How to gain experience Software Testing as a novice

MoT Essentials Meetups
#1

Hi,

Firstly I apologise if i’ve posted this in the wrong part of the forum, I was unsure where i’d be able to ask a question like this. Anyway here goes…

I work for a large company who recruit Software Testers internally without the need for any testing experience. This is because they prefer the staff they recruit to have knowledge of the internal tools which they can then train you to test.

I am looking to move into this side of the company and in order to give me the best chance, i’m trying to learn about Software Testing on the side whilst in my current job.

Recently I passed the ISTQB Foundation course, but aside from this I am a complete novice. I’m looking to gain some experience but I am not sure where to begin. I’ve looked into voluntary testing for wikipedia where there is a lot of information about the testing they do, but no where that tells you what to test and how to test it.

So what i’m bascilly asking is, can somebody offer any advice on where to get some voluntary exerpience testing?

Thanks,

#2

Hi Daniel,

@melthetester wrote a great article on the Dojo about Learning through volunteering which might be useful for you. Off the back of her suggestions there I’d look to join the Ministry of Testing Slack and Testers.chat if you aren’t there already, there’s a Beta testing channel on testers.chat for sure. Some companies share their products on there to be tested.

Before the volunteering bit the post on here about Getting started in software testing might also be a good one for you.

Instead of volunteering maybe some sites to practice testing could be one to explore. Less/no chance of getting a bug bounty but there’s some great sites to practice testing on and some of them cover different areas of software testing such as automation and security.

Hope this helps,
Heather

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#3

This is a big help Heather, thank you very much! :grinning:

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#4

Hi @fordy

You are definitely in the right place of The club to ask for help. Software testing clinic is a safe place to learn about testing and we run regular sessions around the UK around different testing activities that include discussions and exercises. You should check out our site softwaretestingclinic.com to see if we have a Clinic near you and come along and get involved.

We also provide free content for the Dojo that you can check out around testing as well that you can find here: https://dojo.ministryoftesting.com/lessons?topic=swtc

If you have any questions, then please feel free to ask here and we’ll do our best to help :slight_smile:

Thanks,
Mark

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#5

I hope you started to gain some actual testing experience. This road map may help you too - https://www.astqb.org/road-map/. Best of luck and hope you have fun.

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