Who should join TestVagrant
We have been on a hiring spree and have been constantly talking to a lot of people over the last year or so. No, the pandemic has not changed much of this for us. And we are still going strong! Over the last few years we have felt that hiring works best when you have answered this well — “Who joins our company” vs struggling and explaining to the candidate on “Why they should join us”.
In trying to convince the candidate on why they should join, we end up trying to hard sell what the person in front is yet to experience whereas when we made the persona clear to candidates on who joins TestVagrant, it is left for them to decide whether they fit in or not. It’s organic, they convincing themselves if they like the persona.
Majority of our roles are playing change agents for client teams. We are quality consultants helping teams on ground to move faster with a lot of automation and also helping them learn the good and bad of testing practices, pragmatically. With that in mind, we tried putting a scale on 2 points
- Testing thought process — i.e. understanding of agile testing practices and their benefits, being able to coach teams on them.
- Programming skills — strong fundamentals with Object oriented design, exposures to a plethora of open source testing tools across different layers of the application.
And this allowed us to analyse majority of QA industry into personas that belong to one or the other quadrant mentioned below.
Q1 — It is sad but this is the majority of industry as of today. A large number of people who started their career into software testing but didn’t grow into the multifaceted agile QA that is need of the hour. Neither did they improve themselves technically nor invested their time in becoming better at domains they tested. Moreover, these are people who are not great observers of practices around and shy away from taking initiatives. Unfortunately, they will always find it extremely hard to navigate their path in today’s time.
Q2 — The tech savvy SDET’s. They augment development process with code that is not limited to writing test frameworks. It goes beyond that, could be writing utilities that help day to day exercises, could be some devops on the automated test side, could be trying any tool in non-functional space etc. In simple words, their job is to make life easier for the team when the focus is on building quality in.
Q3 — A great asset to any team. They are a great mix of good technical skills and testing thought process to drive the team in right direction. Fairly experienced and exposed to a variety of team setup and practices. They inherently know how to push teams towards practices and technical solutions that make sense.
Q4 — The quintessential manual tester. They are expert in product domains and can very well steer the team when it comes to what and how much is need for a quality release. But they are limited by the exposure on technology. A great fit at lot of companies but would not suit in fast moving technology teams.
Given the nature of work we do for our clients, majority of our folks who have been and will be successful fall between quadrant 2 and 3 based on their skills. They are great technically every single time and are always pushing hard to be a better consultant that needs more than just tech skills.
Now that you understand the persona that we are, do reach out if interested in our quest to build a great QA company! You can reach us at careers@testvagrant.com.
