How I got an internship as a tester and stayed at Yandex
Task 1 – how to test the sorcerer
I needed to test the “sorcerer” at Yandex Translator, which appears when sending a request in the “Yandex translator” search engine. I offered different options for what can be done with it, how to check the program’s performance and what it can be tested on. Everything went into action, from checking that it really works, and ending with checking the translation of special languages \u200b\u200b(for example, Chinese, Japanese and Korean). I offered checks for speech recognition in different languages, for sounding the translation, for changing the language in the process of translation.
Task 2 – write test cases
It was necessary to write test cases to check the same sorcerer, according to all the rules: the name of the test case, the steps (as clear as possible and one-step), the expected result.
Task 3 – issue bug reports
Well, for the final, it was required to issue a bug report for a specific bug. I don’t remember exactly what bugs I was given for description, but I think the point is clear: give the bug report a proper name, make a clear and understandable description of the problem, and describe the steps to reproduce with expected and real results.
In total, it was really long, because it was necessary to write several test cases, several bug reports, think about what and where to test, what terms to use.
Stage two: Interviews
In total, I had one large interview, which had a theoretical and practical sections, one technical final and two interviews with two teams: backend and frontend.
The feeling that EVERYONE was asking: what is testing, and why is it needed, and what will be the consequences if there is no tester, the software life cycle. I talked about the life cycle of a bug, what are the models of working in a team, who is responsible for what in a team (developers, testers, projects and products), how communications are built. They asked me for practice in the form of simple testing of purchases, the operation of the basket, login / non-login, API, back testing, how the request occurs, what errors mean. The feeling that according to the theory they drove everything that could be known.
The backend team was not ready to invite me to their place, but I was not very upset about this, it was the front that attracted me more with its own characteristics. The interview with my future supervisor was as pleasant as possible, easy and almost stress-free, we talked about motivation in testing, I was given an interesting logic task, and they also offered to test the site, which, in response to a request for a date, wrote whether it was a holiday or not. The interview itself was morally sustained by me much easier and more pleasant than all the previous ones. Perhaps it was the fact that the leader herself was very soft, pleasant and inviting, perhaps I myself was already tired of worrying in the end, and there was also a session on my nose, so I didn’t have the strength to worry at all.
After the interview, I was already prepared to wait a week. My HR came back to me literally 9 minutes later with a message that the feedback was as good and joyful as possible:
It was unexpected, joyful and quite relaxing. I did not expect such a quick feedback and that everything will be fine.
My internship started on July 12 and lasted 3 months
My goal was to grow into a completely independent tester in these three months and seize the opportunity to stay in the state. Initially, I felt incapable of doing this, because there were many more capable interns. I worked during the day, and at night and on weekends I studied theory, studied the tasks that were given to me with particular difficulty and slowly joined the team. For three months, I managed to participate in real combat missions, learn how to regress, start on duty and be responsible for releases, my mistakes and bugs. The future was not certain, and by the end of the internship I was already thinking of looking for other teams, because I was completely afraid of what would happen next. But the good news caught up with me before my birthday: I found out that I was staying in the state.
It’s been 8 months since I was hired at Yandex. My first review is ahead of me, and I’m already slowly starting to collect a list of what I’ve done well during this period. In parallel with my tasks, I am engaged in testing in an adjacent team, I try to build a testing process for myself there, and I also decided to rejoin working with people and became a buddy: now I am adapting a new tester and helping a person to join our cozy world as painlessly as possible.
I think without the help and support of the team, as well as my leader, it would be clearly harder for me than it is now. And I am very grateful to them 🙂
Thank you all for your attention!
