In general, we define continuous testing is as a type of software testing that involves a testing process which includes testing early, testing often, test everywhere, and automate. Primarily the goal of this format of testing is test early and test often. Such that process involves stakeholders like Developer, DevOps, QA and Operational system.
Let us now understanding more about the job and work profile as a Continuous Testing Professional.
Why Continuous Testing job is a good career choice?
Since past few decades Software testing has become utmost important. Also the software industry is aware of the risks they may face. Thus they have started giving more importance to software testers. Let us now understand in detail as to why jobs as a continuous tester are rising at a steady pace –
- To be more specific the career path as a Continuous Tester is flourishing at this point of time.
- Testers and developers are an integral part of a SDLC.
- The role of Software tester starts substantially early at the time of checking the specifications.
- IT employers are very specific about the Continuous Tester Positions.
What are the myths prevailing as a Tester?
Some of the most common myths assumed for a testing profile include –
- Anybody can become a tester- go for Developer profile as its superior to this
- Reimbursement is less when compared to Web Developers in the industry
- No career growth is there in Software Testing
- Those who cannot ‘code’ out of condition choose Software Testing as a Profession.
Breaking the Myth
Let’s understand the importance here –
- There are generally two groups working on any venture including both tester and developers, we cannot separate them from each other.
- Each generated code needs to be reviewed for Quality and with no testers it would become tough to develop the final product.
- The main fact is both the segments (Testing and developing) are of critically equal importance.
Opportunities as a Continuous Tester
From the day one both the Software tester and developers work in sync at the beginning of any undertaking.
While this is one of the biggest facts that the role of Software tester starts substantially early at the time of checking the specifications archives and proceed for the duration of the existence of the entire project, while Software Developer’s roles starts later.
It’s always tough to find your first job be it in any domain. So if we talk of Testing as a career the competition becomes harder. Being fresher it’s stiff to enter the world of testing as experience is what the employers look for. You must be wondering how one can gain experience without given a chance.
It’s valid to think this way, but without the knowledge of advanced professional skills and an exposure to this professional, IT world it’s tough to survive. This makes the freshers to start with available minor jobs that are somewhat or entirely different from what they aspire to do. IT employers are very specific about the Continuos Tester Positions. Although it doesn’t totally means that the as a beginner you’ll never find an opportunity. There are several things you can do to find your first testing job as a Continuous Tester.
Skills required for Continuous Tester job
We shall now discuss in length the skills and expertise required to become a continuous tester. Also we will provide an insight on how to gain these skills.
Do you really have the necessary professional and personal skills as a tester?
The first step towards getting a Continuous Tester Job is gaining the professional testing skills. Before commencing on sourcing for the experience make sure you have the right testing skills and knowledge. Companies working on specific verticals involving freelance, mobile applications, gaming, and languages among others knowledge and skills require professional essentially for Continuous Testing.
Also you must work on your personal skills which may include – efficiency, analytical, thinking and co-operation skills. It is of utmost importance that you involve yourself in interesting post activities such as voluntary and socially-oriented projects. This will be seen as your achievements in your resume. At least captivate substantial skills that you’ll point out during your interview. Just make sure those things are related to your field only. For instance you may volunteer for an IT firm around your locality. Remember this will be added both as your experience as well as your achievements, thus are very crucial.
Now arises one of the most important questions as to how to equip yourself with required skills and knowledge to get the job.
How to add up to your skills?
It’s not just important for the employers to seek the experienced candidates for their company also it’s quite important for the employees to have some experience with relevant knowledge. This will help you gel-up quickly in any new workplace and to understand their work culture.
Crowd-Sourcing
Gaining knowledge and experience isn’t tough anymore. The current age has various crowd-sourcing sites. In comparison to the past decades it has become easier to gain experience in testing. Along with gaining experience and knowledge in testing from crowd-sourcing it also leads you to make money at the same time.
To do this sign-up for several crowd testing companies for near about three to five-months. Don’t make this your leisure activity, doing so will end you nowhere. Take timeout and learn diligently and perform as if this is your first job. After investing few months i.e. around 5-6 months in this include these to your resume. State everything you learnt like- work done, technologies, projects, and also the total experienced gain. This will uplift your resume and show the employer or hiring manager that you’ve invested your time and efforts to gain such experience. This will also show your passion and zeal to work a Continuous Tester.
