Category Archives: recruitment

Experiences, recruitment, Testing

A Testers Portfolio

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portfolio

I’ve been recruiting for both testers and developers recently and one thing that struck me was the difference between the two disciplines when it came to a body of work.

As a developer you are nothing these days without a Github account. It’s expected that you have one, that it has code in it 🙂 and that an interviewer will take a look. So much so that most developers will gladly advertise their account and repo’s on their CV.

In my most recent piece of testing recruitment I was looking for an exploratory tester and a tester with more automation skills. One automation tester was able to give me a link to her Github account; this was the first time this has happened to me when interviewing testers and was a positive thing to see. None of the exploratory testers I interviewed showed me any links to previous work; now this does not necessarily make those testers better or worse of course. However, as Rob Lambert has talked in his recent series of blog posts and e-book about ‘Remaining Relevant’, as a candidate, you need to stand out, and having a body of work can really help.

For testing it’s a bit different.

So this got me thinking – why is it that testers don’t traditionally have a portfolio?

Is it because more testers are 9-5’ers?

There could be an element of truth here, perhaps there are more testers who are less motivated by their work, with testing being a job they have fallen into rather than a career. If one is not motivated by a job then one is far less likely to want to do whatever is required to remain in that career area.

Are developers more motivated to share their work?

Perhaps there’s a bit of pride in sharing something that one has created that testers don’t have so much. For testers involved in automation, particularly framework design, then there’s something to share, but this isn’t the more general case.

Do they have more to share?

I’d wouldn’t say so, it’s just what is shared is different.

Is it more difficult to build and maintain a body of work as a tester?

I think it is. Since testing is much less about creation then it does make things more difficult. But it’s far from impossible.

What could you do if you want a portfolio of work?

Myself and Dan Ashby touched upon the idea of a testers portfolio in the recent two episodes of Testing In the Pub, where we talked about recruitment. The idea is that, as a tester, you have this body of work, either built up through your day-to-day work, or from experiences in the wider testing community, that can really help you to stand out from your peers, and help when you want to make your next career move.

You may be able to directly share what you are working on at work, but this is frequently not the case. Getting involved outside of work can instead be one key way of building up a portfolio. For example you could consider:

Writing for Blogs and Magazines

Maybe your company has a tech blog. Why not write for that? Or magazines, whether printed or online are always looking for articles. Don’t think that you have nothing to write about – all experience is relevant and there’s some great people in the testing community who will help you edit an article. You just need the idea, and an ability to type 🙂

Starting Your Own Blog

Sometimes you just want to publish something, or you want to say something that’s free from any editorial tone. Start your own blog, it’s really easy and free if you use something like Blogger or WordPress. It’s also great for raising your visibility, especially if you get your blog featured on sites like Software Testing Club or Test Huddle. Add it to the directories.

Talking At Conferences and Meet-ups

Have an idea, submit a proposal, get it accepted and then panic 🙂 But seriously, talking at a conference is a great way of sharing your knowledge, raising your profile, and getting noticed. It’s daunting at first, slightly daunting even when you’ve done it before, but also really rewarding. Conference speaking looks great in a portfolio.

Sharing Your Presentations On Slideshare

Whenever you talk, take time to upload your slides to a sharing site like Slideshare. This makes them available to all and makes you far more visible to search engines like Google. Which it turn helps you build a portfolio of work.

Pulling It Altogether

Pulling it altogether means that you build up a single portfolio. This can take place on your own website or blog and these are easy and free to put together. If you don’t mind a few advertisments then a free WordPress site is a great way to start and you can easily use a theme which makes it look more like a website than a blog.

I have also found that about.me is a good place to consolidate your information together and is widely known. Let’s also not forget about LinkedIn, although I find that it’s better to keep my body of knowledge linked to LinkedIn rather than on the site itself, which allows for more flexibility.

Having a personal brand is an often overlooked but very important differentiator when looking for a new role. It won’t make up for a lack of relevant technical or social skills, but it will help you to stand out from other, similar, candidates.

So think about your portfolio. What would you include?

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Update

Thanks everyone who has commented, either here or on Twitter. There have been some great suggestions on other ways you can form a portfolio as a tester. For example:

  • Use Github to store useful resources. It doesn’t have to be code. Thanks to Alan Richardson for the link to this pentest example.
  • Test an OS project that is stored on Github – thanks Michael Bolton, and also @xrisfg.
  • Taking part in activities such as Weekend Testing, podcasting, etc – thanks Dan Billing.

And thanks to everyone who commented below. I’m glad people found the article useful.

