What does a tester need to know?

The duties of a specialist in this area include not only the study of probable errors and failures in functioning, but also modeling of different situations that may appear during its direct use. Many newbies choose the profession of a tester due to the absence of excessive requirements and ease of work. What do you need to know about this specialty? Is everything as simple as it seems at first glance? Let’s figure it out together.

What a tester should know: briefly about the profession

Let’s start with the numbers: according to the information provided on the dou.ua portal, newcomers in this area at the very beginning of their career are able to receive from $ 500, and more advanced specialists can count on a salary of $ 2,500. If you pump your skills to the maximum, perfectly understand the essence of the work and take the position of QA Tech Lead, then it is quite possible to receive more than $ 3500 per month. An excellent reason to think about mastering this direction in IT, isn’t it?

A newbie tester should consider the theoretical and practical part of the specialization. In the first case, we say that a specialist is responsible for checking the software and helping the development team fix bugs and prevent them from occurring.

In IT, there are several subspecies of the duties of such employees:

1. Software tester – what does a beginner need to know? He should be able to do normal manual work. Newbies are often not associated with the stages of improving product quality in a global sense. Such an employee only finds and eliminates errors.
2. Quality Assurance – in this case, the requirements for a Middle-level tester are higher. Usually these are specialists who have been working in this area for 1-2 years. They are responsible for improving the quality of software at all stages of development. Experts at this level create and set standards, monitor compliance, and select verification tools. The tester will be required to develop a bug prevention plan and improve quality assurance processes.

For clarity and a clearer explanation of the main tasks of the employees of this department, let’s look at a simple example of tasks for novice specialists that are found in the proposals of employers. Usually, juniors are required to test household programs, such as a calculator. In some cases, you will need to find bugs on the portal of the company where you plan to find a job. The examples, of course, are the simplest, but from them you can immediately understand what exactly the employer wants.

What you need to know to work as a tester: basic knowledge

So, you decide that a QA specialist is exactly the profession that you need. Now the question is, what do you need to know? For a tester, especially a beginner, this section is very important. The first step is to learn the basic terminology and rules for future work. There is a lot of literature on the Internet that will help you plunge into testing without a base. We recommend that you pay attention to the textbook by Roman Savin “Testing.com” and the book by Svyatoslav Kulikov “Software Testing. Basic course”. A qualified professional must understand:

• what is a bug report or test case;
• testing strategy;
• functioning of computer networks;
• the structure of the PC;
• basics in programming;
• subtleties of using the database and web resources.

It is not at all necessary to study as a programmer first to start a career in testing. But you need to understand each stage of work – this is an important rule of a competent QA specialist. Without this knowledge, it is impossible to compose correct tests, which will lead to errors and poor quality of the final product.

Naturally, in addition to theoretical knowledge gained independently or in courses, practical skills will be required. You will need to learn:

• draw up test cases
• write bug reports;
• draw up other working documentation.

You can check for bugs and improve quality for everything. Any programs, services, mobile applications and web portals fall under the watchful eye of a tester. We recommend that you engage in the preparation of documentation not only when studying the material on your own, but also when taking specialized courses. Regular practice has never harmed a single specialist. The better you write bug reports and cases, the more likely it is that recruiters from cool IT companies will be interested in you.

What you need to know to become a tester: basic skills for the job

The exact skills of the applicant are formed from the selected vacancy. Usually, they immediately indicate what is expected of the future employee. Let’s be clear about what a QA tester needs to know. At least when applying for a job, a beginner will need to be able to:

• identify and correctly create bugs;
• work with bug tracking programs in Jira, Redmine or Bugzilla;
• carry out client monitoring of mobile applications of web services;
• to do testing at a basic level;
• use programs like Charles or Fiddler, as well as work with Wiki and Confluence.

The advantage will be knowledge of English at an upper intermediate level, as well as a basic understanding of programming languages ​​such as Java or Python.

What you need to know Junior QA: summing it up

At the beginning of your career, you need to understand what the customer specifically requires. At the first stage of work, mastering of basic testing is important and only then improving of product’s quality. It is necessary to understand that junior specialists are called testers, and QA is already Middle and more advanced workers.

To receive the first order or hiring, you need to know the theoretical material, be able to find and create bugs in practice, as well as use bug tracking systems, work with test case storages and services for monitoring data transmission. A software tester, the requirements for which are indicated in the vacancy, can work for large corporations, small studios to provide testing services, as well as freelance. The desire to develop, practice regularly, as well as hard work – all this will help you get your dream job in IT!