Why is ISTQB certification increasingly becoming a common job requirement?

I’m currently job searching, and it’s been a frustrating experience so far. Aside from the market challenges, I’ve noticed a growing trend of ISTQB certification being listed as a strict job requirement, not just a preference. I’ve even been ghosted by some recruiters after they asked if I had one.
Are companies prioritizing certifications over practical experience?

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My guess would be a misapprehension about what testing is, what it’s for, how hard it can be, what it can and can’t do and what kind of person can help.

Given the confusion and lack of education about the principles of testing, and given that it’s often been in the shadow of (or excluded from) development and its methodologies and manifestos, I understand the difficulty that people would have. If you’re familiar with the social science roots and history of groups that study and improve testing, you’ll also be familiar with the difficulty of explaining testing in a convincing way. It’s like trying to convince someone that science is good - you have to explain why it’s necessary, which is something that science communicators have been struggling with for years. Between frustration and a lack of patience and a need for certainty and to show one’s capability to hire well, it’s very convenient to outsource that understanding.

ISTQB does introduce concepts in testing. The exam seems to basically check that you have memorised the concepts. It also promises a standardised domain language. These are really appealing ideas from a business perspective, even if they are flawed or insufficient in important ways.

Testing is also seen as facile by some applicants. I once had a candidate tell me, to my face, that testing is easy and “a monkey could do it”. I think that excluding these sorts of candidates can involve asking for a certification like ISTQB, because at least they have gone to the effort to try to learn how to test. Surviving companies are populated by intelligent people, who know that what they want is a self-driven, passionate, hard-working candidate. If that’s not available then they at least need people who are certified to be capable, as impossible as that is. I think ISTQB hiring is sometimes a case of… what else can we do?

ISTQB also teaches a lot of techniques and approaches that have more value to people not motivated to find problems. This sounds like a bad thing, but if you are hiring from a pool of people who seem to not really care about your product, or the risks in it, then early formalisation, documentation and control metrics are useful to railroad people into what you’re trying to get them to do. It isn’t without business value, even if it’s at the expense of good testing (remembering that people often are more familiar and comfortable with business than testing). It’s covering the risk of hiring people who can otherwise hide their expense and lower value in activities that nobody else understands anyway.

I think that some understanding of the reasoning can help a job application. Knowing that I have to bypass certain expectations helps the approach. I tend to get work with direct applications. It becomes more important to communicate your passion, sell your own ability and understanding, and to be able to talk professionally about testing. If you can teach and coach testing that’s also a selling point.

Best of luck with your search!

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It’s good when companies show that they prioritise certifications over practical experience like that. It means they are companies you wouldn’t want to work for, so you don’t need to waste any more time looking at their job adverts.

There are still some enlightened companies that don’t require ISTQB. Use LinkedIn to look up anyone who used to work for my company (Test Partners Ltd) - none of them will be working at companies that require ISTQB.

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With companies getting hundreds of applicants for every role it’s likely that organisations are looking for any way they can for weeding out numbers quickly.

How do they do that? Enforced years of service / technology / accreditation… something you can search for and say “yes they have” or “no they don’t have” easily. It allows for a quick filtering of candidates to reduce the overhead of a manual review by a hiring manager.

Is that good? not really; lots of organisations don’t know what they want from a tester really so just work to what they consider an industry standard. This looses the nuance of actually thinking about what challenges they have with quality and how to support them. But this is harder to hire for and takes more time, expertise and effort to understand!

Oooooooor maybe those organisations really do work to what ISEB teaches. Maybe they’re regulated industries that need things done a certain way. Unlikely though… I think it’s more likely a quick way to reduce the number of applicants somebody has to go through manually.