"ministry of testing", Experiences, management, recruitment, Testing

Persona Based Interviewing

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Why you may need to do some actual testing in the interview for your next testing role

Interview

 

When I was starting to think about writing some posts to help out those who are either recruiting testers (see here for my first post), or for testers looking for new roles, the obvious first post was going to be around interviews. Interviews are scary, interviews need preparation, etc.

But to be honest, there is already so much available on the web that’ll teach you the basics, that I’d be re-inventing the wheel.

This is the second post in a series on finding a job within testing – the first one is Starting a New Job In Testing which you can also read on this site.

Basic interviewing techniques

If you need some help on basic interviewing techniques then I’d recommend spending some time on Ministry of Testing, looking at the recruitment resource section. What I want to discuss in this post is an interviewing technique we are using where I work, in order to help us recruit testers. It’s not new but it’s also not typical, and so hopefully it helps you.

 

A typical interview

A typical interview has a set of questions, and sometimes a script to follow. While the questions may not be written down, an experienced interviewer typically has a number of questions in their head that they can tailor to the interview situation, and use to steer the conversation in a particular direction. There may be a formal test, or the interview may just be conducted verbally.

Simply asking someone questions about testing, and gauging their responses, is one way of understanding in more detail what they know. You can also find out more about who they are, and what they can bring to the company. While we are following this approach, we’re also doing things a little differently.

 

Persona based interviewing

In a persona based interview, each of the interviewers play out part of a task based story, which the candidate is also a part of. One of more scenario’s are played out, normally based around a task that the candidate would typically face if they were successful in joining the company. The interviewers take different persona’s, each playing the part of a role or person that the candidate would need to interact with, in order to successfully pass the task that they are set. In this way the interviewers can understand how the candidate approaches particular tasks, how they solve problems, and how they interact with others.

For our interviewers for mobile test positions we typically play out some scenario’s based around testing our applications on real hardware. I won’t go into too much detail, for obvious reasons, but the candidate receives a certain testing task, and then is expected to start testing and exploring the application in order to successfully find bugs within it.

We play the parts of other people in the story. These could be the Product Owner deciding on re-prioritisation, other testers being able to offer advice, a developer being difficult or helpful, or even a senior manager wanting to know the progress of a testing task. As we go through we throw in these sorts of requests, and other changes to the scenario, in order to see how the tester works when requirements change and the pressure mounts.

Attempting to complete the tasks without interacting with the other roles within the scenario is very difficult and we are looking as much towards how and when the candidate asks for help, as we are to the testing skills that they show.

After the scenario’s are complete then we discuss with the candidate how they think the scenario’s went, what they thought went well and what they would do differently if faced with them again.

 

Is persona based interviewing useful for test roles?

We think it is. Mainly because:

 

It gives us a better idea of how the candidate thinks, and how they approach a testing problem

I’m a firm believer in context-driven testing and Rapid Software Testing in particular, as is the company I work for. To me, being able to observe how someone approaches a testing task, who they communicate with, and what questions they ask is very important. Being able to get an understanding of how they change their approach based upon the context is also much easier within the scenarios. Using persona based interviewing I get to discover more about ‘how they tick’ rather than what testing terms they can remember, or how much of their career story they can tell.

 

We get to see a candidates real, practical skills

By giving the candidates tasks based around testing our live applications, usually on an iPhone or iPad, we give the candidates an opportunity to demonstrate the real, practical skills that they have. We encourage the candidates to talk us through what they are doing and give them the opportunity to demonstrate what they know. Being able to demonstrate ability also puts people more at ease and we get to see what they can really do.

 

It focuses on critical assessment and improvement

By having a de-brief or lessons learnt session after the scenario’s have played out, we also get to see how a candidate critically assesses themselves, and discover what they would do differently given another chance. Making mistakes is human but learning from them is the important thing, and I don’t expect testers in my teams to get everything right first time. However I do expect them to be able to recognise ways in which they can improve.

 

It’s more fun than just answering questions

It’s certainly more fun for the interviewers, and hopefully it’s also a bit more fun for the candidate (as much as interviews can be anyway). Asking questions isn’t much fun, and only being able to show your skills in simple answers, is not the best way to spend your time. Demonstration of skills tests how a candidate works not what they can remember.

So, why not try persona based interviewing next time you are recruiting for testers. It can be a great way of finding really good people who you can have confidence will do a good job.

 

The next post in the series will be about C.V.’s, and what you need to highlight in order to get noticed.

Image courtesy of Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net