Quality Assurance professionals design automated code tests, identify software bugs, and help to fix the problems identified (or send them to the department that does). They also collaborate with other designers to create effective tests for new software and web applications. The user data collected in these tests is what allows the organization to make user-friendly, effective applications. As our world becomes ever more connected, even in the most mundane tasks like doing the laundry or turning on a light, the potential to collect this data and utilize it is everywhere.
What this means is that the best QA professionals are both reactive and proactive. Entry-level jobs will likely deal mostly with legacy code, finding and fixing bugs. Growth from that position then has engineers creating automated tools to complete these jobs. However, the intermediate and higher skill-level QA professionals are both reactive and proactive. Knowing what questions to ask to avoid problems -- that is, effectively designing tests -- means working with multiple tech-industry teams, including UX/UI designers, software and web application designers, and, of course, the IT department.
The path to this career involves the combination of critical thinking and good coding skills. Most professionals in this industry have a BA, and often they’ve completed specialized courses from either a university, a respected industry leader, or their corporations. Keep in mind that new technologies like machine learning will rapidly change this industry in the next few years, so that penchant for life-long learning and problem solving that led you to QA will serve you well in QA career longevity.
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Many companies use quality assurance (QA) testing to ensure the products they create meet specific standards. Quality assurance testing allows companies to avoid sending out products to customers that are faulty or low-quality. Quality assurance testers can be found in almost every industry, from clothing to software. The quality assurance tester is responsible for performing a variety of tests on each product, constantly monitoring product performance, flagging issues, and troubleshooting them.
When looking for a quality assurance tester, hiring managers will want a candidate with the right mix of experience and education. Typically, ideal candidates for the role will have a bachelor's degree in a related field such as computer science or analytics. They will want a candidate with related experience, such as prior roles as a quality analyst or test engineer. Additionally, it’s important that candidates for these roles demonstrate specific skills, such as knowledge of testing methodology, problem-solving abilities, and critical thinking skills.
There are lots of testing methodologies that quality assurance professionals can use. Black box, user acceptance, and agile testing are just a few. Hiring managers will like to see an applicant who has experience with as many testing methods as possible. Showcasing what testing methods you are fluent in on your resume will show hiring managers that you are a dynamic and knowledgeable candidate.
You can earn certifications specific to quality assurance testing to showcase your knowledge in a concrete way on your resume. You can earn the ISTQB tester or analytics professional certificate to strengthen your resume.
Quality Assurance testers are the individuals and teams that run every test you can think of trying to see if a web application or software program will break. They have strong problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and excellent written communication skills. They’re the best at documentation and take the minute information and put it together in a system that the entire QA chain can understand.
Even if you choose to diversify your skill set by taking a position in a parallel career path (as this person did with the electrical project engineer role), it’s important that you highlight aspects of the role that apply to the QA job you’re seeking. If you’re applying for multiple roles in related industries, make sure you have a resume for each one with different highlighted achievements. Note how in this case we highlight achievements which are relevant to the quality assurance industry.
As a QA tester, you’re going to need to demonstrate communication skills. The best way to do this is to measure the results or impact of actions you’ve taken, which this resume does by measuring the efficiency of tests when working with a team of software engineers. As a QA tester, you’re in an excellent position to measure the impact of your actions -- you are the one who tracks how many bugs are found after all!
The quality assurance (QA) automation engineer plays an integral role in optimizing a company’s quality assurance procedures. These professionals plan and create automated tests to assess the function of software. Being able to automate the QA process allows companies to test their technology more quickly and efficiently, leading to increased revenue.
To become a QA automation engineer, you will need the right education and skills. Hiring managers will look for someone with a degree in computer science or IT. It’s important that QA automation engineers are talented coders with a breadth of technical knowledge. Hiring managers will look for someone with experience in QA, such as previous roles as a manual tester or QA tester. Strong candidates for this role will have knowledge of different testing methods and coding, superb problem-solving skills, and organizational abilities.
To become a QA automation engineer, you will need to understand the variety of testing tools and frameworks you can use to solve QA testing issues. For this reason, you should highlight the testing methods and frameworks you have used in the past on your resume.
QA automation engineers must be savvy problem solvers in order to create testing automations that are effective. As such, one important soft skill to highlight on your resume is your problem-solving skills. Be sure to highlight any complicated QA issues you have successfully solved in the past on your resume.
A QA automation engineer develops automated tests that are used to test the functionality of applications. They are tasked with designing the tests, creating the code for them, activating the tests, and reporting on how they perform.
To succeed in this role, you will need to have very strong programming skills, as well as a wealth of experience as a QA automation engineer. Recruiters will be expecting at least a bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or a similar field.
