Disney+ Hotstar Test Automation Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

So, the interview process was like this: there were 2 technical rounds, then a bar raiser/managerial round, and finally an HR round. The first technical round focused on coding skills, with questions about Cypress and a couple of programming problems. The second technical round was more in-depth; they asked me to talk about test frameworks I've used, presented a scenario to design a framework for, and then gave me a programming problem. The third round, with the bar raiser, started with them introducing themselves and the company, then I talked about my background, followed by some test automation technical questions and basic SQL. The last round was HR, where I answered behavioral questions. It was a great experience interviewing with Hotstar. All 4 rounds were spread over 3 working days – the first two on the first day (evening), the second technical round on another day, and the HR round the day after that. There was a bit of a wait for the offer confirmation, about a week.

So, first there was this HackerEarth coding challenge on-site with one question. After that, we had two technical interviews over Skype, which were pretty standard difficulty-wise. Then came the Hiring Manager chat, which was totally pointless, over the phone. I got the vibe he's a micromanager who can't think outside the box. He asked me about using ML for auto-fixing test failures, and I tried explaining some stuff I knew like supervised/unsupervised learning, neural networks, weighted averages, and feedback loops, but he seemed clueless about it all (seriously, asking about things he doesn't understand?). After that, there was a VP round, which was actually super interesting and made me feel positive despite the company's bad reviews. I waited about 4 days for feedback, then pinged HR. In the end, no offer, they said I wasn't a good fit. I did ask HR to provide feedback to candidates, win or lose, to keep things professional.

After a call with HR, I had a telephonic round that was supposedly a 'coding round.' It was quite unorthodox; I was instructed to code on paper without a laptop while the interviewer described the problem. Afterward, I had to explain my handwritten code over the phone. The interviewer then provided various inputs and asked me to predict my code's output for each, requiring me to manually trace the logic with pen and paper. While I'm a strong coder, this approach was very disappointing. I suggest investing in platforms like HackerEarth or HackerRank, or using real-time online coding tools like CoderPad. This flawed process likely cost you a good candidate, but I hope this feedback helps you improve.