What Skills #MakeATester? – A collaborative approach to help future Testers get a chance.

So as my last post showed, Universities aren’t really considering Software Testing as a core topic of Computer Science degree courses. Therefore, by the time graduates are looking for jobs, testing isn’t really on their radar. The same can be said for potential testers who haven’t got degrees. As shown in a recent “Let’s Talk about Tests, Baby” podcast and the following survey, a fair amount of people fall into testing roles, some have qualifications in other areas sometimes not even related to IT atall and end up in software testing. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but surely there is a way in which people may want to be able to train themselves for that first Testing position, rather than only accidentally falling into the position? I know from my own experience, I learnt what QA did while still working as a developer and then transitioned across to become a QA Engineer when the opportunity arose. If I had known the areas to focus beforehand, maybe I would have been better prepared to decide the path to take at the beginning.

So, i don’t know whether this has been done before, but I intend to collate a list of ‘ideal skills’ to become a tester, these may be soft skills, more technical skills or any one particular ability which is useful in the role of testing. Using this amazing Testing community, we must be able to come up with a sizeable list of ideas. I will then cut down the list to the top 15-20 and hopefully use it to encourage students or other non-testing folk who may have the skills that Testing is a genuine option for them.

So how can we create this list?  Two options for you:

1. Tweet #MakeATester to @siprior with your suggestions
2. Fill in the form below

I can report back in a month or so on what my findings were