their technical field and the interpersonal skills needed to build and maintain an effective team of professionals. QA manager interview questions will test candidates in both respects

If you're looking for a QA manager job, here are three interview questions you're likely to encounter and a guide to answering them.

1. What kind of quality assurance process do you prefer to use, and why?

There are many ways to arrange the QA process. Avoid the temptation to view this question as a “gotcha” requiring you to guess the company's methods and coincidentally describe them as your favorite way to work.

Instead, use it as a jumping-off point to show that you're conversant about various methods and why you favor the approaches you do. How your explanation demonstrates your knowledge of the field is more important than your exact favorites.

Often, a quality answer here will prompt hiring managers to follow up with more details about their specific needs or current practices and a conversation about how you might apply your methods there.

Example: As a starting point I like to choose a project lead who'll work with the engineers and create a list of objectives to bring to the rest of the team. Then we can use the Waterfall model for testing no matter what the release schedule looks like. This lets team members follow a similar process no matter what part of the project they're in charge of testing. This makes the work and the reporting straightforward and equitable for the testers. We use a tool like FogBugz to track the bugs.

 For longer projects, I'll build in a halfway point or quarter point where responsibilities are expected to shift to different team members, and if the project has changed we can also adjust our objectives. I'll do this more frequently if the project itself is being developed with more of an Agile model. 

2. How would you choose a testing tool?

There's a myriad of testing tools and methods available for QA work. You probably have your favorites, and it's not a bad idea to mention them. That said, the main objective of the interviewer here is to learn about your decision-making process.

Example: I'd start by determining our resources and requirements. That would probably bring a few tools to my mind already, and as needed I'd investigate new ones that meet our needs. From there I'd see what the team is familiar with and what's worked or been lacking in the past. I'd favor their recommendations. It's important to me that the team uses the same set of tools so we can train new employees in an organized way. I'd narrow that down to two or three options and choose the one with the best benefit without prohibitive costs or training expenses.

3. What kinds of people skills make a good QA manager? 

Questions like this one are designed to see how you might interact with your team and what kind of manager you aspire to be. QA itself is only part of the job – they also want managers to foster an environment where people get along, do good work, and want to stick around.

Use this question as an opportunity not only to share your knowledge and skills, but also the values you hope to see enacted in the environment that you'll be working in, too.

Example: A good QA manager communicates instructions and expectations well and listens to feedback. They're empathetic and can sense how the team is feeling and what helps each member be at their best. They're tactful, especially since our job revolves around finding problems. They're positive and constructive. These abilities help a manager keep a team unified and successful.