Recruitment

Choosing to be a Tester

Stephen Blower recently published this excellent post about proving your worth as a tester; If you haven’t read it then you should. As well as being struck by the excellent points he was making I was surprised to find that I am more unique that I realised – I actually did choose to go in to Software testing.

I was lucky and discovered that I enjoyed programming during my A-Levels. I went off to university to study Software Engineering. We did lots of programming but testing was never mentioned. Luckily I’m not such a great programmer so without realising it I was doing lots of debugging just to get my assignments to work.

One of the best aspects of my degree was that it was a Sandwich Course that required me to spend a year working in the IT industry. The European job market has a much better grasp of under-grads spending time in industry so I ended up  working in Germany. Unfortunately it was within an IT department that outsourced all their development work, they really didn’t really know what to do with a budding developer so I got dumped with the test contractor. Amazing! I had no idea that you could be paid for nit-picking someone else’s software.

After several months of testing I returned to university and used my final year to find out as much as I could about testing. As well as reading books and convincing Mercury to give me free access to their tools (Thanks, Mercury!) I decided to carry out a questionnaire on testing (ok so there were extra marks if you did this but still). By another very lucky chance one of the people I emailed about this survey ran a Testing Consultancy. As well as answering my survey he offered me the chance to do some work experience once I had completed my degree. When I contacted him 6 months later to take up this offer he lined me up for an interview and then offered me a permanent job as a graduate test consultant. I have never looked back.

As well as proving to Stephen that some people actually do choose to become testers (albeit with a lot of fortuitous circumstances) I thought it would be useful to highlight just how important that offer for some work experience turned out to be. If I had been rubbish the company could have easily fobbed me off with a week or two of safe project work. As it was they took a risk and launched my career.

The greatest challenge is identifying people who desperately want to break into testing. Hopefully Twitter and blogs make it easier for the interested tester to actually find out and follow testing but if you spot one then do whatever you can to help them. If you know of universities that teach aspects of testing contact them, maybe you could give a talk on testing or spread the word about tester meet up in the area.

Lets spread the word and open a few doors to the testing industry.

Tester required

Recruiting to fill a tester position is a difficult and time-consuming activity, each time I have posted a job ad I have mentally prepared myself for a flood of applications and a long and grueling hunt to find the perfect person. At the same time I hear endless reports on how hard it is to find a job, how many applications such and such has made, often without a single interview. So here are my thoughts on where the process is going wrong – each job is different but I believe most, if not all are relevant to any job application.

The cover letter; this is the first thing the recruiter will read, it is never ever optional. No matter how you have applied for the job, through a recruitment agent, online or via post you must always write a cover letter. In its simplest form this letter is a couple of paragraphs introducing yourself and explaining why you feel you are suitable for the job. The most important thing is to make this unique to the job you are applying for, generic cover letters will not cut it. You need to show you have read the job ad, plus any other company information that is available and you need to spell out exactly why you feel you will be perfect for this role.

The CV; Always keep this to a maximum of 2 pages, with a font size of at least point 10 (well you want them to be able to read it don’t you?). Keep in mind that the goal of your CV is to get an interview, keep it focused and avoid the long job history if it doesn’t add anything to this role. You don’t need to go into details about every job you have ever had, the last 2-3 will be more than enough if they’re relevant. Ideally you should be using your job history, education and experience to back up everything you said in your cover letter – if the job is looking for agile experience then write about the agile experience you have and how you came about it. Likewise if the job requires someone who is passionate about testing them make sure your CV screams passion!

Tailoring your application; If you’ve read the job ad and done a bit of research into the company then you should have a reasonable idea about the company culture, use this to your advantage. If you’re applying for a job at a bank then keep your language formal, if it’s a media company then you can afford to be a bit more informal. Either way, keep the language on your cover letter and CV consistent, nothing highlights document re-use more than the language suddenly changing style half-way through. Even though you might be applying to dozens or more companies you really want your application to look like it was specifically aimed at this company, show them how much you would like to join the company.

Finally, if you’re applying for a testing job then do whatever it takes to avoid any errors in your application (yes, get your mum to read it if you need to).

Good luck!