Today fast-growing IT sectors have numerous career growth opportunities but people are not familiar with software testing. Employees who are working in other industries are willing to switch their career to software testing and the passed-out students are planning to become a software tester. Why do software testing roles reach this much bigger heights? This is because software testing plays a major role in every sector and the software tester checks the product whether it met the client’s requirements.
What is software testing?
Software testing works on the computer programs and verify whether it meets the specified requirements and the tester produces successful outcomes. Their major work is to identify the bugs in software products or projects. Software tester provides a high-quality product without any error or issue. If you want to start your career as a software tester, then start obtaining a software testing certification. Hence these certifications have a greater value over IT companies. Nowadays recruitments are made based on professional certifications.
Skills required for software tester
Here comes some of the technical and non-technical skills required to become a software tester.
Non-technical skills
The below-given skills are important if you want to be a professional software tester.
Communication skills
Good verbal and written communication skills are essential for software tester certification. The test reports, plans, and strategies created by the software testers should be easy to read and comprehend. At the time of discussing with the developers regarding the issues or errors in the projects, you need to show some shade of diplomacy and discreteness.
Analytical skills
If you want to become an expert software tester, then you need to obtain analytical skills. These skills will help you to break out the complex software application into smaller units. This method gives a better understanding and it also helps to create new test cases for the software project.
Time management and organizational skills
While distributing the projects to the customers you need to test the projects many times. This creates more demand for software testers. Software testers should manage the workload more efficiently. Although the software testers exhibit high productivity, organization, and time management skills.
Technical skills
Technical skills are essential for software testers, look at the below-given skills and enhance your knowledge
Basic knowledge of Linux commands
Most of the software applications like databases, application servers, and web services are deployed on Linux machines. So, software testers must know Linux commands.
Gain knowledge on database/ SQL
The software systems have a lot of data in the background. This data is stored in the different types of databases like MySQL, Oracle, etc. in the backend. The data in the background get activated at a particular time. To check whether the data are stored properly in the backend database using simple or complex SQL queries.
Get experience with test management tools
In software testing, test management plays an important role. Only through test automation techniques, your software testing process gets succeeded. The test management tool is nothing but organizing the testing related details. For example, you are also able to test all your test cases which are written by the testing team with the help of Testlink. Likewise, there are multiple numbers of tools available in test management tools. It is mandatory to have knowledge and working experience with these tools. Hence these test management tools are used in most companies.
Get knowledge on defective tracking tools
The two main aspects of software testing are defect tracking and the defective life cycle. Software testers always feel difficult to handle the defect and systematically track them. Defect management has become common in IT companies hence whatever the defects occur it should be informed to the managers, testers, and developers. Various tools are involved to lock the defects such as Qc, Jira, and Bugzilla.
Get knowledge of automation tools
Automation testers work on manual testing and they also need to train themselves in automation tools and gain more knowledge on these tools. The basic knowledge of automation tools is not sufficient to track the interview, rather you have to obtain experience with the automation tools. Knowledge of any scripting languages such as JavaScript, C#, and VBScripts are required for the testing jobs. Nowadays many companies use Perl and shell scripting, if you consume knowledge on these scripting then you have a larger scope for the testing field.
The role of a software tester
The software testers are busy undertaking the testing documents, executing test cases, giving reports and retest bugs, creating test cases, attending review meetings, and other team-building activities.
Software tester career path
There are various levels of software tester are progressing in the company from fresher level to experienced. If you know more about software testing courses then join in software testing certification courses online. Where you can get an idea about an upcoming future software tester job and the skills required for it. Look at some of the software testing career jobs
- QA Analyst
- QA Team Coordinator
- Sr. QA Analyst
- Test Manager
- Senior Test manager
An alternate career option as a software tester
Once you choose your career path in manual testing then pursue the below-given specialization.
Automation testing
If you choose to be an automation test engineer then you have to be responsible for automating test causes execution manually.
Business analyst
Even the tester has the same business knowledge as developers. The clear career option for software testers is to become a business analyst. By starting your career as a business analyst you need to be more responsible in analyzing and assessing the company’s business models and workflows. These workflows and models in the software are integrated by the business analyst.
Performance testing
Application responsiveness is maintained by the performance test engineer. Tools used in the performance testing such as Loadrunner and WEBLoad.
Bottom-line
The above-mentioned details show that the software tester has a unique position in the cooperative field and these jobs are in higher demand. Without any hesitation start your career in the software filed as well as gain the required knowledge for software testing