Look for firms which require very less or no work-experience
Small scale companies tend to take risk of employing less or no-experienced candidates. They hire new candidates and train them till they are are well versed with the practical segment of testing. They tend to hire individuals based on their personal imputes & knowledge and not their professional experiences. This is one of the most adopted strategies you’ll see currently. The more professionals you’ll meet you’ll get to know how they made it this far. They’ll share their professional experience stories and how what made their interest in Continuous Testing. Remember, none of them have started with big IT MNCs; they must have begun with small scale companies & start-ups, etc to reach at this level.
Go get Certified
There are many bodies offering certification courses under different domains. You may enroll for any best feeding your requirements. A lot of certification bodies offer Certified Continuous Testing Professional. Indeed this certification is rarely available so grab the chance and update your skills also there are a lot of free practice tests to cater you with complete knowledge of the course. Followed by an assessment test will give you the estimate where do you stand.
Some of the most eminent bodies offering courses/certification include –
- Devops Institute
- Vskills – India’s Largest Certification Body
- Edureka
- Coursera
Take their experience stories as a motivation pump to begin with any of the small good opportunities coming your way. The start-ups give you a great chance of learning along with professional exposure, to help you gain the required confidence as well along with the skills. Learn the strategies and make a note of new things you learn every day. Give your complete focus and just dive into the world of continuous testing. The start-ups are growing at a great pace and this makes them require a number of testers. The letter of recommendation you’ll receive at the end of your internship will be the fruit of your labor.
Books are your Best Best Friends
At all point of time books are the best source to refer and learn. Some of the most popular books sources include –
- Continuous Testing Kindle Edition
- Software Testing and Continuous Quality Improvement Hardcover – 7 Jan 2009
- Continuous Testing for DevOps Professionals: A Practical Guide From Industry Experts Kindle Edition
- Continuous testing Standard Requirements Kindle Edition
What are the key responsibilities as a Continuous Tester?
We shall now discuss in detail about the roles and responsibilities as a continuous tester. As a fresher you must have a good knowledge based to serve your responsibilities well in any organization.
Lets now get an overview about the working styles of a continuous tester –
- The primary goal as a continuous tester is to assess the Business risk coverage.
- Secondly, as a continuous tester you should be able to create a safety net to help the team protect the user experience in accelerated development processes and to avoid any software failure headlines.
- Thirdly, continuous testing expects to be embedded within the development process and not tacked.
- Next, the job as a continuous tester involves executing the right set of tests at the right stage of the delivery pipeline and without creating a constriction.
- Also as a continuous tester you are required to provides application feedback appropriate for each stage of the delivery pipeline.
- As a testing professional you will be required to evaluate each layer of modern architecture at the right stage of the delivery pipeline.
- You role as a continuous testing professional would require throughout tests that realistically assess the end-user experience across all associated technologies.
- Continuous Testing’s tests must be broad enough to detect when an application change inadvertently impacts functionality that users have come to rely on
- In the process of continuous testing you will be required to reduce false positives by prioritizing robust, flexible modern test frameworks over brittle scripts
- As a continuous tester you will be required to continuously review and optimize the test suite. As well as eliminate redundancy and maximize business risk coverage.
Tips on getting Jobs Easily
We will now elaborate the tips to on getting jobs easily that will help you to get a step closer to becoming a Continuous tester.
Now it’s time to look for recommendations
At the time of hiring the employers mostly ask their current employees for any recommendations to hire for vacant positions. And we mostly recommend those who are close to us and like – our friends, family, relatives, or any good acquaintances. This is the reason not every company posts a job in a newspaper or any good job portals.
So if you’re looking for a job as Continuous Tester then looks for recommendations from your connections that’re into this Testing profile or they have job openings suitable to your profile. This will reduce your anxiety of getting tough questions during your first job interview. Simply inform all your connections who’re working and mention that you’re looking for a continuous testing job. Even you may contact you, tutors, from college or anyone you know.
Try social networking, this always works
There are regular job postings. LinkedIn is something totally professional utilizing this will definitely be beneficial. There are certain other big job portals like – Shine, Monster, Naukri.com and Indeed, etc. Post your updated resume and make sure you edit resume for every other job you apply for as per their job requirements.
