Change in hiring and interviewing process in India for software testing and software testers

I claim to be one of the most experienced and most affected tester in the context of interview in India and here ( in this link ) is more information about it. After going through that link or this video you would know that I have been struggling to not see another Pradeep Soundararajan in the job market who is frustrated with this industry's idea of interviewing. Edista Testing Institute ( my client and partner ) is constantly pushing towards seeing a better testing community and that's why I chose to work with them.

I consider the following as one of my biggest contribution to the change the industry needs. Most training institutes in India (even the so called highly reputed ones) have people who dont know to test, teaching testing by running a thousand slides. I think they have so many slides that if you run 25 slides a second to watch it like a movie, it still runs for about 2 hours. Such slides have always caused an avalanche slide of many victims career, knowledge and skills.

Edista started to redefine things by hiring me and then allowing me to hire Manoj and then Sharath and then now more people. The last I heard from Manoj is that testers who were interacting with him are now excited about what Manoj is doing and are enquiring what it takes to be able to get skilled in testing.

You might also discover that Manoj has started to publish his practice sessions on testing in his blog.

We sit to gether, test, learn from each other, create exercises, practice pair testing, discover new tools, debate on ideas, think about more heuristics, brainstorm test ideas, discuss about bugs, run a test club ( like the movie Fight Club ), teach people how to learn and then how to test. We are never away from testing and we are never away from anything about testing.

We aren't skeptical about the fact that there could be more people like us and who knows they might be interested to join us. So here goes the job posting for the same: ( and I have posted this in LinkedIn and other communities - please feel free to share this job posting to all other Indian testers )

Consultants in Software Testing and Software Test Education :: Bangalore

Profile:

Edista Testing Institute ( www.edistatesting.com ) has a couple of openings for Consultants in Software Testing and Test Education.

It wouldn't be wrong if I say, they are looking for people who have the urge to be heroes in software testing. This role demands you to train ( yourself and others ), collaborate with the on going research activities, test products, learn and innovate.

This role also demands you to grow to an extent to be able to contribute valuable things to the testing community and work for its betterment.

About your co-workers:

You would work with skilled testers and brains who constantly engage in learning activities, blogging, discussions, teaching, mentoring, challenge and argue online in testing forums ( like www.testrepublic.com ), offline and reinvent the art of reinventing things in testing.

If you think you wanted to be a hero ( or hero-in ) in software testing and never got the opportunity, here it is.

Eligibility:

We'd be glad if you have worked as a tester for a while ( at least 2 - 5 years ) and also be glad if you are willing to travel within India (or abroad ) on short term assignments.

We would prefer you have a degree in Engineering or Science however if you dont have them but have a demonstrated ability of good thinking, we'd be fine.

Interview Process:

Our interview process is cut above all other organizations that neighbor us. We put you in the testers seat, give you time to test a product and have a discussion of your testing based on the report you produce.

We aren't too bothered if you dont know the difference between Sanity testing and Smoke testing because we believe, knowing the difference ( even if it exists ) doesn't make a huge difference.

We aren't bothered if you have a certification in Software Testing or not as long as you are passionate, skilled in testing, and have the fire and fuel to take you a long way. In simpler words, it *doesn't matter* if you dont have ISTQB, ISEB or CSTE certifications.

About Edista:

www.edistatesting.com

Time to join:

Immediate is preferred. A little delay is fine if you are stuck somewhere.

Contact:

Send your profile to : resume@edistatesting.com

If you can crunch your profile in one page, we'd silently thank you for that.

The results so far:

• We invited about 7 candidates so far who claimed to have energy, passion and demonstrable testing skills.
  
• We are seeing great benefits of this approach.
  
• It makes us spend 3 minutes ( after a person has finished the test and generated a report ) to know about the claims a tester has made in his profile are fale and a little bit about the organization that said, "Yeah, he can test".
• We spoke only to one person in depth as his report was quite interesting.
• We know that we can filter more candidates with lesser time we have and get better ones to work with.
• It would be dangerous to get a person who cant test and report credibly into any organization that wants to hire testers.
• Those who fake testing experience fear to even apply or even if they do and by our overlooking we invite them for the testing session, we dont need to spend time beyond 3 minutes post their test.
  

Testers have to be tested on their testing skills and not on memorization skill. The best test ( based on the current situation ) you could give a tester during an interview is to make him sit on a computer and asking him to test a piece of software by giving a meaningful mission and time to do it.

Side note: Are you planning to be in the supporters list?