Just like you, but I havenāt had the chance to learn any programming language yet. After refreshing/enhancing my manual testing skills, Iām starting a workshop in JAVA (for testers) as a prelude to learning test automation. Iāll keep you updated on the tools my instructors recommend.
Best of luck with your learning journey ! Iām sure youāll do great .
Are you open to learning new programming languages? Iāll address this more in Question 4 you had.
I can advise you now " do playwright " or ādo Brunoā but that is not going to help you because I donāt know where you live nor do I know what companies demand in your area. Soā¦ Iām going to help you this way:
Look up 10-20 vacancies for test automation in the area you wish to work.
Analyze those vacancies, check for technologies and tools used like playwright, cypress, Postman, RobotFramework; JavaScript, Java, Python etc etc
Then list them up, see which one are more frequent and then analyze which is easiest to learn or one that you are passionate about to learn. Learn it and then apply.
Itās not worth me saying " learn cypress with JavaScript" right now since in your area Selenium + Java might be āthe hypeā. I hope you understand this?
The answer above kind of applies here also, your job market is waaaay different then mine. You have to look through your job market and analyze it yourself. Since here in Belgium Cypress & Playwright are hyped for new and innovative companies, and for old legacy companies itās still Selenium + Java.
I hope it already helps a little bit, not that I really gave you a focus point but "check your own market "
BUT once you established whatās hot and whatās not in your market, you can come back saying " I need to learn X or Y" whatās the best approach for this and then we can mentor you on it. Happy to spar and mentor afterwards <3
Just looking at the two jobs in the ministryoftesting club, might put off any new beginnerā¦
āA hands-on technical leader with strong skills in programming and a broad background in technologyā
āMinimum of 4 years demonstrated experience in one or more of the following: Selenium Grid/WebDriver. - Cucumber/Gherkin - jUnit, TestNG - maven/Gradle - Python/Pytestā
Getting to that level takes the same amount of time as going again through the university or other professional studiesā¦and one can consider changing the domain completely even.
Thanks for the adviceāI really appreciate it! I wanted to mention that Iām located on the East Coast of the United States. And yes I am open to learning other Programming languages, actually in the past I learned Java but again I did not go any further with it as at the time I was just learning it just for fun because I enjoy coding. But I really enjoy Python so I think I would like to continue with that path. Following your guidance, I compiled a list based on 15 job descriptions I reviewed, and hereās what I found:
Thank you so much for your encouragement! It sounds like you have a great plan in place with your workshop in Javaābest of luck with that! Iād love to hear about the tools and techniques your instructors recommend as you progress.
Iāll definitely keep you updated on my journey as well. If you come across any interesting insights or resources, feel free to share!
Have you filtered it by the jobs where they would hire juniors in automation?
It looks like a big, spread list of tools.
Iād check as well within each if thereās a specific expertise required. For example, some look for Java unit test coders, others to build tools for developers, others to code UI-level checks, others to do data-related scripting, and others API-level checks/scripts(e.g. Postman+JS)ā¦
This should help in reducing the complexity and increase the focus.
Knowing where you are now may help others advise better, you do not need to reply here but consider the following for yourself before you go all in this journey. There is a lot of material out there on this specific journey, there are other journeys though so by considering where you are now may help confirm its the right journey for you.
Can you describe where your skills are now?
What did manual testing looked like for you in your day to day experience?
What technical skills have you been utilising in your day to day testing to date?
What sort of tools have you been using to assist with your testing?
What would you say are you key strengths as a tester?
Why have you decided this is the correct journey for you personally?
Is the primary goal to gain employment for example?
Often testers will undersell their current experience when faced with an interview that focuses on coding skills.
In some other cases their testing may have been very tied to a model that can sometimes be described as manual automated testing.
Hey, no I just went to search for automation roles in general in my initial search, but I will go look for employers that would hire junior automation testers, honestly I usually see job descriptions looking for multiple years of experience automation testing. Thank you for your advice.
These days that every vacancy, in security itās the same āEntry Levelā with 5 years of experience
Sure but DM it in private, not in this chat
I see that youāve done your research and Python is coming up mostly.
Then if you like that, go for Python Learn it with Selenium, make a project yourself put it online that you can add to your resume, so people have a repo to view, so they can see your skills.
"
