Software testing fresher job

Software testers analyse software and systems to avert risk and prevent issues

As a software tester, you'll be involved in the quality assurance stage of software development and deployment. You'll conduct automated and manual tests to ensure the software created by developers is fit for purpose and any bugs or issues are removed within a product before it gets deployed to everyday users.

Your role is integral to the creation of software systems and technical products including vehicles, electronic goods, defence, and healthcare. You might work on bespoke, individual projects or multinational projects spanning the globe and costing billions of pounds. You'll need to be familiar, or become familiar with, programming and using coding languages.

Responsibilities

As a software tester, you'll need to:

• meet with system users to understand the scope of projects
• work with software developers and project support teams
• identify business requirements
• plan projects
• monitor applications and software systems
• carry out stress testing, performance testing, functional testing and scalability testing
• write and execute test scripts
• run manual and automated tests
• test in different environments including web and mobile
• write bug reports
• assess code
• carry out resource planning
• review documentation
• work towards departmental and project deadlines
• provide quality assurance
• provide objective feedback to software development project teams
• troubleshoot and problem solve
• design tests to mitigate risk
• present findings to software development and business user teams
• travel to different project sites
• work on multiple projects at one time
• document analysis
• liaise with project teams in other parts of the world
• communicate findings to technical and non-technical colleagues.

Salary

• Starting salaries for graduate-level software testing positions are in the region of £18,000 to £24,000 (depending on location and company size).
• With three to five years' experience, salaries can rise considerably. Software testers earn £35,000 to £50,000 on average.

Salaries vary according to location, technical knowledge and the sector. The City of London and financial services currently pay the highest salaries. Some companies also offer bonus schemes, benefits and overtime payments for unsociable hours.

Income figures are intended as a guide only.

Working hours

Working hours usually follow a standard office day of eight or nine hours, between 8am and 6pm. However, due to the nature of project work you may be required to work outside these times.

On occasion this may mean working shifts and weekend work. This would be most likely to occur during periods of software deployment or if a project happens to be taking place across a variety of locations and time zones.

What to expect

• Work is mainly office-based and you'll spend the majority of your time at a computer.
• Your role may be stressful at times, particularly around the time of project completion.
• Once you've gained adequate experience, you could progress into the freelance and contracting market. This would enable you to select specific projects and work more flexibly. However, working as a contractor may not provide the same benefits and job security in comparison to a permanent employee.
• The IT sector, including software testing roles, has a higher ratio of male to female workers. However, there is a higher ratio of female to male software testers when compared with other IT jobs (such as software development). Organisations working to encourage more females into software testing roles and IT careers include Women in Technology and the BCS (The Chartered Institute for IT).
• Companies employ software testers in many locations within the UK. The highest concentration is in large cities including London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham. There are also international opportunities, most notably in the USA and India, where a large number of offshore software testing companies are based.

Qualifications

Software testers often have a degree in computer science or IT. However, the role is open to graduates from a variety of degree disciplines including:

• chemistry
• electrical engineering
• mathematics
• physics.

You can enter the software testing profession with an HND or foundation degree. A diploma in software, IT, or engineering may be most highly regarded by companies.

Skills

You'll need to have:

• strong verbal and written communication skills with the ability to liaise with a variety of stakeholders
• problem-solving skills
• the ability to work under pressure
• attention to detail
• competent technical skills
• the ability to work in a team and individually
• organisational skills with the capability of working towards tight deadlines
• a passion for working with technology.

Work experience

A number of large graduate employers offer summer internships and year-in-industry placements, which provide the opportunity to gain relevant work experience. Completing such a placement will give you useful professional software testing experience and would expose you to the full development lifecycle.

Some companies run work shadow schemes to give an insight into the software testing profession.

Your university may also have a computing society. Joining relevant university societies will help you demonstrate your passion for technology and may provide other opportunities to meet with companies and industry professionals.

Find out more about the different kinds of work experience and internships that are available.

Employers

Software testers are required in a variety of industries, where they are a valuable asset to organisations that rely on safe, functioning software to operate.

You can find software testing opportunities in:

• financial services
• healthcare
• manufacturing
• media
• professional services
• public sector
• retail
• telecommunications
• transport.

Large graduate employers may include software testing within their rotational IT graduate programmes. This would give you the opportunity to gain experience in software testing as well as other IT roles (including project management, application support and software development).

Employers without traditional rotational graduate schemes may offer software testing as a direct entry role where candidates start work as a software tester from day one.

You may wish to consider your preference for style of working before you apply for jobs. Large organisations often have software testers dedicated to one project, while smaller organisations may have a central team working on multiple projects.

Look for vacancies at:

Professional development

Training will depend on the company you join and can vary from structured training and development programmes organised via a graduate scheme, to on-the-job training and short courses, as required.

The IT sector is ever changing, so it's important that you keep up to date with developments and specific software testing trends.

Joining a professional association, such as BCS, can be helpful and may help to expand your awareness of the IT sector. Membership can also offer opportunities to meet a variety of professionals.

