I’m aiming to be job ready for an entry level QA position for manual testing in 30 days. I’ve been practicing test case and bug reports, just general exploratory testing.
I have a basic background in software development in JavaScript/react so I understand how applications work and are built to a certain degree.
What are the most important skills I should focus on right now to land interviews?
What are the biggest gaps you typically see in junior QA candidates that I can overcome to be impressive.
Are there any specific resources or tools you’d recommend prioritizing (e.g., test management tools, basic automation, API testing)?
-Any and all advice/resources is greatly appreciated!
Your region and target companies are going to make a significant difference on what is important to them.
I’ve not hired in a while but when I was doing this I was picking people whom I could fast track in about four weeks. So technical curiosity, strong learning ability and excellent communication skills alongside an interest in testing.
Find blogs but keep an open mind, you could easily name someone the recruiter does not agree with at all, that is fine as long as you can explain why and not follow views blindly.
If you are going towards web testing, since you have some background in development if you can study dev tools and relate how that could be used in testing that may be an straight forward edge over other candidates.
Entry level positions are not going to expect a lot of experience but still expect to be asked about challenges you have faced, how you dealt with them and what you learned. They will also look for a good fit for their team, this is hard to gauge but research the company for every application.
Think about how you can provide evidence of learning fast, technical ability and strong communication skills. Critical thinking remains the primary QA skill but interviewers will approach how they gauge you that one very differently.
There is also AI angle, expectations again may not be high but be able to show an interest in this area.
Its been a while since I’ve recruited anyone but here’s some tips in what I look for:
Ambition and enthusiasm - you need to give off genuine confidence that this is the career you want. You can’t fake that as it’ll be seen through
Demonstrate you’re ability to listen and question - goes along with ambition and enthusiasm. Whatever is being said you listen deeply, comprehend and are ready with questions about the organisation, the products, the team, prospects etc.
Have something different - for an entry level role its difficult but bring examples of your work. If automation, then maybe a github repo to share. Not just to prove how great you are, but to prove what you’ve been doing to learn. As @andrewkelly2555 mentioned, some experimentation with AI and agents would be a good part of that. It doesn’t have to be working, but as you were learning you can give an honest appraisal of how it’s going, what you’re struggling with, what you enjoyed etc.
Examine an organisations website with a critical eye - most people go around the web site to prep with info about the company when they apply for roles. I once had a candidate who applied with a commentary “well your web site good in these areas, but could be better in these areas. I found 5 bugs in it, do you want me to go through them”. That was quite powerful
Examples of good team work - as an entry level position you may not have a lot of examples professionally, but there are other examples. Examples where you’ve worked with people with different opinions and backgrounds socially, in voluntary groups or sports teams - they all count
For me, if I saw a candidate with at least those 5 attributes, they’d be very difficult to ignore.
Welcome to MOT club @EthanLD152 glad u found this space where u can find tons of resources on testing to learn from… when it comes to entry level junior tester, i always forward Cem Kaner’s BBST courses BBST® Test Design Open Course Materials - BBST® Courses , apart from this u should also have basic understanding how testing plays a vital role throughout SDLC , write from Requirement analysis where you test to find ambiguities / gaps in ur requirements to Production deployment where u perform a shift right testing techniques like Synthetic Monitoring , log analysis … All the best !