Hi everyone. I am new to this forum and looking for help to shape my career. I have around 14+ years of experience in testing. I have experience managing various testing projects but never got an opporutnity to work latest automation tools. I have equipped myself with Automation tools (through bootcamps). However never got an opporutnity to work on any latest automation tools. Currently working in legacy application testing and it looks a dead-end job. I am not motivated with current and dont see much learning curve. I am confused as to how to take my career to next level. If I plan to switch over, I do not get much calls which I assume because of 2 reasons - 1. More experience, 2. No real time Automation experience or experience in latest trending QA tools. Is there anyone in same situation as mine. Looking forward for guidance or experiences. Thanks.
Here are a few options that I have friends that have done to grow successfully.
- Test Coach - Basically you help teams and organisations to level up their testing. You need good communications skills, workshop leading, understanding of how the full software development cycle works.
- Security Testing - Extremely technical and requires a lot of tools to master. Typically require you to program to some capacity too.
- Load / Performance Testing - Require a few tools too and a solid understanding of networking. Will do automation as in tools assisted testing, without having to do test automation as in Computer Based Testing.
- Functional Test Automation - Looks like you already have identified this.
- Management - A different kind of job but a popular next step for a lot of people.
In my experience security testing and performance testing forces you to grow in your perception of what testing is, which might benefit any functional testing you do.
Hi!
What about focussing on the activities in the test design phase and requirements analysis phase? After all, still 35% of all bugs in production can be traced back to the requirements. You could try early Model Based Testing for example, which is an easy to use shift left testing approach. The main goal of eMBT is to start the communication and collaboration asap, to get a shared understanding of the requirements at the very start of the SDLC.
Thanks for your valuable inputs.
Hi,
What do you mean by career growth?
Is it money, general satisfaction, work/life balance, flexibility to develop yourself at work and experiment, job title, changing of daily work as you’re not that into serious-expert testing, etc…
What do you see as a path in your ideal view?
Without mentioning something very specific, how do you see yourself possibly being happy in the next 5-10 years?
Which kind of career path do you want to shape?
An IT/Software career, a Software Testing one, Business or Development, Management or doer, an independent or full time employee.
What’s the area in which you think about shaping your career?
Within the current department, company, city, region, country, continent?
Did you identify the constraints already?
Are you looking in the right places for the opportunities, are you actually serious of wanting to make the change (some people only want to change if 20 different things are better for them), what are you missing(ask recruiters/hr of companies), are you ready to give up some benefits in order to gain others?