Stuart’s offer above sounds amazing!!
there is also the MoT Scholarship that you could apply for.
From what you have said, my advice would be to start small, pick an area and focus there to get started. testing is such a huge domain. Often Performance and Security testing for example, are their own area due to the learning requirements. Of course a tester can do it all, given the time to learn. But I would suggest narrowing your focus a little to avoid burnout! There will be years and year worth of information you’ll be learning. I’ve been going over 10 years now and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I learn new things ALL the time!!
Don’t rush yourself!!
Performance testing has a variety of tooling available, my choice was JMeter - they have really good docs in my opinion, and it’s fairly easy to learn. I also tried K6 but with some work restrictions, it made learning that much harder. The best thing here would be to research the tools and find one that suits your learning style.
This stretches far past tooling though, for performance testing you would also need an understanding of the systems you are testing. How is it built, what does it run on, what are the network speed requirements, user journeys, SLA’s and expected throughputs. What type of Performance test are you trying to achieve - Peak load, stress, soak, scalability etc. ? All of this information is then used to design a “scenario” for running your test. After the test is complete you’ll need to understand the results and what figures you are going to report on. Personally, I use the 95th percentile. I have a small write-up on why I use this, I can try to find it for you if you like. Ultimately; Your test should then answer your question “Does it meet the requirements?”
Then you also have exploratory testing, API testing, Visual testing, Accessibility testing, Security testing… etc.
A broad understanding of the different types of testing certainly helps, but again I would start by picking one and focusing on that area to start with.
Hope this helps… I didn’t intend for the above to be overwhelming! Googling any of the above will likely provide you YouTube videos explaining what each part is. And if possible, try to get yourself an MoT membership as there are loads of video tutorials and courses available for you to learn from!!
Also consider any local testing meetup groups. Not sure on your location but someone from the MoT community may run a meetup near by.
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