If you’ve been overseeing software development operations for your business, you may be aware of how even the smallest nuances can make the biggest impacts to the trajectory of your software development lifecycle. Startup companies experience this on a far higher level and frequency than their more established counterparts; try to hire developers for startup projects, and you know just how much flexibility is required to roll with the punches, in the midst of limited resources and tight deadlines.
QA testers and analysts are also no exception, as their work goes beyond simply checking for bugs and reporting to designers and developers of the very same. Today, QA teams help determine overall performance quotients of your software and applications, as their insight delivers the direction that other team members need to take in order to improve what’s existing. Additionally, the right QA expertise can help your business deliver compliant software, as relevant industry knowledge from select QA testers and engineers can identify non-compliant capabilities from the get-go.
While most emphasis is given to the hire of remote developers and designers, there’s no doubt that QA specialists are just as important. In this article, we highlight the roles and responsibilities of a QA engineer, while also offering a checklist to help you source, hire and monitor the performance of suitable QA talent.
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The key roles and responsibilities of a QA engineer are:
If you are a business owner or leader that’s partnered with a software outsourcing company, knowing a QA engineer’s role across your software development team shall help you understand some of the nuances that go into testing, fixing and releasing software.
It’s important to also keep in mind that industry standards and compliance regulations are two areas that your QA teams need to be familiar with, or educate themselves on, as your software may need to adhere to the same in order to maintain legal and competitive standing across the sectors and/or geographical regions you operate in.
This QA tester hire checklist is meant to help businesses source the right QA team members, for in-house and outsourced teams alike. Similar to when you hire a developer for a project, hiring a relevant QA tester requires a careful assessment of what your existing team is lacking, what they need, and what to look for in your new hire.
While it may seem obvious that a QA tester is required for your project, conducting an assessment to discover any possible gaps within your existing software development lifecycle shall be useful before you publish that job ad. Compliance regulations and industry standards are two other important factors to consider, so if these apply to your business, you will typically need a QA team member that can test your software with these factors in mind.
Engage in a discussion with your current software development team to understand whether any nuances apply for hiring a new QA team member, and use the feedback gathered to finally build and publish a job ad.
It’s time to share your job ad across job boards and social networks. Alternatively, asking people you know for any recommendations is also worthwhile. Candidates can be filtered and shortlisted based on your criteria, with interviews following soon after. Assessments are a routine way of testing the competencies of your candidates, but identifying relevant soft skills can be a determining factor towards whether someone is eventually hired or not.
A bucket list of areas that prospective QA team members can be assessed on include (but aren’t limited to):
Once you’ve hired and inducted your new QA tester(s), it is imperative to monitor their performance in order to ensure that their efforts aren’t only technically accurate, but are also adding value to your organisation as a whole. This is particularly important for startup companies that have resource and/or budget constraints, along with limited structure owing to a high pace of growth.
If any deficiencies are identified in your QA team members’ performance, training them to improve is of course the required course of action. However, repeated lapses may call for a reconsideration of their position, and a subsequent search for new talent all over again.
On a side note, when you hire remote developers, designers and QA testers, this in general requires stringent monitoring following initial assimilation, owing to distributed work environments where autonomy needs to be inculcated by team members themselves, absent of a physical workspace.
QA engineers are an indispensable part of any software development team, together with their developer, designer and architect colleagues. Even with the advent of software test automation tools, QA engineers are here to stay as they configure and automate tests with these tools – while providing strategic insight to the rest of the team following their observations during the test phase.
Undertaking more than just core testing, QA team members are also responsible for building test cases and reproducing bugs that are reported by team members, to help developers fix the very same. With so many roles to deliver on, your QA team needs to have great attention to detail, while being reliable at the same time lest any emergencies occur, or rapid scaling needs to be done due to rising demand.
Assessing your business before determining the final job criteria is a viable starting point, as it can help uncover any gaps that your new QA hires need to address. Screening, interviews and assessments should not only focus on technical expertise, but also communication and leadership skills that can allow for nimbleness, especially during times of high growth and demand.
Ultimately, hiring a QA tester is akin to when you’d otherwise hire a developer for a project, as all team members within any software development team need to be dynamic enough to take on pressure and rapid changes, while being cognizant of the base objectives that constitute your business.