How to land your first job as a Tester

[ElSnoMan]

I'd love to see multiple examples from different people

• How did they land their first job?
• What did they do to prepare?
• What if I have no experience or higher education?
• How do I stand out?
• Where should I begin?
• What tips do they have to help me succeed?

[jraysparks]

How I got my first job as a tester

• I landed my first job as a tester was by first becoming a Product Specialist. Essentially I was a Tech Support Rep for some neat apps built into Salesforce. I helped Sales Managers implement and maintain these apps in their systems. It was fun and I was good at it. However, after several months, I was restless and looking to other departments internally. The QA team looked like a fun group, half true software geeks, half on their way to somewhere else. I was drawn to this dynamic environment. Lots of learning and training was going on, and it was mostly manual. However, I also got my first true experience writing automation there too.
• My preparation was proving my subject matter expertise within our product base. This knowledge served me well when faced with large manual regression suites.
• I did have some higher education, but not in tech. I remember some cursory remarks from the hiring folks. It didn't hurt me, but it was more that I had proven myself as knowledgable and hard-working.
• I was a top performing Product Specialist within the company. Nowadays, I am looking to develop my public repo with neat projects I can demo for future employers, and also work with the latest tools I find interesting and naturally share that with others I'd like to work with.
• Begin by learning the basics of testing theory and process, automation, and automate the login for your fav website. Also, find a company you'd love to work for and interview for Product positions or see if they have manual testing positions.
• Succeed by involving yourself in a community of learning outside of work, like QAP! It's helped me expand my horizons in terms of learning new techniques and skills I can directly apply to my day to day work. Many managers love to see progress. Be the person who is always bringing more to the table.

[ElSnoMan]

@jraysparks would you be open to making a post or adding a page to the wiki about this?

[vernko]

I don't have a college degree and didn't have any background in coding. I definitely didn't have any experience. I did attend a "bootcamp", but I only attribute this to giving a very brief intro & making my first real positive helpful connection. I gained all of my real learning and knowledge after through a mentor, the community, and learning on my own.

I got my first job as a tester the long way (well if felt like the long way anyway haha). I knew I wanted to pursue a career in testing, but interview after interview wasn't happening. I took roles as a FE developer gained experience in the industry. I never stopped learning and pursuing a career in testing though. A combination of all these things helped me stand out and land my first role as a tester:

• I found a great community (cough cough QAP), mentor and an amazing friend (this was especially important during all the difficult times)
• I stayed heavily involved with the development community especially QAP.
• I attended the weekly trainings
• I went to meetups
• I networked with people at meetups and just through different social media (heavily on LinkedIn and Twitter)
• I learning (meetups, trainings, platforms like Test Automation University) and kept doing projects. With those, remember to walk before you can run (following tutorials & copying & pasting code snippets can help you learn, but you have to take time to understand those things before you just implement things willy nilly).
• I started contributing to different projects