Tag: Testing

Why learning Selenium is Important for a Software Tester?

Why learning Selenium is important these days?
Selenium is an open source tool and supported by a large volunteers of open source developers. Selenium has become one of the most popular automation testing tools in the recent days. More and more organizations are adopting Selenium over other commercial software testing tools.

[Note] – We are offering Selenium Training in Gurgaon

I remember predicting Selenium will be the dominating automation tools in next 3 years. I said this in 2010 to a group of my students and it is almost reality now. Why is it so popular? It is the cost. More and more organizations are cutting cost and divorcing commercial and high cost tools like QTP, rational and MS visual suites of tools. Open source is a cost effective solution in the long run even if the learning curve is little steep. I am sure the job market for selenium will increase in 2013 and coming years.

Problem with the Selenium Implementation –
Like I said, the learning curve with any open source tool is little high. It is because they are not supported by big organizations and since the tools are robust in nature, they tend to more complex than commercial GUI tools. Sometimes you need to have good knowledge of programming language to get a good hand at Open Source tools (It is applicable to QTP too.) Some of the first road block to adopting Selenium are –
– Lack of skilled selenium resources in the market
– High learning curve
– Little or not availability of good framework resource
– Lack of programming languages in testers
– Testers with the ability to implement Selenium from start to end to replace existing commercial tool in the project

As more and more testing projects are trying implement Selenium and trying replace commercial tools, the companies are looking out for skilled selenium resources. There is a high demand for skilled and trained selenium testers in the market. Most them know about Selenium IDE as a tool. But the actual Selenium is usage of Webdriver and its core component to harness the actual potential of selenium. I can safely predict today again in 2013 that – if you know selenium today, you will sure get multiple job offers from the market, more when it is recession time as everyone is trying to cut the cost.

How Do I Learn Selenium Easily?
If you do a google search on selenium training offerings, you will find thousands of links offering selenium training including online selenium training. The problem with these offering is that most of them are selling pre-recorded videos with some percentage of live classes or no live one to one interactive classes at all. There are thousands of pre-recorded videos available in youtube. Learning selenium from watching pre-recorded videos is like learning to play cricket from watching cricket matches in TV. These videos do help in to a certain portion but most of the time, they are not effective. To learn cricket, you need to go to the filed and you should be guided by an able coach and you should practice. Same happens with learning any automation tool. You need to practice and should take classes from an able selenium expert who has working experience. Robotic video lectures do not help.

How do I learn Selenium then?

The Solution – Learn Selenium Online from Expert OR Join class room session
I am happy to share that we are staring online Selenium Tool training course by working professional in our institute Talent Plus Plus. Our trainer is a very experienced selenium trainer and he has been taking class room training in our Gurgaon center. And due to popular demands from students outside Gurgaon/NCR we have decided to start online classes. The students outside Delhi, NCR such as Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, New York, San Francisco, London now can take the online selenium course from our Experienced Trainer Chirag. The first few batches have been very successful and we would like to extend this to  other students.

Prerequisites for taking the online class
1. Have knowledge of Manual testing
2. Some basic knowledge of Java (Optional – We will teach the basics in the class)
3. A laptop/PC with internet connection + speaker/headset mic
4. Skype and team-viewer software
5. Willingness to learn and succeed in career

If you are in Gurgaon/Delhi area, we have class room session for Selenium and you can get more information on our Selenium Course section. Yes, we offer practical Selenium Training in Gurgaon. If you live outside Gurgaon/NCR, online classes are available. No robotic video lectures, you learn directly from the trainer who is working with Selenium in real life.

We take career seriously. We believe that the only way to predict the future is to create it. So get started and give a rocket boost to your testing career. The selenium bus is moving ahead fast and you may not want to miss the opportunity of a wonderful career. Call us at +91-9911449111 or write to us at [email protected] for Online Selenium Automation Testing Course or Classroom session.

