Software tester question

Techguru365

How does one go about acquiring the skills to become a software tester? There are quite a few listings in my area, but they all require you having so many years of experience. How does one acquire that initial experience?

zidian

I started off with a software development firm on a part time basis. I looked for small companies with open listings for QA (Quality Assurance), Testing or BA (Business Analyst) positions. These firms likely don't have much for testing going on currently and are looking to raise the quality of their development. The reason why I looked in this direction, is they are likely to not pay very well, which means they are likely to take someone with little to no experience. I found these companies were looking to hire more based on personality and passion.

I worked QA for about a year before they promoted me to a junior developer position.

Techguru365

Thanks for your reply Zidian. Did you have SQL knowledge, know how to create test case etc going in, and what were you tasked with on a day to day basis, did they offer you any on the job training for the position?

N2IT

I am a BA and provide regression, QA, Unit testing on major production releases. However my main role is to develop reports and analyze the data within the database, all schemas. I would think you would start of as a UAT for functional testing and grown into other forms of testing. I think as an analyst in today's world you have to have very good SQL skills. Without them I would be ineffective.

zidian

I had no job experience in the Software Development Life Cycle and no education going in. What set me apart from other candidates was that I had a small portfolio of work to display from doing software development as a hobby. That is ultimately what got me the job.

I had a two week on the job training to learn the basics of TSQL and how to properly test for bugs and usability and how to write test cases/bug reports.

ratbuddy

What kind of code was in your portfolio? I need to get a git account started but I'm not sure what sorts of things potential employers will want to see.

zidian

Nothing I'd be proud of today. I had a couple applications written in C++ for bots on IRC networks. I also had a few websites written with the Adobe CS products that were done for friends and small businesses. I also included a few of my batch and automation things I had written just to make my life easier at home. It's been a number of years since then and none of my code was very good when compared to typical commercial standards.