Robotic process automation (RPA) interviews test how you choose processes to automate, build reliable bots and run them in production. Tool-specific questions usually focus on platforms such as UiPath, Automation Anywhere or Blue Prism.
Fundamentals
What is RPA?
RPA uses software bots to perform rule-based, repetitive tasks in applications the way a person would, such as copying data between systems, filling forms or processing invoices.
Attended vs unattended bots?
Attended bots run on a user’s machine and are triggered by the user to help with part of their work. Unattended bots run on their own, usually on servers, triggered by schedules or queues.
Which processes are good candidates for RPA?
High-volume, rule-based and stable processes with structured digital inputs and few exceptions. Processes that change often or need human judgement are poor candidates.
Building Bots
What are selectors?
Selectors identify UI elements, such as a button or field, by their attributes. Reliable bots use stable attributes and avoid ones that change, like dynamic IDs.
How do you handle exceptions?
Separate business exceptions (such as a missing invoice number) from system exceptions (such as an application crash). Use try-catch blocks, retries for system errors, logging, and screenshots, and route business exceptions to a person.
What is the REFramework?
In UiPath, the Robotic Enterprise Framework is a template for transactional processes. It handles initialisation, getting transactions (often from a queue), processing, retries and closing applications in a consistent way.
Why use queues?
Queues store work items so several bots can process them in parallel, track the status of each item, and retry failures.
Operations
What does an orchestrator do?
An orchestrator or control room deploys, schedules and monitors bots, manages credentials and queues, and stores logs.
How do you measure an automation’s success?
Track hours saved, error rates, processing time, exception rates and bot uptime, and compare them with the manual baseline.
How to Prepare
- Walk through a process you automated, from assessment to deployment and support.
- Be ready to discuss how you made a bot resilient to UI changes.
- Practise explaining the business case, not just the technical build.
Get Help in the Interview Itself
Preparation gets you most of the way. For the interview itself, ApplyQuick Interview Copilot listens to each question and suggests a structured answer based on your resume and the job description, on Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet or a phone call. You can also rehearse first with an AI mock interview. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial.