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That depends on the location and profile of the company.
Around here, anything working with government, public institutions, European bank and institutions, banking, financial services and funds administration, authorization & authentication services, satellites; want a certain type of testing as in the ISTQB: create a big document plan, create detailed test cases, execute, automate, report.
As this is the biggest part of the market, consultancies also demand a similar profile.
So ISTQB ends up being the most sought after thing. And make sure you have in the resume the keywords related to the practices in that glossary.
There’s also ISTQB services provided locally to fulfill that. They are asking about 3k euro to do the 3 days training and take the exam, for each module.
Most of the time at least 1 ISTQB is the entry fee one has to pay to get past the initial resume screening.

Of course, this has little to do with professional testing, but there’s no other way in order to survive as a tester otherwise. Especially if one wants to grow financially, in a higher role, or switch jobs easily (after 3-4 months of applying).

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There is no bachelor or master for ‘Testing’ so ISTQB became the next best thing to ask for a piece of paper. (It’s the same in the security world)

It tells companies that “you have the capability to learn”, which I understand because otherwise the company who doesn’t know you at all is taking a “risk” and if they get 20-100 resume’s a day, it’s easier to dismiss one who doesn’t have the certificate then one who does.

If you have a certain amount of experience, ISTQB becomes obsolete but that depends on region I believe.


What I do recommend putting on your resume because many HR departments are using “AI” to scan pdf’s for certain keywords and if ISTQB is not on your resume, you won’t make it to the interview.

In order to COUNTER that; you can just write “I’m open to learn and obtain ISTQB Foundation”

This will not only bypass the automated scan for keywords but also tell the company that you are willing to learn.

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@kristof Thanks for a great advice, I’ve suspected that absence of keywords like ISTQB might affect my chances to get an interview, but I had no idea how to address that. I’ll definitely try that! (even if i don’t believe that ISTQB is a true measure of a good specialist)

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I agree but if the company pays for it why not :smiley:

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I don’t think so, maybe some companies, but I believe that they are the minority.

I spent the summer searching for new opportunities in the EU (mostly Poland) and casually in the UK, USA, and Canada markets and haven’t noticed such a trend, especially if we speak about mid and higher levels positions. Maybe it is more often a strict job requirement for entry/junior level QA engineers/Testers.

Personally, I don’t believe that this certification has any significant value and plays any real difference in job search in most situations.

upd: I don’t have it and I got a nice offer and haven’t been asked about it for many years and didn’t get any rejections this summer because I don’t have it :slight_smile:

Have a look at these other reasons why it might not be you:

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When I was job searching around this time last year, ISTQB certification never felt like a barrier to opportunities—I had plenty of interviews and landed a good job, even though the market wasn’t ideal. But recently, in the UK market, I’ve started noticing ISTQB being listed more and more frequently as a strict requirement. Previously, it was occasionally mentioned as a preference, but rarely a requirement.
As I said, I’ve even been ghosted twice by recruiters who initially reached out with roles that seemed like a great fit, only to disappear after asking about the certification.
Overall, it feels like the testing job market has taken a step backward, at least based on my experience.

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It’s been like that for a long time. I have over 30 years experience but was frustrated by recruiters not considering me as that box wasn’t ticked, so I paid for the exam myself. You can get a book from Amazon, no need to attend a course, then when you’re ready just book the test. It’s under £200 for just the exam

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The world is approaching 1M ISQTB certifications. While sitting through a course costs relevant money, taking an online test to acquire the cert is still a few hundreds. Recruiting ads ask for it, since the chain forward asks for it. I came to realize - opportunity cost - that time fighting it, I could just get it. Also speaking against it being one of Foundation syllabus 1.0 authors is kind of a power move, and speaking against it when you already passed it the same.

You are right. It is not useful and says nothing about you as a tester. But if out of the 1M people I have two people who have no other way to clearly market their skills, it is an easy way to see one did something, perhaps unpleasant. And work includes some unpleasant things.

I would suggest that we testers aren’t very good at showing our practical experience. On CV good and bad testing look very same. Having just gone through 85 applications, I concluded again I need to call everyone with any experience to figure out what the real experience is.

I have seen a lot of CVs. I have seen one impressive enough that I called the person because of the CV. Others I called because I needed to in order to find the right person. That impressive one belongs to @ezagroba of past, I think 10 years ago. She is more impressive these days.

