Finding A Way For Fresh Testers.

Following post is my experience of being a tester from a different field.

Being a Tester is not an easy job, as you know I am some one who is not from a technical background but, forced my self to be a tester just because this is some thing which I want to keep doing till the last date of my retirement.

But things are not working out, just because of a tag called “Fresher”. I was lucky to pursue a job as a tester at a right time, even though I can feel the heat of this word “Fresher”.

What can tester do, to get rid of this word “Fresher”? Why we have to stick to one job to remove this tag? Can’t we act practically? Sticking to one company doing same job, day in and day out does it make any sense?

Sitting in an office and finding error in software’s is not everything that a tester needs. He needs knowledge lots of knowledge, he has to be competitive, self motivating, sharp, should have a different views, many more qualities are needed since testers are a different creature on this world.

In today’s world everyone needs an experienced tester but, what about the fresh ones?

Aren’t they important? Can’t they be an asset for you? What should a fresh tester do to survive?

Oh come on! Don’t think about becoming a freelancer, I really don’t understand why people become a freelancer, why to work free for something which you are good at. I understand being a freelancer can add values to your work, might give you fame but after that, if your lucky then you’ll get a job or else continue being a freelancer. Does that make sense? I don’t think so?



Oh come on! Don’t think about uTest or some similar sites, what I have experienced being true on this kind of sites might not land you anywhere. I made a profile with the status of beginner and tried to find some ‘releases’ guess what no releases for fresh one on the same time I logged in from a different user Id which had a status of an expert, now guess what 15 projects on release option waiting to be tested. Does this sound good?

MORAL -- Never be true with your experiences is it?

In my early days I met one of the testing extremist Mr. Pradeep Soundararajan I really appreciate his work for the testing community. He is one of those personalities which is self motivated as well as motivates others unknowingly.

I got an opportunity to be one of the participants of BWST-1 where knowledge was in tons (hope you have read my earlier post on BWST).

BWST motivated a lot but, that didn’t last for too long. June 13th I was hit by a reality that company is trying to slash some nos. of head count. Now obviously, being a fresh new bee the sword was hanging on me too. Some how first week went off (after 13thJune), there was news from other departments. Finally, on 25th June I got a call from my chief (PM). He discussed about the several change to bring in our testing team and spoke about discarding jobs but, some how I managed to save my tail my asking him to work more efficiently as well as handle client. I really thank God to save me this time.

Then after, my learning got diminished day by day, my thoughts are put into a cage. No time to explorer new things, and unfortunately I have to blame time for this.

We fresher need practical knowledge, one to guide us with the do’s and do not’s.
Please share, if there is any institute or organization which provides real time experience in testing for freshers.

Three days of Experience

Talking about my experience, last week I was shifted to a team of developers who are assumed to be the best in our organization (coz they were highly paid and yeah they worked smartly as in code, logics, communicating and in many ways).

DAY 1

It took me one whole day to go through the requirements of the developed software, mean while team member around me started chatting with me asking about me, my experience, why testing (many more questions) and unintentionally they were even trying to nag out me (they were pretending to be happy as a tester joined their team but, their intention was to remove me out of this team) because no one like testers or can I say no one like spectators on them.

After few hours, truly speaking I felt, will I be able to find error, bugs, mistakes, defect in their work, coz their talks created a perception in my mind due to which my approach, my mentality changed towards finding bugs. I was not supposed to run the software on the same day but, I did, to feel the complexity of the developers and software.

As I said earlier due to my brain wash and change in perception I couldn’t find any error, bugs.
Now, I was totally bugged out. I left application and went back on requirement document.

I know that testers always cannot find bugs but, in my case I was feeling horrified, not exactly but, yeah anger was there in me (I couldn’t find bugs. Huh!). There were only two questions running in my mind.
1. Are they so good in developing?
2. What if I don’t find any error, mistake, bug…?
On this note I left for the day (back to home).

DAY 2

I’ll describe my day two in point format.
1. Revised a small part of requirement you can say phrase 1.

2. Took a U-turn on software and simultaneously went through requirement doc. and application.

3. Slowly slowly started understanding the purpose of the software and started using the software as per the requirement and from the N number of user’s point of view. (I know I can’t think like users coz every one is different but, tried my best to view, throw my perception in different angel, mode of situation, permutation combination)

4. Unbelievingly my half day went like hopping here and there. Finally, after lunch I was ready with all requirements standing firm in my mind, all my thoughts very clear. Started my testing.

5. Took up a small module, within five minute two typo errors. WOW. (small but, good for that point of time)

6. Within 20 minutes two functionality errors (which was missing as per specs.). Yahoo!! (that time I was feeling great)

7. Now comes the coding of the module, as per my knowledge I was a management student without any technical knowledge. Then two was curious to know more about this team’s coding.

8. Started with date format changed the date format viewed the application, this Exception error was not handled. (This date was exported from another application by running the windows services.)

9. I was feeling extremely happy not just because I was finding error but, by thinking that yes now I can also add value to product. This feeling was amazing.

10. Talking about coding errors, this application screen was in a grid format in which you can add different fields as per your needs and mails had to be send from this application if some one passes a comment on you, this was not happening just because, the added field was suppose to be added in the end but, I added it at the top of all the field due to which the mail id of the user on which the mail had to be sent was disturbed and the code was written using an array now, ERROR. Excellent. BRAVO.

11. Day end but, before leaving office I was supposed to report my PM. (I had reported this error on a bug tracking tool called project management)

12. As soon as I entered his cabin he was smiling, the first sentence he spoke was, “So, I got some one to bug me and this team”. I was appreciated by him.

DAY 3

The whole team came to know about the error reported, all my well wishers were happy for me, including the expert team members. :-))

**NOTE** The errors reported by me were nothing great but, well it does matter to a fresh unidentified tester.