Top 20 Selenium Interview Questions Answers for Programmers and Automation Test Engineers

Hello guys, if you are preparing for Selenium Developer or Automation Testing Engineer interview and looking for frequently asked Selenium Interview Questions then you have come to the right place. Earlier, I have shared 130+ Core Java Interview Questions and 20 JUnit Interview Questions and in this article, I am going to share 20 common Selenium questions from interviews with answers. If you have worked with Selenium or used Selenium in your project then most likely you can answer all of these questions but if you struggle to answer any of these Selenium interview questions then you have always go back and check one of these best Selenium online course to learn and revise key Selenium concepts. 

In this article, you are going to see questions that are always asked in Java Automation and Selenium interviews. If you are planning to have your interview then you have every reason to stick to this article till the end so that you can grab what it takes to pass an interview of this kind. 

The questions are very friendly and straightforward so you will enjoy them all the way to the end. The following are the top 20 selenium interview questions with answers.

20 Selenium Interview Questions Answers for Beginners and Experienced Developers and Testers

Without wasting anymore of your time, here is a list of 20 common Selenium interview questions for beginners and experienced developers and testers who are preparing for automation engineer job. I have tried to cover as many Selenium and automation testing concepts as possible but if anything left out or you have Selenium questions form your interview to share with us then feel free to drop a note on comments. 

1. What is Automation Testing?
Answer: Automation testing is a process of automating the manual process to test the application or system under test.
 

2. What are the benefits of Automation Testing?
Answer:

• Enables parallel execution
• Facilitates unattended execution
• It saves money and time
• Improves accuracy

 

3. What is Selenium?
Answer: Selenium is a suite of tools for web testing and it is composed of WebDriver and RC, Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and Grid. Here is a nice diagram which explains How Selenium works in general:

 

4. What are the parameters that you have to pass in Selenium?
Answer: the following are the four parameters that you have to pass in Selenium:

• Host
• Port Number
• Browser
• URL

 

5. What is the difference between Explicit wait and Implicit wait?
Answer: Explicit wait is a one-timer that is used for a particular search while Implicit wait sets a timeout for all successive Web Element searches.

 

6. What are the limitations of Selenium IDE?
Answer:

• There is no exceptional handling.
• External databases reading is not possible.
• Selenium IDE uses only HTML languages.
• It is not possible to read from the external files.
• Conditional statements execution is also not possible.

7. How can you debug the tests in Selenium IDE?
Answer:

• Insert a break point from the location where you want to execute step by step.
• Run the test case.
• At the particular break point execution will be paused.
• In order to continue with the next step, click on the blue button.
• To run commands at a time click on run button.

 

8. What are the limitations of Selenium testing?
Answer:

• Unavailability of reliable tech support: Since Selenium is an open-source tool, it does not have dedicated tech support to resolve the user queries.
• Tests web applications only: Selenium needs to be integrated with third-party tools like Appium and TestNG to test desktop and mobile applications.
• Limited support for image testing.
• No built-in reporting and test management facility: Selenium has to be integrated with tools like TestNG, or JUnit among others to facilitate test reporting and management.
• May require the knowledge of programming languages: Selenium WebDriver expects the user to have some basic knowledge about programming.

 

9. Explain what assertion in Selenium is and what are the types of assertion?
Answer: Assertion is used as a verification point. It verifies that the state of the application conforms to what is expected. The types of assertion are “assert”, “verify” and “waitFor”.

 

10. What is Object Repository?
Answer: An object repository is an essential entity in any UI automations which allows a tester to store all object that will be used in the scripts in one or more centralized locations rather than scattered all over the test scripts.

 

11. Explain how you can insert a breakpoint in Selenium IDE?
Answer: In Selenium IDE to insert a break point:

• Select “Toggle break point” by right click on the command in Selenium IDE.
• Press “B” on the keyboard and select the command in Selenium IDE.
• Multiple breakpoints can be set in Selenium IDE.

 

12. How you can convert any Selenium IDE tests from Selenese to another language?
Answer: You can use the format option of Selenium IDE to convert tests into another programming language.

13. Explain what can cause a Selenium IDE test to fail?
Answer:

• When a locator has changed and Selenium IDE cannot locate the element.
• When element Selenium IDE waiting to access did not appear on the web page and the operation timed out.
• When element Selenium IDE was trying to access was not created.

 

14. Explain how you can insert a start point in Selenium IDE?
Answer: In two ways selenium IDE can be set

• Press “S” key on the keyboard and select the command in Selenium IDE
• In Selenium IDE right click on the command and the select “Set / Clear Start Point”

 

15. What is the main difference between webdriver and RC?
Answer: The main difference between Selenium RC and Webdriver is that, selenium RC injects 
Javascript function into browsers when the page is loaded. On the other hand, Selenium Webdriver drives the browser using browsers built in support.

 

16. What are the advantages of RC?
Answer: Advantages of RC are:

• Can read or write data from/ to .xls, .txt, etc
• It can handle dynamic objects and Ajax based UI elements
• Loops and conditions can be used for better performance and flexibility
• Support many Programming languages and Operating Systems
• For any JavaScript enabled browser Selenium RC can be used

 

17. What is IntelliJ?
Answer: Intellij is an IDE that helps you to write better and faster code for Selenium. Intellij can be used in the option to Java bean and Eclipse.

 

18. What ways you can customize TestNG report?
Answer: You can customize TestNG report in two ways,

• Using ITestListener Interface
• Using IReporter Interface

 

19. Which is the latest Selenium tool?
Answer: WebDriver

 

20. How can we get a text of a web element?
Answer: Get command is used to retrieve the inner text of the specified web element. The command doesn’t require any parameter but returns a string value. It is also one of the extensively used commands for verification of messages, labels, errors, etc displayed on the web pages.

 

That's all about frequently asked Selenium Interview questions with answers for Java and Automation Testing engineer. Selenium questions are not stressful as others might be and as of now, you must have already realized that. You have already acquired a gate pass to your success in the Selenium interview that awaits you.

Everything will turn out to be just exactly what you want because you have opened your eyes as far as the questions asked in a selenium interview are concerned.

The ball is now in your court. Go and excel.

       

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Thanks for reading this article so far. All the best for your Selenium and Java  interviews and if you have any questions which don't know answer or any doubt feel free to ask in comments. 

P.S. - If you want to learn Selenium in depth and looking for best resources then you can also check out this list of online courses to learn Selenium framework. In this list I have shared best online courses from Udemy, Coursera, Pluralsight and other popular websites to learn Selenium in depth. It also includes both beginner and advanced level courses for experienced developers.