Are internships necessary before getting a full-time QA role?

[Bodige_Roshini03 (Bodige Roshini)]

Discussion on ISTQB, CSTE, CSQA and other certifications. Are they worth the investment? Do employers actually value them?

[steve.green (Steve)]

Your question doesn’t make sense because ISTQB, CSTE, CSQA and other certifications have nothing to do with internships. Anyway…

As a tester with 30 years’ experience who has hired many other testers, I do not value those certifications at all. More than that, I prefer that applicants do not have them.

I do value training courses provided by a small number of people such as James Bach, Michael Bolton and Alan Richardson. I’m sure I’ve left out one or two other good ones, but there aren’t many. I also value the AST and BBST courses.

Internships
We have mostly had good experiences with interns, although one was utterly hopeless (probably at everything, not just testing). This was ten years ago when we still had an office, so we could provide the support an intern needs. Of the other three that I can remember, we offered one a permanent role, one we didn’t and one we couldn’t because she was in the middle of her studies. Two are now doing test automation and one went into software development.

During the internships, we paid them £25 a day to cover their travel - I think it’s important to do that. We also gave them proper work and a lot of training and support. They were always shadowing one of our testers, so they were a net cost to us rather than a cheap resource.

The point of all this is that internships can lead to permanent roles and a good career. I like to think we were a good employer, but I am sure there are bad ones who just look at interns as cheap labour.

Sadly, we have not been able to have any interns since 2017, when we got rid of our office and started working from home. It’s just not possible to provide the necessary level of support remotely.

[Bodige_Roshini03 (Bodige Roshini)]

Thanks so much, @steve.green. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts!

[simon_tomes]

Hi @Bodige_Roshini03 ,

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[Bodige_Roshini03 (Bodige Roshini)]

Thank you @simon_tomes for sharing