Want to switch from software development to testing domain

Question

I have 4 years of experience in software development. But I did software manual testing more than software development. I am good in finding tough functionality related bugs.

I have passion for software testing rather than software development.

Please suggest me is it possible to switch in testing domain.

Answer 1

It's certainly possible - that's the way I and many others here became testers.

As Som Ghosh says, you will need to mention in your applications for test positions that you have worked in testing as well as development. I'd suggest you include details of the kind of testing you've done and the scale of the projects that you tested.

I would recommend that you consider these questions and answer them for yourself:

• Do you prefer manual testing or automated testing? With your development experience, you will be considered a good fit for automated testing positions and potentially software developer in test positions as well. Some places may not want someone with your development experience in a manual testing role (Note: I do not agree with this view, because in my experience and opinion the development experience helps to isolate problems that non-technical manual testers would have difficulty isolating).
• Are you willing to take a drop in pay and prestige? This is an unfortunate fact: a lot of places do not treat testers as professionals on par with developers. Tester pay is usually a level or two below developer pay, sometimes more for purely manual testing, and testers are often far below developers in the internal hierarchy when it comes to the equipment they're required to work with (which is "fun" when you as the tester are trying to test software on a system that doesn't meet the minimum requirements for said software. It makes for a potent resource-bound test, but doesn't make the tester's life any easier).
• Can you advocate for issues you find? This is an important skill that is often overlooked: a tester's role is much more than just finding bugs. A tester needs to give reasons why a bug should be fixed, and to provide managers and leads with enough information to make a good decision about whether software should be released or not. Which leads to:
• Can you advocate for a release to be delayed? As a tester, you will not be the "quality gate", but you will still have the responsibility to give compelling reasons to delay releases when software your are testing has serious issues. You won't win all these - but you need to have the strength of personality to discuss them with your manager and make sure that your manager knows the risks of releasing in that situation.
• Can you communicate clearly without giving offense? I've learned in my years testing that what is obvious to me is not necessarily obvious to someone else, and vice versa. If you can communicate with others and tell them their code has problems without offending them, you should be fine.

Answer 2

Its good that you find interest in software testing and want to switch from programming to testing. Since you have 4 years of experience in programming you can use it as your strength to be a test developer. A test developer writes test scripts for automating tests (mostly unit level but not necessarily limited to it). Plus you fund it interesting to do manual testing so you can explore your investigating talent in that area.

Get in touch with people like James Back, Jerry Weinberg, Michael Bolton, Pradeep Soundarajan, Kate Paulk (and many others) and read their blogs and articles.

And while looking for the job like the others have mentioned here you can write your experience of testing work that you have done in your resume.

Answer 3

While Kate's answer is extremely thorough, there is 1 thing I felt that was missing. How to actually land a job in SQA.

The first thing you will want to do is familiarize yourself with the tools and techniques that are commonplace in SQA. There is so many to list but if you read 85% of the questions here they are about a few different tools in general. Without the tools on your resume it will be harder to bypass the software filtering of your resume.

SDIT and Test Automation typically requires you to be skilled in multiple different languages and development styles. Generally speaking, this is pretty easy since principles is the harder part to learn. Get a comprehensive list of languages on your belt.

QA in general requires extremely detailed, thorough, borderline crazy people to be the best. If you have what it takes, you will do great. I hope you enjoy your time in QA as much as a lot of others have.

Answer 4

Yes Suchi you can switch to testing domain

many companies prefer developers switched to testing as their testing professionals . You can start applying and you will get good response also.

try to mention in your profile that you worked on testing also so that it would be helpful for recruiters to line up their list

Answer 5

Try switching to testing department in your current organization only. It would be good that if you gain some more knowledge on software testing process and all that stuff.

On paper it would also be good to have some testing experience before you hunt for a testing job outside with development background.

Get comfortable with the process of testing first, read some blogs, books etc.

If it interests, you can go for automation testing, which requires coding expertise as well.