What is the salary for Continuous Tester job?
You cannot just jump to the number of zeros you’ll get in your salary as continuous tester. It’s tough to answer like this there are a few factors we need to consider before we know the salary we can expect.
Required Skill set
You need to possess the right skill set before considering yourself worthy of the job position. Don’t ever think that the Continuous testing doesn’t require any kind of technical skills. In the IT domain there are several software testers searching for job just like you. Here we can apply the General Demand & Supply technique of Economics- the more supply is there the less will be the price, therefore the more number of software tester available will make reduction in the salary.
So now as you’ve already decided your career path as a Continuous Tester then keep in mind there are very specialized continuous testing jobs available. Nothing can replace the Continuous Testing and for this good experience and grip over the skill-set is required.
Potential Employer
If you compare big MNCS like Google and Apple of course they pay higher than any other company let’s say- Infosys, Tech Mahindra, TCS, Wipro, etc. the reason is the kind of work culture involved, also profitability, and the overall turnover, etc. Thus, you need to build a strong skill set and a good amount of experience to get bigger offers in your hands.
Preferred Location
Location is the biggest factor involved when it comes to the salary. In India if we see small towns pay you very less while metropolitan cities are paying much higher, that’s why people relocate. Also if you see and compare companies outside India pay you much higher than you could ever think of. This is due to the strength of the currency. So, before searching for any job make sure you keep the lcation in your mind as a primary factor.
Interview Skills
This final stage decides the figures of your salary. How your interview goes is the factor directly influencing your salary scale. Your negotiation skills, your confidence, offer already in hand, etc.
There is great potential in software testers these days, this leads to great competition. Simply follow the above key point and manipulate your pay scale accordingly.
Job Interview Tips
We shall now be discussing in details about the job interview tips required to qualify as a continuous tester.
Soft-skills are valued
Being in IT doesn’t mean to focus on technology only. You’re potential would want to see a person s/he can trust on in you, to interact with suppliers, clients and your peers. Employers tend to invest in someone who is well-spoken fresh employees, and they can mould them accordingly.
Be friendly in a certain limit, show them how well learned you are. Don’t be mindlessly nervous, and assume bad results before the interview. Because hiring managers are taking their valuable time to meet you and know you well.
Be Honest
Often employees tend to show-off their unripe skills as their bets. Don’t try to fool them with your words, they’re better and smart than you think. This is like- you either now or you don’t know the answer. Don’t show your insecurities and this impact your whole interview session. Be honest while answering any question, if you don’t know the answer then say it and suggest the way you could go about to find the correct answer. This will reveal your critical thinking and problem solving skills. Just mind one thing the interviewer isn’t necessarily looking for the correct answers, s/he also see how would go about ensuing at an answer. This will keep the interview on stronger ground.
Steer the Conversation
Keep the conversation focused on your strengths and try going a step forward. As an It oriented firm always look for mutli-skilled personalities to fill in their knowledge gaps. Make sure you’ve an interesting personality the hiring managers like engaging conversations.
Show Enthusiasm
Your enthusiasm will drive you far in securing the respective job position. In addition to your technical aptitude and personality, an interviewer would wants to make sure you’ll be happy if offered the position. Also, feel free to ask about training programs and professional IT certification as a means of showing a passion for learning and advancement.
Also, mention some positive, network-related attributes that will assure the interviewer that you’ll want to join her team. For instance, if you live close to the office, mention what a pleasure to commute regularly to the workplace will be. Interviewing candidates’ costs every organizations their time and money, so they want to make sure they get it right in one go. The period of graduating from candidate to employee has as much to do with enthusiasm as aptitude and experience.
Get Your Geek On
During your technical discussion try discussing your personal interests, opinions on the topics at hand. As you’re in a room with your like-minded people so definitely they would like to hear more also discussing topics of mutual interests. Take advantage of the friendly environment.
Interviews are not meant to wrack down your confidence rather this is a medium to introduce yourself to the organization. Interviewers don’ like scheduling the interview session everyday for the same position so make the session worth their time and effort. Do your best and make sure you crack the interview and get in the good books of the hiring manager.
