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Software Testing Telephonic Interview Questions & Answers

30 questions for the telephonic interview stage — 19 easy, 11 medium.

About the telephonic interview round

The telephonic or screening round is a 15-30 minute call with a recruiter or engineer. It checks your basics, your CV and whether you can explain Software Testing concepts clearly without a screen to point at.

Tips for the telephonic interview round

  • Keep your CV in front of you and be ready to explain every line on it.
  • Answer in short, clear sentences; there is no whiteboard, so structure matters.
  • Take the call somewhere quiet and confirm the time in advance.
  • Prepare one question to ask the interviewer at the end.
Solved — telephonic interviewStart practicing
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01

What is WCAG and what are its conformance levels?

Accessibility & Usability TestingEasy
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WCAG, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C, is the main standard for making web content usable by people with disabilities. The current version is WCAG 2.2. It has three conformance levels: A is the minimum, AA is the usual legal and contract target, and AAA is the highest and rarely required for a whole site. Each level adds success criteria, such as colour contrast at AA.
02

What is the role of a manual tester in a software team?

Manual Testing BasicsEasy
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A manual tester understands requirements, writes test scenarios and test cases, prepares test data, executes tests on each build, logs clear bug reports and retests fixes. They also do exploratory testing, join stand-ups and reviews, and give a quality status before release. Beyond finding bugs, a good manual tester represents the end user and raises usability or requirement gaps early, when they are cheap to fix.
03

What are severity and priority? Give examples.

Bug Life Cycle and JiraMedium
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Severity is impact on the system; priority is urgency of the fix. A crash in a rare report is high severity, low priority; a spelling mistake in the logo is low severity, high priority.
04

What do you check in mobile accessibility testing?

Mobile TestingMedium
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Turn on the screen reader, TalkBack on Android or VoiceOver on iOS, and check every button, image and field has a meaningful label and the reading order is logical. Check text scales with system font size, colour contrast is sufficient and touch targets are large enough, about 48 by 48 density-independent pixels. Make sure information is not shown by colour alone and that the app works without complex gestures.
05

What is a flaky test and what usually causes it?

Automation Basics for Manual TestersMedium
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A flaky test passes and fails on the same code without any change. Common causes are timing problems such as fixed sleeps or missing waits, tests depending on each other or on shared data, unstable locators, animations, third-party services, test order in parallel runs and environment issues like slow servers. Flaky tests destroy trust in the suite, so teams quarantine them, find the root cause and fix it rather than adding retries forever.
06

Functional vs non-functional testing?

Testing TypesEasy
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Functional testing checks what the system does (login, checkout). Non-functional testing checks how well it does it (performance, security, usability, compatibility).
07

What is a keyboard trap?

Accessibility & Usability TestingEasy
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A keyboard trap is when focus moves into a component and the user cannot move out using the keyboard, for example an embedded video player or date picker that captures Tab forever. Mouse users never notice, but keyboard and screen reader users are stuck and must reload the page. It fails WCAG criterion 2.1.2. Test every widget by tabbing in and out, and check that Escape closes popups and returns focus.
08

What is the V-model?

Manual Testing BasicsMedium
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A development model where each development phase has a matching testing phase, such as requirements with acceptance tests and design with integration tests.
09

What is decision table testing?

Test Case DesignMedium
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List conditions and actions in a table and cover every combination of conditions (rules) — ideal for business rules like loan approval: salary > X AND credit score > Y → approve.
10

What is the waterfall model and where does testing fit in it?

Manual Testing BasicsEasy
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Waterfall is a sequential model: requirements, design, development, testing and deployment happen one after another. Testing starts only after development is complete, so defects in requirements or design are found late and are costly to fix. It suits small projects with stable, well-defined requirements. Its weakness for testers is the late feedback, which is why most teams now use Agile or the V-model.
11

What are implicit waits, explicit waits and auto-waiting?

Automation Basics for Manual TestersMedium
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An implicit wait, in Selenium, sets a global time the driver keeps retrying to find any element before failing. An explicit wait waits for a specific condition, such as an element being clickable or a spinner disappearing, and is more precise. Auto-waiting, built into Playwright and Cypress, automatically waits for elements to be visible, enabled and stable before acting. Mixing implicit and explicit waits in Selenium can cause unpredictable delays.
12

What is a test case and its components?

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A set of steps with inputs and expected results. Components: ID, title, preconditions, steps, test data, expected result, actual result and status.
13

How do you test touch target size and gestures for accessibility in a mobile app?

Accessibility & Usability TestingMedium
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Check that buttons and icons are large enough to tap without hitting neighbours: Android guidance is 48 by 48 dp and iOS is 44 by 44 points. Test with large font settings and one-handed use. Any action using complex gestures, such as swipe to delete or pinch, must have a simple tap alternative. Then turn on TalkBack and VoiceOver and confirm each control can be focused, named and activated.
14

What is the testing pyramid?

Testing TypesMedium
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A model with many fast unit tests at the base, fewer API or integration tests in the middle and a small number of UI tests at the top.
15

Smoke vs sanity testing?

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Smoke testing checks that the critical features of a new build work (broad and shallow). Sanity testing checks that a specific fix or area works after a change (narrow and deep).
16

What are the boundary values for an age field that accepts 18–60?

