How to identify the right senior tester for your new Team / Company
How to identify the right senior tester for your new new Team / Company
NOT ALL TESTERS ARE THE SAME. With the industry not standardising on what a senior role means there’s as many flavours of senior tester as there are senior testers. This can make looking for and hiring a senior in your organisation very tricky.
So here’s my helpful tips and tricks for what to look for when hiring a senior (especially if you’re a new team or start up).
Can they talk about testing fluently?
You’re going to need a generalist, which means somebody that can discuss testing holistically. Can they speak confidently and with conviction through the stack and about different testing and have an opinion on these things? Do they have preferred methodologies (every problem is a nail because they have a hammer) or can they tailor their approach to what you need?
Do they just focus on a “test phase” or do they mention pushing left and right. You should expect them to talk throughout the delivery lifecycle and state why different tests can help you with functional and bond functional needs.
As a hiring manager – don’t assume that you should come with a presupposed way of testing when looking for your first tester. Lay out the problem space and let the tester tell you how testing can help.
Have they spotted problems and fixed them?
You’re going to need a self starter, someone that can look and spot problems and then find ways to solve them. Can this person speak about times they went out and identified risks & issues then followed those through with a bespoke and tailored test approach?
Have they worked from scratch, identifying the issues themselves, or did they work in an organisation where the asks on them were give to them? You should expect someone to be able to talk through how they identify risks / problems, communicate them to the company and propose solutions.
As a hiring manager – you might get asked about what challenges you face related to testing and quality. This might be the tester’s way of starting to show they can engage with problems and they may follow up with suggestions for potential fixes.
Have they run proof of concepts or added testing ways or working?
You’ll need someone who’s actually worked from first principles to set up testing ways of working, this means someone who can look at organisational risks and put in things in place. has this person worked from nothing before, or have they built upon (or maintained) standards and tools that already existed?
Have they selected tools based on the needs of an organisation and to solve specific problems or do they always use the same tools? Can they speak about times where they’ve had to learn about a new tool in order to roll it out across an organisation? Can they talk fluently about their strategy to roll out changes (workshops, mentoring, coaching, applying it themselves) and better yet can they point to any materials online that show they’ve done that (Here’s my workshop on using Docker )?
As a hiring manager – be prepared for a senior tester to be able to suggest tools and ways of working (not every solution is automation). Be open to their discussions on what the solutions might be and engage with them to learn more, perhaps ask why that’d approach / tool would help you.
Have they worked alone before?
If they’re the first tester in your organisation, they’ll be the only tester in your organisation and that can be a lonely place. Look to see if this is somebody who can work without a support network around them, or have worked before without someone to guide them. Check to see whether they have a support network outside of the organisation.
As the only tester they’ll be the sole testing champion, having to roll out testing across the organisation. Can they show that they’ve been a self starter and worked to roll things out without being told what’s needed?
Some testers can only really thrive when they’re being told what to do / what the scope is / when they have very clear requirements. How can they work when thrown into uncertainty and set their own scope without another tester there.
Can they work in the small and the big?
We want to know that our first tester can work throughout the organisation as needed, that means being able to think in the wide (organisational strategy) and down at low technical levels.
You want to make sure that they haven’t only worked influencing at a team level. Look to see if they have experience of working at different levels of a company, embedding into a team and also influencing in the wide. Who have they spoken to (managers and C-Suite?) and do they have strategy for socialising things across the company (do they run workshops and document things?)
How Influential are they, can they sell ideas?
You’re going to need your tester to be able to not only come up with ways of working but get others to follow them. This means they need to be an excellent communicator and comfortable in socialising and selling ideas.
Look for examples where this tester has worked on selling new ideas to people (rather than adhering to the status quo). Have they called out where things aren’t working, been a change agent and do they have a strategy for working with people who don’t want to hear their ideas?
Being a change agent doesn’t always mean being liked, is this something they’ve come across and how do they handle it? Do they keep pushing for the changes needed or will they go with the easy solution and step back?
As a hiring manager – look to see if they’ve spoken online. is this someone comfortable blogging or speaking at conferences about ideas? By seeing blogs and talks you can get a flavour of how they’ll communicate in your company.
Are they a leader?
This follows on from previous points, but you’ll want a tester who’s a leader. Someone who’ll take initiative, spot things that need changing and act upon them (rather than waiting to be told). You’ll want to see how active a roll people have taken in decisions: did THEY select a tool for roll out? How did they select that tool? What initiatives did THEY come up with and implement and how far reaching were they?
Many testers, even at a senior level don’t always get the opportunities to make decisions and just lead on what’s an already existing strategy, tool set and framework. You’re going to need someone with the skills to innovate rather than just follow what’s already in place (because you don’t have anything in place).
As a hiring manager – drill into specifics of what they’ve said they’ve done and look for signals on their innovation rather than following someone else’s lead. Did a test manager select the tooling, did they only use prescribed templates?
So when hiring for your first tester, Don’t assume that all testers can champion and set up what you need. look for someone that can lead on testing and solve your testing problems.
