QA Tester job postings

What can we learn from software quality assurance and testing job posts? Log on to Linkedin.com and look for "QA Engineer" jobs, navigate to Craigslist and search for "QA Tester" positions. You will find hundreds positions which offers hefty salaries, excellent benefits and great growth potentials. Understandably, there is plenty of competition for the jobs in the testing field. So, how does Quality Assurance Tester land one of those hot QA testing jobs? Recruiters and hiring managers say everything boils down to two things technical and communication skills. Let’s take a look only on the technical skills namely test automation skills requirements and ignore for now manual testing experience and communication skills.

I surveyed job postings in LinkedIn and Craigslist for Software QA Engineers and Testers indicating that knowledge of one the test automation tools like SilkTest, JMeter, HP QTP, JUnit, NUnit, TestNG, Selenium, Watir and LoadRunner is required. The job advertisements require knowledge of the test automation tools in the various forms. For example

Write, develop and execute automated Test Scripts using Quick Test Pro (QTP)
Experience with JBoss, Hibernate Automation design and performance testing with Selenium, Quick Test Pro, JMeter, LoadRunner, SoapUI, SOATest, etc
Experience in Watir, PAMIE or other open source testing tools a plus

Not surprisingly there are the number of QA Tester job posting mentioned outdated software testing tools or wrongly named the tool vendor.

Must have some exposure to Mercury QC, QTP or equivalent tools (Test Director and ClearQuest)
Automation experience in QTP, WinRunner, LoadRunner is preferable.
Hands on experience with a commercial automation GUI tool such as Borland Segue Silk.

Here’s what I discovered after checking 248 job postings, almost half of them indicate that test automation experience is required, 75 percent of QA Tester job posting ask for coding skills.

So which test automation tools should QA Tester know or learn in the nearest future? Here is the list of top test automation tools mentioned in the job requirements

• Selenium - 125
• HP QTP - 44
• JUnit - 40
• Watir - 25
• LoadRunner - 12
• TestNG - 9
• Silktest - 8

Perhaps someone may complain that it it not correct to mix test automation tools as SilkTest, Selenium, and QTP which allow record and playback testing with tools that require coding skills in order to work with them such as Watir, JUnit, and TestNG. In my opinion record and playback testing features will minimize the learning curve for particular tool, but in order to create comprehensive, reliable ans supportable test cases with test automation tools QA Tester need to have the coding skills.

Overall, whether you are just starting out as a QA Tester, or you have several years of testing experience under your belt, the knowledge of test automation tools are the keys to success.