Have you tried asking feedback on your CV?

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THIS! Very much this!

Testing is a really hard concept to navigate, even when you’re a testing professional. Having a certification at least is a way that shows you’ve done / passed something :smile:

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Long story shortly. We had a bad experience with a person who had this certification and we look at resumes more carefully now. I do not say that all QAs are the same, bad experience can be and with QA without it.

May be it is great to have different certificates(certifications) for companies, which want to show that they have professionals, but for us it was not so this summer. And we see the difference, same start with and without certification.

If any QA from our company wish to have it, why not? Self-development is welcome.

We are not exception, there are companies who cares about experience not about certificates(certifications).

P. S great advice @kristof

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I inhabit a testing world that is far removed from most commenters on this site - waterfall, project plans, scripted test cases, test execution schedules - so take my comments for what they’re worth to you (you may not want to work for companies like this anyway…).

The company may or may not be setting the requirement; perhaps all they’ve asked the recruiting agency for is “a really good tester”. And along with that, they’ve set a really good salary or rate to go with that to reflect the quality of person they want.

Now, with testing being perceived (rightly or wrongly) as relatively low-skilled and in a lot of cases able to be done remotely, and with a relatively flat market in job positions across all industries, how many applicants do we think we’ll get for a well-paying test position? Hundreds? A thousand or more, with a good deal of them being chancers?

You might have the best CV of the bunch but nobody’s going to sift through all of that to find it.

If I’m looking for another profession, doesn’t matter what - accountant, lawyer, plumber, electrician - I don’t know how good they’ll be until I see their “CV” (i.e. online reviews, etc) but I still want to run an initial filter by checking that at a minimum they have some sort of qualification. Why are testers any different, why are we holding ourselves back by insisting that people judge us on our quality but we can’t even get (or actively refuse to get) a simple cert to get past that first filter?

A degree or a diploma or a cert tell me nothing about the quality of someone’s work, but they do tell me that they’ve followed the “accepted” path to being seen as “initially qualified in some way”, which makes it a very easy filter to both screen for (recruiters) and pass (applicants).

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Thanks Maaret, what a huge compliment!

Here are my CVs for reference:

@mariam-sargsyan Email me your resume if you want some feedback on it.

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It’s not just the certification people use this way, it is also the BSc / MSc used in the same way. I find it peculiar how after 30 years in testing and enough reputation on impact and results, I still am not allowed with many of our customers (new job!) since I never graduated. ISTQB is a lot smaller fix than a degree. But every one of these externally assigned requirements feels a little bit more personal than they are.

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I’m wondering what could be a good way of showcasting your experience?
I know writing articles help but is their a way to show (especially for manual testers) your testing skills?
Just curious if anybody has ideas for that

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I think the most reliable way is to learn to think and talk about testing in a professional way.

It’s possible to get hired based on community, but usually that’s because you talk about testing in a professional way. It’s possible to get hired directly, but that usually means that’s because you’ve sold yourself properly.

Another approach is to apply to small businesses, where you’re more likely to help shape the processes and policies around testing.

The problem with what I’d call testing is that the structure of it is tacit. ISTQB uses a lot of artefacts to externalise the structure around test design and strategy. If we want the flexibility and speed that comes with using internal structure we have to know how to externalise that.

I think test framing is an important skill to help externalise that testing. The ability to trace back what you are doing to your test mission. To be able to answer difficult questions about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. The way to show the exploratory nature of nature of testing and the application of resources and how to focus/defocus and when to introduce scripted elements into your testing. The difference between that and just winging it.

With regards to showing experience, I think it’s worth keeping a record of process improvement projects, workshops we run, talks we give, courses we do, books we read, anything above and beyond actual testing, because that helps to surround the tacit parts of testing, which are harder to communicate, with explicit examples of passion and intent. A lot of what hiring is, in my experience, is finding someone who cares about what they do.