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Bad Hiring Practice is Killing Software Testing

I have been a part of hiring process for my current and previous organizations. I have taken interviews for my projects, my clients, walk-in interviews and also been to numerous fresher hiring at college campus. What did I learn from these interviews?

Most of the resumes are shortlisted by HR persons and then are sent to us for technical evaluation. Then we talk to the candidate to evaluate him. The evaluation process is generally a set of questions starting from “Tell us something about

This is a traditional way of evaluating a candidate for a job. Is there a problem in it? I seriously feel yes. Right from the short listing of resumes to offering a job – the system goes through some pre-conceived procedures/filters. I have seen many bad testers passing through these filters easily and many good testers, just because the filter itself is bad-shaped, get rejected.yourself” to some technical questions about testing/non-testing area. If the candidate is able to answer most of the questions fairly well, we select him or pass on to the next level of interview. If he cannot answer the questions – we simply convey – “You can leave for the day.”

Bad Shape of filters –

1. Resume Short listing – Resumes are short listed by non-technical people. I don’t know how most of the HR people collect the resumes and hence short list them. Many of the resumes I forwarded never passed the HR screening process. It is important to have a good repo with HR guys if you want your friends to get a call.

2. Just in time Hiring – Just in time hiring may sound good to reduce bench strength of an organization. But think about a situation where the person leaving your organization has a particular skill and you do not have a similarly skilled person in bench. You will need to hire someone from outside. I am not against just in time hiring. I am against initiating the hiring process late. When you know someone has resigned, why don’t you arrange to hire and replace the resigned candidate in the beginning of the notice period? Believe me, 95% of resigned candidates will not take back their resignation. Why try till last date to take him back? If you offer to give him carrots when he resigns, why did not you give that before he had actually resigned? Most of the organization will not allow its employee to leave before they serve their full notice period. But the companies will want employees from other companies to join them in short period.

Warning – The candidates who can join in short notice are most likely to be fake employees or they are not working anywhere currently or they are too bad resources that their organizations want them to leave early. Except, the only situation where he already has an offer at hand he had resigned before your interview process started.

I have even received emails from hiring firms mentioning – “relieving letter not required.” Wao, this is great. What kind of ethics these firms are practicing?

If you are forced to hire in short time span – you are bound to recruit bad/fake candidates. So start early.

3. Knowledge of the Interviewer – It is important to judge the knowledge of the candidate. But it is more important to know how much skilled the interviewer is to judge a candidate. Bad interviewers screw up a hiring process and the filters get more bad-shaped.

4. Questions asked at Interview – If I list down 100 questions for software testing and commonly asked behavioral questions from internet and if I can remember them all, then I think, I can clear most the software testing interviews that happen these days. All I have to do is get someone who can give me answers for those questions and I will have learn like a parrot. I can just repeat the sentences in front of the interviewer and get the job.

5. Candidates with Certification – Passing IT certification exams are easy. Please read my post “Investigation on Certification”.  I am not saying certification is bad. I am saying certification has just become very easy and I know few guys who have never tested any software and still they cleared certification exams. It is high time we designed better methods of certifying people. Shortlisting and selecting candidates solely based on what certification exam he has cleared is a bad method.

Need for a better hiring practice-

What are things that we can do as industry thought leaders in testing? (Sorry, I am not a thought leader yet in testing or any other industry. I am just a follower of good practice.) This is what I suggest – if you care to agree.

1. Follow a hiring practice that companies like Moolya follows. Ask candidates to test an open source product and send the test report. Brilliant process. What you will get is real tester with real result. Bad apples automatically get filtered out. However, this method will need discipline and ethics from the hiring organization. Also you will face challenges as a large service based organization to reach out to more number of candidates. Walk-in type of interview will need more planning and resources.

2. Do not care about what is written in resume. Do not care about what certificate they have. Do not care about what educational background they have. Just care about if they can really test. Challenge them with problems. Find out how they have solved problems in real life.

3. See how passionate the candidate is about testing. Is it just another job (money earning machine) or he really thinks about testing? Ask him what he wants to do in testing or what he has done in testing.

