Career in Software Testing for Non-IT Graduates

1. Career in Software Testing for Non-IT Graduates I am from non – IT background. Can I make my career in Software Testing industry? What is growth path in this field? Can I expect stable career in this sector? Being a non IT graduate I am not pretty good in programming. I don’t have sound knowledge of technologies as well. Will it be a good decision to switch into IT field (especially software testing)? Basic purpose of writing this Article is to answer above questions. Usually students contact me to get guidelines on above mentioned questions hence planned to share a thought on ‘Career in S/w testing for non-IT graduates’. No one can deny the fact that glamor of IT industry is attracting one and all. Then how can we expect that a student who is fresh graduate can stand apart of it. And of course there is nothing wrong in it. Charm of testing field, easy entrance, rapid growth path, more chances to fly abroad (onsite ) are few of the reasons why young crowd is willing to get into ‘software testing’ field. Let us discuss about skills required to enter into testing industry. Instead of giving more importance to academic background only now a day’s industry is looking for smart graduates. Now what do I mean by ‘’SMART”? Industry is looking for candidates who are technically good, whose communication skills / soft skills are up to the mark and most importantly behavioral skills. A candidate should know basics of programming (we can say ‘Logic Building’). Of course we are not expecting that candidate should be expert in programming languages but he/she should at least know basics of it. If your question is ‘why you are expecting a tester to know programming’? Then my answer is very simple, if you want to demolish a building then you need to have construction knowledge (at least to identify center pillar of a building). Similarly if you want to find the bugs in an application then knowledge of application development is must. It will surely help you out to make your testing more effective. Along with knowledge of programming you should be able to think out of the box so that you can cover all the angles of various aspects of the application. You cannot achieve remarkable growth in testing industry. I guess this is what we have heard about testing field. Right? One who doesn’t know about testing field can make this kind of comment. There are various career paths in testing industry where you can ensure reasonable growth. Below mentioned are few of those career options: Test Engineer… Sr. Tester… Test Lead…. Test Manager…. Project Manager…. Program Manager Test Engineer … Automation Engineer…. Automation Architect  You may plan your career as Business Analyst, Quality Auditors, Human Factor Analyst, Performance Tester, Database Tester, etc. Let us take a glance at market position of testing industry. According to NASSCOM report (NASSCOM – 2020 outlook) global testing industry is expected to cross $50 billion USD mark till FY 2020. Now the question is what will be the share of India? Will it be 10%?

2. 20%? 30%? No! According to NASSCOM India will hold lion’s share in global testing market by acquiring 53% (i.e. $28 USD) of global market. I guess this can also be one of the reasons for you to join testing industry. Isn’t it? Let us conclude… Don’t hesitate to join testing industry if you are non-IT graduate. But just ensure following things:  You know basics of programming (If not then you should be ready to learn the same)  Your communication skills are up to the mark (If not be ready to improve)  You can think out of the box (can see various angles of things)  You are ready to upgrade with new technologies Last but not least ensure that you are interested in this field. If you agree with above terms and conditions then I am sure you will enjoy the journey of The World of Testing.