IT industry has grown tremendously for the last 10 years, and students are eager to try themselves in this sphere. We all know that writing a code is a super-power, but are there any other professions in IT that you can enter without profound technical background and deep hard skills? Yes, and in this case, a role of a tester might be right to the point.
Who Is a Tester?
According to the ISTQB Glossary, a tester is a skilled professional who is involved in testing of a component of the system or system in general. To make it simple, a tester detects bugs that should be eliminated before the product is released.
Is the Role of a Tester Important or Is It All About Fun?
Testing is about curiosity and about noticing new sides of familiar things. Checking systems for bugs, analyzing problems and testing the usability of the product – all these tasks will become your daily routine.
This might be an exciting profession as you can be one of the first people who tries some new technology or unique yet not released software. Also, sometimes your work may involve playing games or surfing some social network – isn’t this what you dreamed of as a child?
Despite the fact that some people don’t think of testers as mission-critical people on the project, their work is not just about fun and novelty: it is also about control and security. There are some projects where the role of a tester is as essential as the role of a developer. For example, testing the blood transfusion system where the control before the final release of the software is very crucial, as the lives of real people depend on it.
What Qualities Do Testers Need to Have?
As IT market is growing and new technologies appear practically every month, the requirements for testers get more and more severe.
To become a good tester you should have a mix of hard skills and soft skills. For a junior tester, such soft skills as open and atypical mindset, curiosity and critical thinking, might be more important than hard skills. However, basic software development skills would be a great advantage.
Also, nowadays the knowledge of English is a basic requirement, as the majority of projects have the international element. Even if you don’t work on international projects, you simply need to understand English to develop your skills, as the majority of new technologies are accompanied by documentation in English and professional translations take long to appear. You are likely to find yourself lagging behind your English-speaking colleagues while waiting for the manual to be translated into your native language.
Who Can Become a Tester?
Actually anyone, who really wants to become a tester or tries himself/herself in a new profession in IT industry. No one was born with QA and testing skills and experience. It is not obligatory to have specific technical education or previous experience in testing, but you need to have an enormous desire and some basic skills mentioned above.
There are a lot of cases when people of various professions – from economists to doctors – have become software testers. Sometimes it can be not even difficult for them to switch from one profession to another, in case they are involved into the project related to their professional domain (for example, former doctors test a healthcare application).
How Can You Become a Tester?
There are two major ways to enter the profession of testing: education in a specialized institution and a self-learning path.
Firstly, we would like to mention the tools that you can use to learn the skills by yourself.
You can listen to podcasts:
- https://joecolantonio.com/testtalks/
- http://www.angryweasel.com/ABTesting/
- http://letstalkabouttests.xyz/
You can read about standards of testing:
- Testing Standards Working Party
- The International Software Testing Standard
- Standard for Software Component Testing (PDF)
However, if you do not feel enough strength to learn everything by yourself and you need to have someone to tutor and instruct you, you definitely need to choose software testing courses. QA Academy gives you the opportunity to become a tester by choosing either online courses or offline courses at the university in Riga. The latter course includes both lectures at the university and online where you study software testing with leading in-field experts. Also, there are online courses available at any place of our planet, which is actually a great advantage. Tutors on all courses are current software testing specialists of the A1QA Company.
So, if you are thinking about the career in testing, why not start it now?