4. Do not discriminate people from another industry. Do not just throw him out just because he is from BPO, Medical sales, HR background or a house wife. I am a Mechanical Engineer and had worked for a year in chemical industry before moving to full time testing. If you think I have achieved anything in testing, then every other guy from other industry has a potential to do magic in testing.

5. Do not discriminate people with gaps. We tend to filter out people who have gap period between two jobs. Investigate why there is a gap. I have seen many female testers who left their jobs because they got married and they had a kid to care about. Now that the kid is grown up, they can join back testing job. They face lots of challenges in even getting an interview call. I understand that those who have not worked for last few months/years may not be as smooth in working as compared to those who have been working continuously. But a passionate tester can ignite the passion anytime. You just need to give them a chance.

6. Why the hell do you need him to score first class/division in Class 10, 10+2 and Engineering? Person who only read text books and not any other books are likely to make bad testers. I am not saying someone who did a good score is a bad tester. But, it is also crime to reject someone for he did not score a good mark ten years back. By the way, there are millions in India who are “65% throughout the academic career” and performing badly in career and life.

7. Do not ask lots of definitions during the interview. Do not care about skills which can be trained. Only care about skills/traits that cannot be trained or changed. Attitude, interest, motivation, commitment, vision – these can be changed but it takes time. Think what you want – a person with full of definitions or someone who wants to learn and can be molded to do good testing. However, do check if the candidate knows about coding if you are hiring a white box tester for example. Special skills are important too.

Testing is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires thinking. Passionless testers will get bored in few years of testing. Choose good people for testing, not just another job seeker. Today, testing is not regarded as a class one job in IT industry. ‘They’ think testing is a low skilled job. You know what I meant by ‘they’. It is because few people screwed up the image of software testing by pushing low performing developers into testing. If you cannot code, go to testing. India’s top organizations are well aware of this and following it ever since they came to know about testing.

It will take time to convince everyone to change their hiring practices. Let us make a New Year resolution – to uplift the image of software testing professionals by adopting a good hiring practice. I promise to offer my free professional help to organizations who want to change their current hiring practice and adopt new better practice and that is for free. Write to me or comment your thoughts.

This is an old post from my old blogger post. I revisited my thoughts and rewrote some parts of the post here in my testing institute’s site.

Which Software Testing Institute Should I join?

Lots of people ask me which testing institute is the best in Gurgaon, Noida, Delhi, Bangalore or any other places. Generally I don’t have an answer for this question. Sometimes I know few institutes run by good people/trainers. I usually recommend them. However, if I was the one who is looking for a good institute I would look for the following points to choose the best institute for software testing, dot net, qtp, selenium, java or any other subject.

The Faculty – This is one of the most important factors of choosing the best institute. If the faculty is not good for that subject, even though the institute has a very high reputation in the locality, I will not select that institute. The person teaching the subject should be the subject matter expert of that subject and should have practical experience of working in the IT industry. Will you be ready to learn something from someone who does not have a job for himself and teaching in an institute? But the problem is how to know about the trainer. The first attempt would to talk to the trainer, know his name. Do some research on linked in or twitter about the person. Most of us would join institutes merely by talking to the receptionist. That is wrong. Talk the trainer and ask him how he can help you learn the subject.

The Course Fee – This is also important. There are institutes who charges very high amount of course fee. People might think that a good institute charges high fee because of quality education they provide. This is not true. Have you noticed the beautiful receptionist, good looking classrooms and decorated front office and high cost of advertising? All these come at a price. The cost should justify the content you are learning. Training institute are not Branded T-shirts. Choose for a quality trainer instead of choosing 5-start hotel like class room. You will go there to learn, not to hang out with friends on weekends.

Batch Size – Are you learning in crowd? Is the faculty able to give real attention to everyone? Is he or she able to solve every doubt that you have? Crowded class room is as good as reading a text book alone without a teacher’s help. A class comprising of more than 5 students is crowd class and wastage of time and money.