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Test 17, 18, 19, 59, 60 and 61.
17

What is UAT?

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User Acceptance Testing — end users or the client verify that the system meets business needs in a production-like environment before go-live.
18

Why are stable locators like data-testid or roles preferred over position-based XPath?

Automation Basics for Manual TestersMedium
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A position-based XPath such as /html/body/div[3]/div[2]/button breaks whenever a developer adds a wrapper div or reorders the layout, even though the feature still works. That creates false failures and maintenance work. Locators based on a dedicated data-testid attribute or the accessible role and name, like a button named Submit, stay valid through design changes and describe intent clearly. Testers should ask developers to add test IDs.
19

What makes a good bug report?

Bug Life Cycle and JiraEasy
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A clear title, steps to reproduce, expected vs actual result, environment/build, severity and priority, and evidence (screenshot, video, logs).
20

What is a database view and what do you verify when testing it?

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A view is a saved query that behaves like a virtual table, often used for reports or to hide sensitive columns. When testing it, compare its output with the same query run on the base tables, check filters and joins return the right rows, confirm hidden columns such as salary are really absent, check behaviour when base data changes and verify that users without permission on the base tables can still read the view if intended.
21

SQL: find rows where mandatory columns are NULL or empty in a customers table.

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-- Mandatory fields: name, email, phone SELECT id, name, email, phone FROM customers WHERE name IS NULL OR TRIM(name) = '' OR email IS NULL OR TRIM(email) = '' OR phone IS NULL OR TRIM(phone) = ''; -- Expected result: no rows
22

What are response time, throughput and latency?

Performance and Security BasicsEasy
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Response time is the total time from sending a request to receiving the complete response, as the user experiences it. Latency is the delay before the first byte of the response arrives, mostly network and waiting time. Throughput is how many requests or transactions the system handles per unit of time, such as 500 requests per second. Good performance usually means low response time at the required throughput.
23

What is the definition of done?

Agile, SQL and API TestingMedium
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A shared checklist for when a story is complete, usually including code review, tests passing, no open critical bugs and documentation updated.
24

What is the difference between alpha and beta testing?

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Alpha is done in-house by internal teams before release; beta is done by a limited group of real users in their own environment.
25

What is the difference between a high-level and a low-level test case?

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A high-level test case states what to test without detailed steps or exact data, for example 'Verify user can reset password using registered email'. A low-level test case gives exact steps, test data and expected results for each step. High-level cases are quick to write and suit experienced testers or changing features. Low-level cases suit regulated projects, new team members and cases that will later be automated.
26

What is mobile app testing and what extra checks does it need?

Mobile TestingMedium
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Test on real devices and OS versions, interrupts such as calls, battery, network changes, gestures, permissions and app store guidelines.
27

What happens in the requirement analysis phase of STLC?

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In requirement analysis, the testing team studies the requirements to understand what needs to be tested. They identify testable requirements, clarify doubts with the business analyst or client, decide test types needed, note automation candidates and look at environment needs. The outputs are a list of questions, a requirement traceability matrix draft and an automation feasibility note. Problems found here are the cheapest to fix.
28

What is system testing?

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System testing tests the complete, integrated application against the requirements in an environment close to production. It is done by the testing team after integration testing and before UAT. It covers functional testing of all features plus non-functional aspects such as performance, security, usability and compatibility. It is black box testing, so the tester checks behaviour from the user's point of view without looking at the code.
29

What is the difference between authentication and authorization?

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Authentication checks who you are, for example by password, OTP or biometrics. Authorization checks what you are allowed to do after you are identified, such as whether you can view reports or delete users. Authentication comes first. Testers check authentication with wrong credentials and expired sessions, and authorization by trying actions with a lower-privilege account or by calling restricted URLs and APIs directly.
30

Why must input validation be tested on the server and not only in the browser?

Performance and Security BasicsEasy
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Client-side validation improves user experience by giving quick feedback, but anyone can bypass it by disabling JavaScript or sending requests directly with tools like Postman. The server must validate every input again for type, length, format and business rules. Testers check this by sending invalid data straight to the API, such as a negative quantity or a very long name, and confirming the server rejects it.

Frequently asked questions

What happens in the Software Testing telephonic interview round?

The telephonic or screening round is a 15-30 minute call with a recruiter or engineer. It checks your basics, your CV and whether you can explain Software Testing concepts clearly without a screen to point at.

How do I clear the telephonic interview round?

Keep your CV in front of you and be ready to explain every line on it. Answer in short, clear sentences; there is no whiteboard, so structure matters. Take the call somewhere quiet and confirm the time in advance.

Which round comes next?

A typical order is online assessment, telephonic screening, one or two technical rounds, a managerial round and HR. Use the other round pages to practise each stage.

Practise every interview round

Online Assessment questionsTechnical Round questionsManagerial Round questionsRapid-Fire questionsHR & behavioural questionsFull mock interview

More ways to practise

Company-wise Software Testing questionsPackage-wise Software Testing questionsExperience-wise Software Testing questionsRole-wise Software Testing questionsCity-wise Software Testing questionsMost asked Software Testing questionsScenario-based questionsPractical / hands-on questionsHR & behavioural questionsSoftware Testing mock interviewOnline assessment questionsTechnical round questionsManagerial round questionsSoftware Testing topic sheets