The BCS, along with more than 100 accredited training organisations worldwide, runs a number of software testing courses and professional qualifications. The courses and qualifications are mapped against SFIAplus (the Skills Framework for the Information Age), which is the UK's government-backed competency framework describing IT roles and the skills needed to carry them out.

At present there are no specific software testing postgraduate degrees offered by UK institutions. However, it's not uncommon for software testing professionals to decide to study a postgraduate IT qualification at some point during their career. Search postgraduate courses in computer sciences and IT.

Career prospects

You may start your career as a software tester on a graduate scheme or via an entry-level position. Career progression can be rapid. The speed at which you progress will depend on your experience, your exposure to different systems, and awareness of testing methods. Professional qualifications and technical skills will help to speed up your progression.

Some software testers progress into senior software testing roles, including:

• senior software tester
• software test team lead
• test manager.

You could choose to specialise by gaining experience within a specific sector, for example, financial services or media. Or you may decide to diversify and develop an understanding of many sectors.

Although different roles, the testing skills you use as a software tester are broadly the same as those used by a game tester. Meaning, it may be possible to move across into the game sector, if you wanted to work on a different type of software.

Additionally, as software testers are required to work with business and project teams, you could move into business-facing roles, such as business analysis and project management.

Progression into software development roles is another possible route.

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Software Tester Job Description Template

We are looking for a results-driven software tester to be responsible for designing and running tests on software usability. The software tester will conduct tests, analyze the results, and report observations to the design team. You may also interact with clients in order to understand the requirements of the product.

To be successful as a software tester, you should have a working knowledge of software and test design, the capability to run through tests, and the ability to analyze the results. Ultimately, the software tester should be result-driven, have good communication skills, and up-to-date knowledge of software programming and software test design.

Software Tester Responsibilities:

• Reviewing software requirements and preparing test scenarios.
• Executing tests on software usability.
• Analyzing test results on database impacts, errors or bugs, and usability.
• Preparing reports on all aspects related to the software testing carried out and reporting to the design team.
• Interacting with clients to understand product requirements.
• Participating in design reviews and providing input on requirements, product design, and potential problems.

Software Tester Requirements:

• A bachelor's degree in computer science or related field.
• Up-to-date knowledge of software test design and testing methodologies.
• Working knowledge of test techniques and compatibility with various software programs.
• Working knowledge of programming.
• Excellent communication and critical thinking skills.
• Good organizational skills and detail-oriented mindset.

This guide will take you through the In’s and outs of software testing. If you plan to make a career in software testing, this is a MUST READ!

What is Software Testing?

Software Testing is a process of verifying a computer system/program to decide whether it meets the specified requirements and produces the desired results. As a result, you identify bugs in software product/project.

Software Testing is indispensable to provide a quality product without any bug or issue.

In this tutorial, you will learn-

Skills required to become a Software Tester

We will discuss the Technical and Non-Technical required to become a Software Tester

Non-Technical Skills

Following skills are essential to become a good Software quality tester. Compare your skill set against the following checklist to determine whether Software Testing is a reality for you-

• Analytical skills: A good software tester should have sharp analytical skills. Analytical skills will help break up a complex software system into smaller units to gain a better understanding and create test cases. Not sure that you have good analytical skills – Refer this link – if you can solve at least ONE problem you have excellent analytical skills.
• Communication skill: A good software tester must have good verbal and written communication skill. Testing artifacts (like test cases/plans, test strategies, bug reports, etc.) created by the software tester should be easy to read and comprehend. Dealing with developers (in the event of bugs or any other issue) will require a shade of discreetness and diplomacy.
• Time Management & Organization Skills: Testing at times could be a demanding job especially during the release of code. A software tester must efficiently manage workload, have high productivity, exhibit optimal time management, and organization skills
• GREAT Attitude: To be a good software tester you must have a GREAT attitude. An attitude to ‘test to break’, detail orientation, willingness to learn and suggest process improvements. In the software industry, technologies evolve with an overwhelming speed, and a good software tester should upgrade his/her technical Software testing skills with the changing technologies. Your attitude must reflect a certain degree of independence where you take ownership of the task allocated and complete it without much direct supervision.
• Passion: To Excel in any profession or job, one must have a significant degree of the passion for it. A software tester must have a passion for his / her field. BUT how do you determine whether you have a passion for software testing if you have never tested before? Simple TRY it out and if software testing does not excite you switch to something else that holds your interest.

   

   

  

   

  Non-Technical skills of a Software Tester

   

   

Technical Skills

This list is long, so please bear with us

• • Basic knowledge of Database/ SQL: Software Systems have a large amount of data in the background. This data is stored in different types of databases like Oracle, MySQL, etc. in the backend. So, there will be situations when this data needs to be validated. In that case, simple/complex SQL queries can be used to check whether proper data is stored in the backend databases.
  • Basic knowledge of Linux commands: Most of the software applications like Web-Services, Databases, Application Servers are deployed on Linux machines.So it is crucial for testers to have knowledge about Linux commands.
  • Knowledge and hands-on experience of a Test Management Tool:Test Management is an important aspect of Software testing. Without proper test management techniques, software testing process will fail. Test management is nothing but managing your testing related artifacts.

