Must Automation Testing Interview Questions & Answers
1. What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is the process of using tools and scripts to execute test cases automatically instead of manually.
2. Why Automation Testing?
It saves time, reduces human error, supports regression testing and works well with CI/CD.
3. What test cases should be automated?
Regression test cases, repetitive tests, stable features and smoke tests should be automated.
4. Difference between Manual and Automation Testing?
Manual testing is done by humans, automation testing is done by scripts.
5. What is Selenium?
Selenium is an open-source automation testing tool used for automating web applications.
6. What is Selenium WebDriver?
WebDriver is a tool that directly communicates with browser using browser drivers.
7. What are locators?
Locators are used to identify elements in a web page such as ID, Name, Class, XPath, CSS Selector.
8. Difference between XPath and CSS Selector?
XPath can traverse backward and supports text(), CSS selector is faster but cannot traverse backward.
9. What are waits in Selenium?
Waits handle synchronization issues between script and application. Types: Implicit, Explicit and Fluent wait.
10. Difference between Implicit and Explicit wait?
Implicit wait is applied globally, Explicit wait is applied for a specific element.
11. What is Page Object Model (POM)?
POM is a design pattern where each page has a separate class with elements and actions.
12. What is TestNG / JUnit?
They are testing frameworks used to manage test execution, assertions and reports.
13. What is Data Driven Testing?
Running same test case with multiple data sets from Excel, CSV or database.
14. What is Hybrid Framework?
Combination of POM, Data Driven and TestNG framework.
15. What is StaleElementReferenceException?
It occurs when element is no longer attached to DOM. Fix by re-locating element.
16. How to handle dropdown in Selenium?
Using Select class with methods like selectByVisibleText.
17. How to handle alerts?
Using Alert interface methods accept(), dismiss() and getText().
18. How to handle multiple windows?
Using getWindowHandles() and switchTo().window().
19. What is Selenium Grid?
It is used to run tests in parallel on different machines and browsers.
20. What is CI/CD in automation?
CI/CD is Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment where automation tests are executed automatically using Jenkins or similar tools.
21. What is Exception handling in Selenium?
Handling runtime errors like NoSuchElementException, TimeoutException.
22. How to take screenshot in Selenium?
Using TakesScreenshot interface and getScreenshotAs() method.
23. What is Cross-browser testing?
Running same automation script on different browsers like Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
24. Difference between smoke and regression testing?
Smoke tests basic functionality, Regression tests entire application after changes.
25. What is your automation framework?
Using Selenium + TestNG + Maven + POM with utilities for reporting and logging.