This is a very technical position that needs you to stay up to date with the latest software and software languages to stay relevant and useful. So make sure you stay up to date on the same. When any new relevant tech and software is developed, ensure you are quick to acquaint yourself with it. Do a course to learn the new tech or get as much experience with it as possible.
Recruiters want to know how successful and efficient the tests you create and run are. So make sure you include actual numbers in your experience section. How many tests have you run in a short period of time? How many errors and bugs did your tests identify?
Quality Assurance Automation Engineers are the bigger-picture thinkers of the QA world. They excel at writing tests that can be iterated over large-scale and enterprise technologies, including databases. They know every aspect of the design of the program and how it should function. They often work on mobile and web applications. As with all QA professionals, they work with other engineers and developers, but they are also likely to have a team of QA testers who work with their code to identify particular bugs.
The larger-scale you get in technology, the more likely it is that you’re going to be working with distributed teams, even internationally. Your ability to communicate well with these teams on a technological and professional level is absolutely essential to the QA team working well.
As a QA automation engineer, you’re going to be approaching complex web and mobile applications as well as enterprise-level software. As a result, you want a wide coding toolbox to draw from. Demonstrating how your solutions work -- and that you have a diversity of hows at your disposal -- makes you an asset to your company.
If you’re a technical whiz with great attention to detail, a position as a QA (quality assurance) engineer might be right for you. Before going to a customer, every product must be vetted and tested for quality. The QA engineer is responsible for giving each product the final check before it is shipped out. In order to ensure each product is flawless, QA engineers conduct continuous tests throughout the manufacturing cycle. The QA engineer must understand the larger picture, and work in accordance with the business needs and budget.
To become a QA engineer, you will need a specific set of technical skills. You’ll need a bachelor’s degree in software engineering or another related field. Hiring managers will also look for a candidate who is proficient in a variety of testing methods. Previous experience as a quality inspector or tester can help you land this role. In addition to technical skills, it’s important that candidates for this role are detail-oriented with strong project management skills.
QA engineers have to understand different quality assurance testing methods. Showcasing the testing methods you are knowledgeable in on your resume can help you land this role. You should put certain testing methodologies, like regression testing, in your skills section on your resume.
Quality Assurance Engineers are some of the generalists in the QA world. They’re often divided into manual and automated career paths, but in such an in-demand industry, the truth is that there’s more demand for QA engineers than there is supply. They work with software that already exists in the product market and with new and releasing products. They may also focus on internal processes of the company, not just customer-facing software.
As a QA engineer (or really any kind of engineer or developer), you’re going to be constantly on the forefront of new tools changing your industry. It’s important to note that you have the drive to continually learn these techniques when they become relevant and necessary to your job.
Anytime you’re applying for a specific role, you’ll get a higher ranking from ATS filters if you include the job title at the top of your resume as well as in specific job titles.
A Quality Assurance manager is a high-level employee who has experience as a QA engineer and tester. Their job is to understand how to best employ QA techniques and teams across the entire system. In other words, they create the strategy for effective testing so that no product hits the market without being thoroughly vetted.
If you’re an advanced degree holder, you’re doing yourself a disservice if you simply list it without fanfare. You certainly should include any awards received as well as their rarity, particularly if they’re in a technical field (e.g. QA). If possible, you should include work achievements that you were commended that show your leadership experience, which is critical to being a manager. It shows that you can handle balancing your priorities and still excel.
As a manager, you’re expected to be flexible enough to adapt to different teams but experienced enough to have definite opinions about how to help that team succeed. This resume shows that the application worked in Agile, waterfall, and iterative methods of software development, which covers the essentials of how any software team would work in the industry.
Quality assurance is an important factor in the production process in many industries, particularly in software. QA (quality assurance) software testers help companies ensure their software is functioning correctly and effectively, before putting it in the hands of customers. QA software testers are responsible for assessing software, running various tests, identifying and solving bugs, generating result reports, and more.
To become a QA software tester, you will need a degree in computer science or IT. Hiring managers will look for someone with previous technical and/or software experience, such as previous roles as a functional tester or application engineer. The ideal candidate for this role will have technical expertise, in addition to strong problem-solving and critical-thinking skills.
A big piece of the QA software tester’s job is to find and solve for bugs or issues found within the software. For this reason, you should highlight any experience you have identifying and/or solving for bugs in software. Even if your experience was in a different position, the ability to troubleshoot and problem solve is crucial to landing this role.
Traditionally, Quality Assurance Testers come in at the end of the development cycle of a new product. The title QA software tester is often used to emphasize that the QA team is a part of the development of the product from start to finish. This means that the team works in an iterative and integrative way, and that QA software testers will pay attention to all things that will affect the function of the program, from bugs, to slow load times, to poorly written customer copy.
