A guide to finding quality testers

This quotation above describes the type of testers we aim to hire.

The testing discipline has undergone a paradigm shift, which means there is a shortage of skilled testers that are abreast of these changes. The new age tester is proactive rather than reactive and is primarily concerned with ensuring that work is in an already testable state as opposed to waiting on it to become testable. The mantra is ‘the sooner the testing the quicker the known state’. We no longer look at what testers ‘do’ so much as how they ‘approach’ what needs to be done. Recruiting for this type of tester requires digging deep to find someone who strives for quality by working closely within their teams and other teams.

We look for testers who have curious minds, who are passionately energetic, assertive in their findings and who are creative. The challenge is to find an interview process that is capable of finding testers such as these. We often interview candidates who have a firm grasp of rehearsed information but fall short when we test their real-world skill. We are sometimes shocked to find candidates who have no knowledge of where the testing field has advanced to.

Our recruitment process is designed to weed out old-school thinkers and to find the testers who have potential, passion and perseverance. Although it is a lengthy process, and requires commitment from both the candidate and us, we have found it to be the best way to recruit for new age testers.