How to stand out as a QA : Building the personality and portfolio to outshine !
How to stand out as a QA : Building the personality and portfolio to outshine !
We all know job hunting is one of the most daunting experiences for some people, and it’s not getting easier with the wide spread lay-off’s, redundancies and unstable market conditions. I am writing this article to all my QA fraternity who are actively looking for a new job and also to those who are well settled in their current role but actively monitoring the market pulse to stay on top of the trend. While I’m writing this article, I am making a fresh start myself to try these new ideas with all the information I have scraped off from useful podcasts and articles I have read recently. So if you get a nerdy vibe, that’s definitely not the plot here. It’s all about building new personality on top of ur technical skills.
Build your Portfolio : Showcase your skills
It’s a common practice among developers to showcase their coding skills on their GitHub portfolio which speaks a lot about them even before the hiring team meets them in an interview. Likewise, automation testers like us can build frameworks from scratch and showcase our skills on various automation tools, languages, integrations, test coverage and what not. I came to know about this good idea from Angie Jones who wrote about building an automation portfolio in one of her blogs. I started on this long back but I am very keen to start again as I have got more matured in my test automation skills now.
Not just automation, we can also showcase Gherkin test cases , testing techniques that we adopt for various scenarios, test planning, test strategy templates etc. I am sure this will be a great conversation starter in the interview and serves as the spotlight of discussions. I can’t wait to work on my portfolio !
Build your CV : Tailor your CV to suit the job description
Your CV is an entry point for the role you’re applying and it needs to be tailored with appropriate keywords that suit the role you are applying. Believe me, I haven’t done this before ever and that explains why I had millions of rejections before I landed on my current job that I enjoy to the core. As much as we expect the recruiters to empathise on us, I realised it’s time for us to empathise on those who will be shortlisting our applications.
The job market is very demanding at the moment plus the layoffs adding fuel to the fire — we all know most of the job adverts receive atleast 100 applications. This is where the emphasis to tailor the CV takes an upper hand. When I mean tailoring, it doesn’t mean altering the CV with false details to match the job description !! . Instead, we need to highlight the skills and those deliverables that are mentioned in the job description. In our personal profile section, we can talk about how we are best suited for this role by highlighting the key points.
I’m sure this is very time confusing and not always we can do an ‘Easy-Apply’ or a ‘Quick-Apply’ in one click. I would imagine this requires a thorough understanding of the job description and a personal validation on whether or not our profile matches with the job. This will reduce the number of rejections we get and also reduce the number of irrelevant applications we submit !
Build your Real Connections : ‘Real handshakes’ Over ‘Virtual connections’
I got introduced to Ministry of Testing community by my senior manager - an inspiring Quality Leader who enrolled our testing team with a Pro-Membership with MoT. Since then, I started writing my work experiences as articles that were polished by the lovely editing team at MoT. Because of the priceless suggestions I receive from the editors, my writing skills improved a lot. Through MoT community and my LinkedIn network, I came to know there are many QA meetups happening all over the UK. As I’m based in London, I’m very keenly looking to attend these meetups in the upcoming months.
What happens in these meetups ? Well, I am a person with lots of social anxiety but this doesn’t mean I can’t make meaningful connections. I took an oath, I will try hard to make real connections — meeting people face to face, exchange conversations on what your work interests and what your best at — learn the same from the others. I feel this is going to leave an everlasting impression and the professional connection is more meaningful. Not just meeting new people from similar work backgrounds, I am looking forward to listen to talks and experiences from the speakers. I hope this will give me the magic wand to improve my public speaking skills.
Build your professional network : ‘Meaningful virtual connections’ Over ‘Spam requests’
I recently connected with few talent leads and requirement specialists who are very active on professional networking platforms. I realised their roles and expertise have evolved a lot lately, they engage actively with applicants and they do podcasts about how candidates (we) can improve our CV and also advise some good practices that we can adopt when it comes to social media engagements to build our visibility and target our reach to the right audiences. So, what is it that I have learnt ?
Reach out to them in an email, attaching your CV and explaining your core skills, passion, interests and what you are looking for in your next role. By doing this, they will be able to reach out when a suitable role shows up. If it interests you and you are desperate for a job, give them a call using the contact info on LinkedIn and make a quick chat about your profile before sending out the email. I feel this way, we make meaningful connections in our professional networking.
Not just that, once you have spoken to a few talent acquisition professionals face to face during meetups OR made a conversation over a phone call, your linkedin posts/activities will drive more traction — it reaches the right audiences. I’m not making a point here that recruitment consultants are your only meaningful audiences, but I am suggesting this can be a more meaningful way of utilising professional networking platforms.
I can write an article of 10 pages but I struggle to bring myself forward to post on my LinkedIn wall. I keep erasing my lines and finally quit from posting it. This is clearly because of the fear of negative or contradictory reactions from my network and the awkwardness when I don’t get enough likes or reposts. I listened to a podcast recently called the QA Hype, where a talent lead from a leading company had openly spoken about this and I could connect this with myself so much ! Sometimes silly fears are the biggest demons ! I’m not sure I can post regularly on LinkedIn, but I am planning to do this gradually. I have decided to post whenever a thought/ message/technical achievement crosses my mind that I feel is best to share with my network.
Conclusion
I hope this article has given you some useful tips to start something new and refreshing. As I mentioned earlier, I have gathered these practices while I observed the current trend and added them to my to-do. I feel these are still relevant while you’re well placed in your job as we have to be always following what is happening on the job market and professional platforms to stay ahead of the game !
Please feel free to comment your thoughts and any suggestions you prefer to share to the community.