Entries Tagged 'Career in software Testing' ↓

Recently I was going through one software testing recruitment post to post on our job section and got amazed to see the list of benefits provided by employer. The position was for “Software Test Team Leader” for UK’s IT Employer.

In the recruitment advertisement employer mentioned following benefits for new joiners:

“You can expect great technical training (including support for the ISTQB Certified Tester Advanced Level) and we have an in-house training division who will look after your personal development too. As well as unrivalled opportunities for career development, Our company offers a bonus scheme, pension, private medical care, permanent health insurance, life assurance, share scheme, discounted childcare vouchers, flexible working options and 25 days holiday with an optional extra holiday purchase scheme. Continue reading →

You must be impressed with the ‘Idea’ AD and this time it is back with the ‘Walk when you talk’ idea. Abhishek Bacchan, who appears as a doctor in ‘Walk when you talk’ AD, this is a definitely out of an ordinary AD, but then, I wouldn’t expect anything else from the “Idea” AD; I love to see the AD and it’s one of my favorite AD since it’s place in line with my emotion and I hope with some of yours emotion as well.

Is it just an AD in changing the health and mind-set of people or an AD to increase the mobile connection sales?
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This is a guest article by “N. Sandhya Rani”.

As Software testers, we keep performing testing activities in various phases of a project. When it comes to testing our own skills, we may not end up choosing an appropriate approach. I am talking about how the interview rounds go and how to face them. The whole article is a very general discussion about the challenges that a tester has to face in an interview.

Let’s start with preparing a CV for software testing job profile.

How to prepare a good CV?
By the term ‘Good’ I mean a CV that describes best about your skills, your expertise, your strengths etc. It’s better not to use a same CV for different types of job profiles. Making slight changes will help to get a call. For e.g. you can highlight the skill set that you posses for the required job like any automation tool or experience in other related automation tools. You can also add about the basic knowledge of any technologies that you posses. This may be an added advantage.

Preparation before the job interview:

Before attending the interview, check the job profile in detail. Understand if the requirement is purely in manual testing, Automation testing or on both. Check if your job profile experience match with what is expected.
The interviewer will mostly stick to questions around the given job profile and what you have mentioned in your CV.  Make sure you can answer questions confidently which are based on your CV. It depends on how the discussion goes between the candidate and the interviewer, which leads to discussion in other areas.

Appear confidently at the time of interview:

In most cases, the interview starts with a brief up about the candidate. One can answer to this question by following a sequence like starting with your Name, what qualifications do you posses, how you started your career as a software tester etc. Some interviewers do not like to hear about personal details like family. So do not proceed with these details unless the interviewer asks for it.

While answering any question tell what you know. Do not try to explain about ideal cases. Interviewers are interested in practical approach, rather than ideal cases. Tell the interviewer how you will go about solving the problems or about your way of tackling things. Do not talk anything negative about any person especially about developers/programmers. If you do so, then it shows that you are not mature enough. Now a days in most of the interviews, scenarios are cited rather than direct question and answer. If the scenario is new to you, take few seconds to think on it and then answer. Do not hurry up things.

The way you present in interviews is very important. Right attitude is very important too. Many managers can judge it easily, if you have really worked on projects or it’s just a fake experience. The confidence level with which you answer makes a strong impression. For any question if you are not sure about the correct answer, just make an attempt. Do not just give up. You can also talk about things that you explored in free time or with your interest. This shows that you take initiative and are a continuous learner as well.

As many of us must have experienced that the interviewers keep asking about the processes that you have followed or are familiar with. One does not need to worry if they have never followed any processes. Following the processes is up to the company and a tester cannot do much regarding that. But of course one can follow some processes for his/her own task (I mean the modules that you own or are in charge of etc). This will not only help to manage things but also inspires other to follow some processes. Any process, which has proven some good results, can be followed. So, instead of blaming others for not following any processes, one can take an initiative to do it. Do not forget that Initiative is one of the qualities that a tester should possess.

One more important point: It’s not necessary that the person who is taking your interview is a person from QA background. A person from developing background can also take software testing job interviews. What I mean to say is the person need not have actually worked on the QA processes. In such case it becomes very important to answer the questions very carefully. It may sound illogical when a person from non-QA background interviews a tester but remember it will be a very good experience as you will get to know how testing is perceived by others.

Over to You:
What’s your experience about software testing interviews? If you want to share some do’s and don’ts please make comments below so that other testers can get benefit from your experience. And finally ‘all the best’ for your testing career!

