How to get a job in Software Testing

Like any other job, getting a job in software testing and choosing software testing as a career, requires passion, interest and dedication as the foremost criteria. If you lack these, chance are you will get bored very quickly which will have a negative impact on your performance at work and the quality of the product being tested. Hopefully, this article will give some background on what is expected of you when you apply for a Software Testing Job.

So, what skills do you require to get a job as a Software Tester?

Certification

Nowadays, software testing jobs being advertised almost all require the ISEB or ISTQB Foundation Certificate in Software Testing as a minimum requirement. Some employers will not even consider your application if you have not passed the foundation certificate in software testing. So, if you are a fresher trying to get a job in software testing, you must at least pass the ISEB Foundation Course in Software Testing.

When you attend an interview for a Software Testing Role you should be comfortable with the Software Testing terminologies, methodologies and various testing techniques. Most importantly you have to know the Software Development Lifecycle and how and where Software Testing fits in the cycle.

You need to familiarize yourself with the different development models (or methodologies) such as waterfall, the V model, incremental, spiral and more frequently these days, the Agile processes.

Test Techniques

Full knowledge of black box testing techniques, such as Boundary Value Analysis, Equivalence Partitioning, State Transition Testing, Classification Diagrams should be acquired which are required for a software testing job.

Documentation and Testing Process

Documentation is also important and is a part of Software Testing activity. You need to know how to derive conditions from the requirement document, how to design test cases from the test conditions and how to write test procedures (a step-by-step script which is a series of actions instructing the user to perform and the expected results).

Testing Tools

Any experience with any Software Testing Tool is highly beneficial and an advantage for your Software Testing Career. Most testing jobs require some knowledge or experience with GUI Automation Testing Tools, Performance Testing Tools, Test Management Tools and Bug Tracking Tools are Some of the comment testing tools are Winrunner, Quick Test Professional (QTP), load runner, HP Quality Center to name a few. Open source testing tools such as BugZilla, Jira, Selenium, Watir are also becoming popular very fast.

Personality and Attitude towards testing

Remember, as a software tester, your job is to check to see that the software is running according to the design and specification and you should report any deviation from the documented scripts. Therefore, a great deal of concentration, thorough investigation and proper recording of results are very important. A good tester should have the attitude of “attempt to break” software, exploit any security vulnerabilities and demonstrate that the software is fit for release. Other attributes such as good memory (to reproduce the unscripted steps) a good communicator and team player (to discuss any defects found to other members of the team and the management) should have eye for detail (to detect those hard to notice and subtle differences) and most importantly be Ethical (you don’t pass a script without executing it first!)

Software Testing Job as a Professional Career

Last point to notice is that unfortunately still some people and even organizations perceive testing as a “testing is so easy anyone can do”. Sure, anyone can do software testing, but only people with the right mindset can be successful and progress their career as a software test professional. Many freshers enter a Software Testing field as a stepping stone to later move on to software development while others choose the Software Testing Job as their career and continue to stay in testing field.

Testing requires a great deal of knowledge of test design techniques to design good tests that bring out the defects in the software when executing the tests. Also testing requires creativity, analytical thinking, concentration and willingness to explore. As more and more companies start to see the benefits of testing (testing their products thoroughly before release to minimize the cost of bug fixing) the greater need will be to employ Software Test Professionals, and I hope this article has offered some valuable tips in getting your foot in to the ever growing Software Testing industry.