Today is my last day on probation at DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft., so I decided to reflect on these 3 months and share my experiences. It will be long. Very very long, as I collected my experiences during these 3 months.
Backstory
The story begins several years ago when I was attending a Lindy Hop class with my wife. That was the place where I first met with István. We quite quickly realized we have a common hobby: Photography. Having a common amusement gives lots of opportunities to talk with each other. Soon I learnt that István works as a Tester. At that time we were looking for a Test Lead at my previous company, see I convinced him to come for an interview. The interview went well, so István became our Test Lead ~5 years ago. I was the Dev Lead at that time and I really loved working together with István. We have started as colleagues but we soon became friends.
Moving forward a few years, István left the company, he joined a company with a hardly memorizable name (at least for me). Yes, it was DMG MORI HEitec Digital Kft. The leaving of my friend and Test Lead really took a toll on me. As I wanted to do something new, I took over István's place in the company
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Months passed during which István tried to convince me to join his team as a test automation engineer. They were looking for the right candidates for months without success.
Whenever I decided to look for a job (you can read about it in more detail about it in my previous post), I immediately contacted István. But unfortunately, they gave an offer to a candidate a few days before. Hearing the news I became quite afflicted.
A few days later, on a Friday István contacted me, as the candidate did not respond to the offer. He told me to send him my CV. I hadn't had a CV, as I was not looking for a job for 15 years. So I spent my whole weekend creating my CV and updating my LinkedIn profile. As I fully neglected LinkedIn in the past, I reached out to my friends and asked them to endorse my skills on LinkedIn, to have a more attractive profile.
Some of my friends told me they are looking for backend developers, but by that time I was sure I want to continue my journey as a Test Automation Engineer. One of my former colleagues and friend Ernő asked me to send my CV to him. So I sent it to him and also to István.
Monday come and István sent my CV to Gergő who is an IT Recruiter at DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft. What I did not know, Ernő also sent my cv on the very same day to someone from the company.
The interview - First round - HR
Gergő called me in the afternoon. He was very nice and informal, which was already a good point. We were talking about what I did, what are they looking for, the salary, when can I start and also we had a short chat in English in which he asked me about my hobby. He also asked whether I am also running for other companies, but I was honest and told I wanted to see how this interview goes before I go to other companies. He promised me to call back in the afternoon when they decided whether there will be another round or not.
My phone rang, it was Gergő. He invented me to an interview on Thursday. He asked whether I would like to have an online session or a personal one. I prefer personal meetings, so I decided to visit the DMH headquarter.
The interview - Second round The interview started at 10:30 but I do not like to be late, so I was there 20 minutes before. I was not especially nervous, I was much more curious, but I took the time to smoke some cigarettes.
At 10:25 I entered the door of the company. The receptionist called Geri on phone, and he arrived shortly with a big smile on his face. I recognized him, as I already checked his profile on LinkedIn. We went to the 3rd floor, where Ákos the Adamos Team Manager was waiting for me. He was also very kind, he smiled a lot.
The interview started, of course, they asked me whether I know anything about the company. I tried to prepare for the interview in that short time, so I asked István about the company, and also checked the LinkedIn page. They were happy about me being prepared.
The interview went forward, Ákos and Geri told about the company and the Adamos project. I also talked about my prior experiences. So the formalities were over. Geri asked me where should I put myself medior or senior. I have more than 15 years of experience in software development but I was only doing test automation for 1 year. So I told them I feel I am between medior and senior. And I also asked them what they consider as a senior, they told me, and I answered I could do that.
Then Geri asked me what is the most important thing which motivates me. I immediately told him: Good Team. Then I was asked what is the second most important factor for me. My answer was an opportunity for learning. I thought we are over with this question, but then the third question came: What is the third thing which motivates me. So I answered: Money.
We also had a short discussion in English, to make sure I won't have a problem with communication. It went pretty well I think.
I really enjoyed the interview, it felt more like a friendly discussion than a serious one. Both Ákos and Ger was very sympathetic. Then Zoli arrived, and the technical interview has started.
The interview - Second round - Technical interview
Zoli came into the room and I started to feel nervous. He was quite sombre at the beginning, but he was quite helpful during the interview, he lead my thoughts whenever I got stuck. We have started with questions related to testing. After a few questions, he asked me
Zoli: What kind of tests do we do first? Miki: The positive tests. Zoli: Okay, but why do we do the positive tests first? Miki: Ummm, because we always do them first. Zoli: Okay, but why? Miki: Because that is written everywhere. Zoli: Because in case the positive tests fail, then there is no point to run the others. I learnt something new (maybe you do). The next tough question for me was:
Why do we test APIs? How can we convince the management it is important?
Well, I couldn't answer immediately, but with some help from Zoli I gave birth to the answer:
Because we can test the business logic of the application with it.
After this, we moved to general object-oriented and Java questions, which went quite well.
The last part of the technical interview was about Selenium. He asked me about the Page Object Model about which I could talk a lot, and then came the next question:
What kind of Selenium locators do I know?
And I made a mistake here. I said, there are 8 selectors. At this moment Zoli clenched his fist and raised it up into the air. I did not understand it at first. But whenever I said "the first selector is selecting by id", then he opened one of his fingers. Then I suddenly realized what I did. I walked into my own trap. He started to count the selectors. Even Ákos mentioned that it is well known in management that we should not say such a number. Luckily it ended well, I was able to list all the eight selectors(id, name, tagname, classname, CSS, XPath, linkText, partialLinkText).
And that was the end of the interview. Zoli said some sentences about why it is great to work at DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft. but I will be honest, I do not remember it. My mind was full of thoughts. Geri (or Ákos) told, they will summarize their experiences, send them to the relevant persons and they will call me back in a week.
Before I left, I visited István to say hello to him, then I left the building. I was happy and loose. It was really friendly talking not a stressful interview what I was envisioning.
Friday - One day after the interview
I was working in the office when my phone started ringing. It was Gergő. He asked me what was my impression of the interview, what do I feel how I succeeded in it. I said I really enjoyed it, in the end, it was a great discussion. I told him I knew I got stuck a few times with testing questions, but Zoli helped me out. Regarding Java and Selenium, I was quite confident. He confirmed they had the same impression. I also said I was happy he did not ask some choking questions. He asked what I exactly thinking about. Then I told for example to ask what are my 5 positive and 5 negative attributes. Actually, I prepared for that question, but I was still happy he did not ask it. He explained to me he did not like that question, as everybody could google the "answer" in a few minutes. I completely agree with him.
After this, he got to the point and told me they would like to give me an offer. He mentioned the main points and told he will send the offer in an email. We agreed on I respond in a few days, but I said I might call today. We put down the phone.
In reality, I had no doubts that I will accept the offer I got really excited about working with my friend as a Test Automation Engineer. I only wanted to discuss it with my wife, but I was pretty sure, she will leave the decision for me. After talking to her I waited for half an hour to not appear too enthusiastic, then I called Geri, and accepted the offer.
With this, I was able to keep my 100% success rate as during my life I only interviewed at 2 companies and I got offers from both of them. The first one lasted 15 years, let's see how this will go. First I/They have to survive the probation to see whether we are a good fit for each other or not.
That's the story of how I started to work at DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft.
In the end, I was not able to compress 3 months into one article, so I decided to split it into many smaller parts. In the next post of this series, I will write about my first day at the company. But do not worry, I won't post about each day separately. But the first ones are always special and memorable.😊
I am happy to let you know that both I and the company decided to continue working together in the future. 🧡
Thanks for reading. 👍
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