This article is by Pradeep Soundararajan, our guest author at SoftwareTestingHelp.

Many thousands of software testers I came across had the notion that they are into testing and are solely responsible for quality. Some of them even think that being a tester also empowers them as a God of Quality for the product.

The questions I ask you is: Is this for good?

Here is what I think and would like to see you considering these ideas.

Quality is everyone’s responsibility and not just a tester out there or thousands of them out there. If your family has to be happy, you can’t assign a person in your family as ensurer of happiness and catch the ensurer responsible if something goes wrong. If a family has to be happy forever, it has to happen with everyone participating and facilitating it.

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The year 2008 was very productive for software testing help in terms of new subscribers and site traffic. We covered many interesting and (I hope) helpful articles in this year.

Here is the recap of some popular posts from year 2008. I know it’s very difficult to select few posts to show here. Still these are some most popular posts, in random order, you can enjoy. Don’t forget to bookmark this page

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Novice testers have many questions about software testing and the actual work that they are going to perform.  As novice testers, you should be aware of certain facts in the software testing profession.  The tips below will certainly help to advance you in your software-testing career.  These ‘testing truths’ are applicable to and helpful for experienced testing professionals as well.  Apply each and every testing truth mentioned below in your career and you will never regret what you do.

Know Your Application
Don’t start testing without understanding the requirements.  If you test without knowledge of the requirements, you will not be able to determine if a program is functioning as designed and you will not be able to tell if required functionality is missing.  Clear knowledge of requirements, before starting testing, is a must for any tester.

Know Your Domain
As I have said many times, you should acquire a thorough knowledge of the domain on which you are working.  Knowing the domain will help you suggest good bug solutions.  Your test manager will appreciate your suggestions, if you have valid points to make.  Don’t stop by only logging the bug.  Provide solutions as well.  Good domain knowledge will also help you to design better test cases with maximum test coverage.  For more guidance on acquiring domain knowledge, read this post.

No Assumptions In Testing
Don’t start testing with the assumption that there will be no errors.  As a tester, you should always be looking for errors.

Learn New Technologies
No doubt, old testing techniques still play a vital role in day-to-day testing, but try to introduce new testing procedures that work for you.  Don’t rely on book knowledge.  Be practical. Your new testing ideas may work amazingly for you.

You Can’t Guarantee a Bug Free Application
No matter how much testing you perform, you can’t guarantee a 100% bug free application.  There are some constraints that may force your team to advance a product to the next level, knowing some common or low priority issues remain. Try to explore as many bugs as you can, but prioritize your efforts on basic and crucial functions.  Put your best efforts doing good work.

Think Like An End User
This is my top piece of advice.  Don’t think only like a technical guy.  Think like customers or end users.  Also, always think beyond your end users.  Test your application as an end user.  Think how an end user will be using your application.  Technical plus end user thinking will assure that your application is user friendly and will pass acceptance tests easily.  This was the first advice to me from my test manager when I was a novice tester.

100% Test Coverage Is Not Possible
Don’t obsess about 100% test coverage.  There are millions of inputs and test combinations that are simply impossible to cover.  Use techniques like boundary value analysis and equivalence partitioning testing to limit your test cases to manageable sizes.

Build Good Relations With Developers
As a tester, you communicate with many other team members, especially developers. There are many situations where tester and developer may not agree on certain points.  It will take your skill to handle such situations without harming a good relationship with the developer.  If you are wrong, admit it.  If you are right, be diplomatic.  Don’t take it personally.  After all, it is a profession, and you both want a good product.

Learn From Mistakes
As a novice, you will make mistakes.  If you don’t make mistakes, you are not testing hard enough!  You will learn things as you get experience.  Use these mistakes as your learning experience.  Try not to repeat the same mistakes.  It hurts when the client files any bug in an application tested by you.  It is definitely an embracing situation for you and cannot be avoided.  However, don’t beat yourself up.  Find the root cause of the failure. Try to find out why you didn’t find that bug, and avoid the same mistake in the future.  If required, change some testing procedures you are following.

Don’t Underestimate Yourself if Some of Your bugs Are Not Fixed
Some testers have assumptions that all bugs logged by them should get fixed.  It is a good point to a certain level but you must be flexible according to the situation.  All bugs may or may not be fixed.  Management can defer bugs to fix later as some bugs have low priority, low severity or no time to fix.  Over time you will also learn which bugs can be deferred until the next release.  Read article on ‘How to get all your bugs resolved‘.

Over To You:
If you are an experienced tester, what advice do you like to give to novice testers?