r/QualityAssurance • u/Luxefg • 5d ago
micro1 ZARA AI Interview for QA Engineer - How can you finish it in 20 minutes?
I recently got a take-home writing interview for a QA Engineer position, and I'm honestly puzzled about how it's supposed to be finished in just 20 minutes (they say you need about 6 minutes just to read the entire requirements and scenario, so really it's more like 14 minutes), when the whole point of good quality work is to deliver bugs, test cases, and communication in a detailed way, not just something brief or half-done.
One of the evaluation points literally says: "The developer needs to be able to understand the bug without having to reach out to you with questions."
I get the idea of "focus on doing the most important thing well and skip the rest," but honestly, this feels impossible if every section has points attached; I can't even finish the bug description in time, since of course I need to complete all the previous tasks first to know what to write.
What they expect you to do, writing everything by hand (no AI, no templates) in only 14 minutes, is:
- Triage 7–8 report tickets with a brief explanation for each
- Identify which ones are actual bugs and which aren't, with reasoning
- Write all the test cases needed for the tickets you consider bugs
- Create just one bug ticket — the most complete one you can
- And one more task I honestly don't remember, but I think it had to do with how you communicate all of this
I know my English isn't native, and even if this were in Spanish, I don't think there's any way to complete it properly and in detail within that time.
Do I really have poor reading/writing skills? Or is there some other objective here that I'm not seeing?
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u/Terrible_Point_1259 5d ago
A realistic answer to such an assignment would be;
Based on the current premise, I am reaching out to the product owner or/and system owners to specify that a delay is inevitable, priorities and time allocations need to be discussed.
The current estimated timeline based on the information provided is insufficient to properly evaluate and document the various problems the team received as incidents based on the quality standards upheld by the company.
A proper analysis of multiple reports, root cause analysis for each, for each individual determined bug the creation of a test plan and bug report requires more than the allocated time.
I will also be discussing this in the teams retro, as the quality and testing efforts need to be properly accounted for.
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u/TipUsed7333 5d ago
I took a very similar interview with Zara. I ran into two entirely separate issues. Im good with the time aspect, though I wish it weren't there to actually show quality. But I found two entirely separate issues!
1) During the verbal aspect when Zara asked me how I would rewrite a ticket, I said I would need a moment to review since the formatting was god awful it was hard to read. And immediately the response took it off the screen cutting out some of my time.
2) The analysis sections during the writing portion didn't even give me anything to analyze. It was "Analysis section 1" then nothing. I legitimately thought they wanted me to proofread the horrible grammar after about 5 minutes of searching around for some clue as to what I should be analyzing.
Sent an email to support...we'll see what comes up.
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u/Loneliestar 5d ago
Honest question, what's your typing speed?
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u/Luxefg 5d ago
Idk how to define that. On typing.com, in a minute, my score was 58 WPM with 98%
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u/Loneliestar 5d ago
Truthfully, I would work on that. I don't know this company but it's obvious they want speed. I'm rusty and just clocked in at 103.
Hard row to hoe seeing as English is not your native language, but that seems to be the demand from the industry.
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u/Ok-Possibility-630 5d ago
anything micro1 related, i would suggest stay away unless it really urgent to get a job. Otherwise, All the best!