    For example – A tool like Testlink can be used for tracking all the test cases written by your team.

    There are other tools available that can be utilized for Test Management. So, it is important to have knowledge and working experience of such tools because they are used in most of the companies.

  • Knowledge and hands-on experience of any Defect Tracking tool- Defect Tracking and Defect life cycle are key aspects of software testing. It is extremely critical to managing defects properly and track them in a systematic manner. Defect tracking becomes necessary because the entire team should know about the defect including managers, developers, and testers. Several tools are used to log defects including QC, Bugzilla, Jira, etc.
  • Knowledge and hands-on experience of Automation tool: If you see yourself as an “Automation tester” after a couple of years working on manual testing, then you must master a tool and get in-depth, hands-on knowledge of automation tools.

    Note – Only knowledge of any Automation tool is not sufficient to crack the interview, you must have good hands-on experience, so practice the tool of your choice to achieve mastery.

    Knowledge of any scripting language like VBScript, JavaScript, C# is always helpful as a tester if you are looking for a job into automation. Few companies also use Shell/Perl scripting, and there is a lot of demand for testers having knowledge of the same. Again, it will depend on the company and which tools are used by that company.

There is also a lot of scope for performance testing tools because applications need to be tested for their performance which is a part of non-functional testing.

That’s it to technical knowledge. Please note you do not need ALL the technical skills listed above. The technical skill sets required vary with the Job Role and company processes.

Academic Background

Academic background of a software tester should be in Computer Science.

A BTech/ B.E., MCA, BCA (Bachelor of Computer Applications), BSc- Computers, will land you a job quickly.

If you do not hold any of these degrees, then you must complete a software testing certification like ISTQB and CSTE which help you learn Software Development/ Test Life Cycle and other testing methodologies.

Remuneration

Compensation of a software tester varies from company to company. Average salary range of a software tester in the US is $45,993 – $74,935. Average Software testing career package in India is Rs 247,315 – Rs 449,111.

Also, a software tester is also given health insurance, bonuses, gratuity and other perks.

What Does a Software Tester do?

On any typical work day, you will be busy understanding requirement documents, creating test cases, executing test cases, reporting and re-testing bugs, attending review meetings and other team building activities.

Software Tester Career Path

Your Software Testing career growth as a software tester (QA Analyst) in typical CMMI level 5 company will look like following but will vary from company to company

1. QA Analyst (Fresher)
2. Sr. QA Analyst (2-3 years’ experience)
3. QA Team Coordinator (5-6 years’ experience)
4. Test Manager (8-11 years’ experience)
5. Senior Test Manager (14+ experience)

Alternate Career Tracks as a Software Tester

Once you have got your hand dirty in manual testing, you can pursue following specializations

• Automation Testing: As an Automation Test Engineer, you will be responsible for automating manual test case execution which otherwise could be time-consuming. Tools used IBM Rational Robot, Silk performer, and QTP
• Performance Testing: As a performance test engineer, you will be responsible for checking application responsiveness (time is taken to load, maximum load application can handle), etc. Tools used WEBLoad, Loadrunner.
• Business Analyst: A major advantages Testers have over Developers is that they have an end to end business knowledge. An obvious Testing career progression for testers is to become a Business Analyst. As a Business Analyst, you will be responsible for analyzing and assessing your company’s business model and workflows. As a BA, you will integrate these models and workflows with technology.

Common Myths

Software Testing as a Career pays Less Developers are more respected as compared to Testers

Contrary to popular belief, Software Testers (better known as QA professionals) are paid and treated at par with Software Developers in all “aspiring” companies. A career in Software Testing should never be considered as “second rated.”

Software Testing is Boring

Software Testing could actually “test” your nerves since you need to make sense of Business Requirements and draft test cases based on your understanding. Software testing is not boring. What is boring is doing the same set of tasks repeatedly. The key is to try new things. For that matter, have you ever spoken to a software developer with more than 3 years’ experience? He will tell you how boring his job has become off-lately.

How to Become Software Tester

For a complete newbie, here is our suggested approach to learning Software Testing

 

 

Process to become a Software Tester

 

You start with learning Basic principles of Software Testing. Once done you apply for freelancing jobs. This will help you gain practical knowledge and will fortify the testing concepts you have learned.

Next, you proceed to Selenium – Automation tool, then JMeter – Performance Testing tool and finally TestLink – Test Management Tool. All the while you are learning, we suggest you apply for freelancing jobs (apart from other benefits you will make some moolah too!).

Once you are through with all the tools, you may consider taking a certification. We recommend ISTQB. However, this is optional.

Certification Exams:

ISTQB Foundation level is the basic certification in Testing field.

It is not mandatory, but it will help increase your chances of getting the job. Most of the companies have this criterion.

A software tester with ISTQB cleared will be given more priority as compared to others.

After this, when you apply for permanent jobs in big corporations you will have many Software tester skills to offer as well some practical freelancing experience which may be of value and will increase your chances of being selected.

You can also pursue certification in a Testing tool of your choice.

Learning Guides: –

Hope to see you at a QA conference some Day!

Here is a tool to help you make a career choice

Check This Software Testing Career Suggestion Tool