TCS practice pack

IT services. Fundamentals, manual-to-automation, and client-project stories.

These are our own practice questions for the kind of QA/SDET role this company hires for. They are not the company's real interview questions. Confirm the current process on the company's official careers page.

Skills this role is usually tested on

Testing fundamentals
Selenium with Java
SQL
Agile ceremonies
Defect lifecycle

Business areas used for scenarios

BFSI
retail
manufacturing
telecom

6 questions

Answer out loud first, then open the guide. Most people read the guide too early.

1
Walk me through the defect life cycle and who owns each state.
easyFundamentals
A strong answer covers
New, assigned, open, fixed, retest, verified, closed; plus reopened, deferred, rejected, duplicate. Say who moves it (tester, dev lead, triage) and where a severity vs priority call happens.
Likely follow-up: Give an example where severity was high but priority low.
2
A bank's fund-transfer screen has amount, from-account and to-account. Design test cases using equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis.
easyTest design
A strong answer covers
Valid and invalid partitions for amount (zero, negative, min, max, over balance, decimals). Boundaries at min-1, min, min+1, max-1, max, max+1. Same account both sides. Mention daily limit.
3
Your Selenium test passes locally and fails in the Jenkins job. List the causes you would check, in order.
mediumSelenium
A strong answer covers
Environment and data differences, headless viewport size, timing (explicit waits), browser/driver version, parallel runs sharing state, test order dependence. Say how you would reproduce it before changing code.
Likely follow-up: What would you log to make the next failure obvious?
4
Two tables: orders(id, customer_id, amount) and customers(id, name). Return customers with no orders, and the top 3 customers by total amount.
mediumSQL
A strong answer covers
LEFT JOIN with IS NULL (or NOT EXISTS) for the first. GROUP BY with SUM, ORDER BY DESC, LIMIT 3 for the second. Mention ties and NULL amounts.
5
Your client changes a requirement two days before UAT. How do you respond as the QA lead?
mediumProcess
A strong answer covers
Impact analysis on test cases and automation, tell the PM the risk in plain terms, re-prioritise by risk, agree what is retested and what is accepted risk, update the traceability matrix. Show you escalate early, not late.
6
Explain how you would structure a Selenium framework for a team of eight working on three modules.
hardFramework
A strong answer covers
Page objects, a thin base layer, config per environment, test data strategy, reporting, retry policy that does not hide bugs, CI trigger, naming and code review rules. Say what you would NOT build on day one.
Likely follow-up: How do you stop the suite becoming slow?

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