Extra Value – What is the extra value that the institute is giving apart from the core course? Are they helping you to prepare your resume, helping you with interview techniques, guiding you for IT certifications? Are getting anything extra from that institute? Do they help you with the real time projects? Do they give you back up classes when you miss any class? Do they allow repeating the entire class after completing course? Are they really helping to get information about jobs suitable for you?

Class Timings – Many students cannot attend weekday’s classes. Does the institute have a weekend and holiday class options? Check out your favorable timings before joining.

I am sure there are other factors to consider before choosing a good institute. Asking old students also help sometimes. One thing is for sure, my institutes at Gurgaon surely pass the above examination. It is because we value our students’ time, money, emotion and ambition. This is why we do not have decorated class rooms but our class rooms are always full for our skilled trainers. Thanks to our old students who send new students to us. The word of mouth is the best form of advertisement and it is proving right in our case.

If you have any specific question, do let me know or Call me for training in testing – 9911449111.

How to get a job in Software Testing?

Phunshuk Wangdu* (name changed) wrote to me this few years back in my Orkut Scrap book.

Hi Friend, Actually I am working in a call centre in technical support Division. Work is related to maintenance. I passed out with electronics from an REC in 2003. But looking the family conditions I have to join whatever got that time. With a bond on 2 years. Now I managed to setup my family and want to come in real field. I come to know from my friends about software testing, which an emerging field and easy to get into. I also have done Software testing course of 2 months from xxx training institute. In my present field there is not so growth, and moreover I have to work as a technician. There are not vacancies for fresher or they prefer 2006/07 pass outs. Dear friend can you advise me? Should I apply as a fresher or with showing 2 years of experience in software testing? In this case, will company investigate my past? I have not made my resume yet. Please advise me how to get a job in Software Testing. I have taken the firm decision to change my field. Looking for a job at Delhi. Thanks again.”…..

And there are so many Phunshuk Wangdus in today’s IT industry, especially in software testing. People think software testing as a launch pad to IT industry, easy, and not requiring hardcore technical, coding, system knowledge etc. It is not. Software testing is not an easy job. It requires skills to find defects in software, ability to think beyond the obvious, think in different ways. Doing a 2 months theoretical course is not enough to become a software tester. Developers write codes, testers find defects. It is similar to student writing paper and professor checking them. Testers are the guardians of the product. They are responsible for software’s quality. It is well said that “testers do not make software, they make it better.”

So here are some advices for Phunshuk Wangdu and etc:
1. Yes it is very easy to use software testing as launch pad to IT industry, but it is equally difficult to keep flying if you do not have the real skill. It is very easy to clear interview, but equally tough to do the real work.
2. If you show 2 years (fake) experience, most of the companies will do a background check. If you are caught, you are black listed.
3. Doing a course in software testing is good. But do not assume that the training provider will get you a job. It all depends on your skill. Do not listen to fake promises by training institutes.
4. Learn skills that are required to be a tester. Talk to the experienced people who are in the same profession. Keep your eyes, ears open. Learn about the new technologies. Read ISTQB books. This will improve your knowledge on the standard testing terminology.
5. Enhance your reasoning ability. Try to think every possible thing in different ways. If you are a fresher, download some beta version software and test it. Read more about Beta Testing. Compare your results with other fellows testing the beta software. If you find some bugs, mention them in your resume.
6. Be honest. Say that you are a fresher in software testing. But mention that you have work experience (Call center technical support in Phunshuk Wangdu’s case). Prepare a valid reason why you want to join IT industry. Don’t say growth opportunity. Show your passion for software testing.
7. You will eventually become a technician if you do not have skills. To achieve growth (in any industry), you have to be proactive, prove your skill and perform better than the team. This is same in IT industry as well as in BPOs.

At the end, anyone who is hard working, smart working, skilled and honest will lift the cup. Prepare yourself. Don’t be knocked down by your past. You have a war in future to be won.

There are no short cuts on how to get a job in Software Testing. My best wishes to all those who want to be a software tester.