Especially in any tech field, your skills section tells a story. It shows the tools you have used and those you can bring to bear on the problems at hand. This is also an easy way to customize your resume to better fit a company’s needs -- if you have the tech skills they’re asking for, change them to match what’s in the job description and you’ll read as a better fit to ATS filters.
Whenever you’re a person in a senior position with management responsibilities, one of the best things you can do is show when you were rewarded ahead of schedule or exceeded expectations. Any position, especially as a QA tester, is looking for strong soft skills and ability to lead — being promoted within 18 months of receiving a new position is a great example.
An entry-level Quality Assurance tester can expect to be doing a lot of work that seems tedious or repetitive to most. They should have an excellent attention to detail and be thorough as they will spend most of their time identifying and documenting bugs. They should also be great at teamwork. The power of QA lies in the orchestration of a team to identify all the bugs in a software or application release, and it certainly is not a job that can be completed alone.
If you’re applying for an entry-level job, it’s a great idea to expand your work experience in this way. These can be school projects or volunteer projects you seek out, but make sure you clearly explain your successes with data. Try to highlight projects that use relevant skills in a QA role, whether that’s programming, software testing, bug fixing or website development.
Another good way to show your involvement in the industry is to include your activity and leadership in clubs or sports. As above, you should point out what skills you think translate to your chosen career path and why. Soft skills like leadership, communication and teamwork are always transferable and are relevant to QA roles — so highlight them through your experiences.
The roles of a Quality Assurance Specialist and a Quality Assurance Tester are quite similar. The biggest difference is that a QA Specialist is more likely to choose a more general or managerial path, and so those skill sets should be highlighted on your resume.
Especially earlier in your career, it helps hiring managers to understand how you see your current position in relation to your desired career path. Consider it something of an elevator pitch. You have 30 seconds to influence how hiring managers are going to read the rest of your resume, so make it count.
If you’re lucky enough to be singled out for placement programs early in your career, that’s a great thing for employers to know! It shows that you excelled enough to be taken note of, but also that you made the most of that time and entered the workplace with some solid (and accelerated) experience under your belt. Even better, highlight QA or software development experience to show recruiters that you’re technically minded.
A medical quality assurance inspector is someone who ensures the products being manufactured at a facility meet specific standards. When it comes to medical equipment, this is particularly important. It’s the medical quality assurance inspectors' responsibility to inspect each piece of equipment post-production, using tools given by their employer, and meticulously record their findings after each inspection.
If you want to go right into a job in medical quality assurance, an educational background in science or medicine will make your resume attractive to hiring managers. Hiring managers may also want to see certifications in quality assurance. When hiring for this role, managers will be looking for someone who demonstrates an eye for detail and superb communication skills.
Certifications show hiring managers you have the knowledge needed to competently inspect products and create reports. There are several certifications you can earn, such as the CQAP or CQI. You can also get a medical device quality assurance certification, which shows hiring managers you have specialized knowledge in inspecting medical devices.
As a Quality Assurance professional in the tech industry, the skill box is your best friend. You can quickly and easily tell employers which skills you can bring to bear and you can even point towards your forward thinking in a growing field (such as including machine learning tools). It’s also a simple and easy way to target your resume to the job listing. This puts you in a better position with ATS (applicant tracking system) filters.
Remember that a skill in and of itself doesn’t create a robust picture of your abilities. As a Quality Assurance professional, you’re going to be expected to use data to make your argument. What better way to show you’re expert at this than having data driven bullet points on your resume?
This word cloud highlights the important keywords that appear on Quality Assurance job descriptions and resumes. The bigger the word, the more frequently it appears on job postings, and the more 'important' it is.
A big part of your career as a Quality Assurance professional is going to be in generating reports that identify vulnerabilities in software. Those reports should be data-driven, persuasive, and clear so that the myriad of stakeholders involved in the design of the application or software can act on it. In some ways, it’s very similar to how you write a resume. You choose a word that suggests the course of action in a descriptive way, include the supporting data, and don’t use seven words when you can use five. Clarity and impact are key!
For a full list of effective resume action verbs, visit Resume Action Verbs.
If you're a senior-level employee, or you're changing careers to become a Quality Assurance, it's useful to add a paragraph at the top of your resume highlighting your most impressive accomplishments. This is called a resume summary.
Here's an example of a summary that can be used on a Quality Assurance resume.
A resume summary is a totally optional section, and in most cases, it's better to leave it out of your resume than include it. For example, if you're a student or mid-level hire, you should not include a summary, and instead use the space to add to your work experience.
To learn how to write an effective resume summary for your Quality Assurance resume, or figure out if you need one, please read Resume Summary Examples for Job Seekers: When To Include One.
