What are the best places to find my first QA Position?

I don’t think there’s anything specific about this, any job search site will do, ones targeting QA or engineering would be preferable. But here’s some tips, if you don’t already have the QA experience to begin with:

  • you might have to look for and start with contract positions as I suspect they are more open to junior/inexperienced candidates, then work your way up the QA ladder from there, job hopping or not. The contract positions are also the ones more likely to offer manual testing roles than the full time positions

  • you might want to consider internship roles if they could be applicable to you, as an alternative to contract positions

  • you might want to consider the networking/referral route. If you know someone, chances are the hiring/interview process could be less strict than for normal applicants (but this isn’t guaranteed). So if you haven’t networked, maybe now is the time.

You might want to read this comment in a related post: Seeking internship opportunities - #2 by m.zn

And for those who come from a different role like software development, I would suggest looking for roles like Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET), QA automation engineer, test tools engineer to start with and then you can transition further into QA however you like. Those positions are easier to transition from development.

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