I’m a 28 year-old film graduate who has been working in a the media field for 3-4 years but is now taking steps to change careers into IT .
After looking at career paths I decided testing would be an exciting venture. Currently I have passed my ISTQB exam and am striving to be put on crowdtesting projects with no luck. The only real-world exposure I have with testing would be the Guru99 live project.
I am looking to ‘beef up’ my CV with as much experience as I can and secure my first IT testing role within 4 months.
I’d be delighted to recieve any feedback/mentoring on my email Jasonaustinbhatti@gmail.com or on this thread.
You’ll find a lot of information here about testing. Where are you from by the way?
This might not bump up your resume but: Testing Challenges it’s always fun to do!
About bumping up your resume, where are you from? I know people in Belgium are always looking for ISTQB’s but other countries might have different requirements. Getting into test automation will bump up your resume, so I’m not sure how technical you are?
Since you already mentioned trying crowd testing, another thing I can recommend is to try getting into an internship, if you can get someone who is working as a tester to recommend you this could help you get in.
Find a job board and start looking for jobs! Experience is the key to starting an IT career. Whether you can get the first step on the ladder will depend on a number of factors including your location, situation and local job market . It’s been a long time since had to actively look for a job (mostly you get approached on LinkedIn once established). But I think monster are a popular one , here in the UK also cwjobs and technojobs.
Thanks for the feedback,I’ll be sure to be on the lookout for any internships. I’ve been contacted by a few companies saying if I pay them they can set me up with work experience but something about the arrangement doesn’t seem right to me.
Also cool blog! I noticed one of your points was to learn how to code… Is Code Academy any good?
That part about paying for experience sounds shady to me! I know that there are companies offering unpaid internship, which might be acceptable in some situations, like if they offer you a job after a few months of training.
Codeacademy is ok to get your feet we and learn the basics, if you want to learn more about automation check the Automation University by Applitools - all the courses there are free.
Just do it one step at a time, it’a a marathon not a speed run!
Paying to secure work experience sounds like a scam; I would suggest that any employer who makes that sort of offer is unlikely to follow the law in a number of other areas.
Following recent changes, if you are employed in the UK in a work experience role, you are usually entitled to receive the minimum wage.
Gosh what a heavy question! There are so many. It might be good to get a clear view of your next/current project and learn something accordingly. Let’s say you are learning restSharp api automation but your new project will use restAssured api automation. It’s learning C# vs Java.
But interesting frameworks (some popular ones – from my point of view):
Postman
RestAssured
Cypress
JMeter (performance testing)
You can find courses all over the interwebs: Udemy, Youtube, …
I forgot to mention - Pluralsight. It’s not free, but they do have a 10-day trial, I think that you could get a 30 day trial using any Microsoft account, as that is one of the benefits of the basic (free) visual studio subscription.
I noticed lately that they added quite a few courses on test automation - mainly by a fellow named Andrejs Doronins, he’s got very nice teaching style.
Also, now they have a certification path courses for ISTQB - not as interesting as automation but could be handy to get acquainted with theory and terminology.
I’m not sure more training will help if you are not getting interviews?
Did you get any feedback on your applications. Get your CV reviewed (make sure it is only 2 pages) and emphasis your relavent skills not just a bio. Try building a relationship with some of the recruiting agents, they will give you no BS feedback on what is really holding you back. Some times it’s something not very PC or obvious. And once they know you are a good egg they will normally keep pushing for you until they find you right roll.
It’s the relationship building that prevents your CV getting lost in the piles. Don’t pay any regard to large faceless agencies that don’t speak to you or companies with in house recruiters who do the same.
Learn a popular test automation tool like Robot Framework. I set up a library of test scripts (recipes) in the Robot Framework Cookbook for beginner and intermediate test engineers here:
See if you can get RF installed and working then run through the tests in the cookbook and observe the log output.
