Required Skills for a Software Testing Fresher

Required Skills for a Software Testing Fresher, Manual Testing, Computer Programming, Database Fundamentals, and Documentation Knowledge.

You will have better career in the Software Testing area by learning these specified subjects

Required Skills for a Software Testing Fresher

I (G C Reddy) have been working in the IT industry for twenty years, worked as a junior COBOL programmer for a large amount of data processing projects, we used COBOL on UNIX operating environment. Next I shifted my career from development to testing, worked as a manual tester, automation tester using WiRunner, QTP, UFT, LoadRunner, and Selenium.

Now working as a software test consultant as well as trainer.

Ten to fifteen years back IT companies preferred only education qualifications and communication skills for fresher recruitment, software subject knowledge was not mandatory in those days.

But nowadays IT companies are preferring software subject knowledge also apart from the academic qualifications. Reason, more availability of human resources, availability of learning facilities, and competitive market, etc,

Generally IT companies provide some training for fresher, if the fresher already have subject knowledge then it can be easy to use the resources.

Have these skills as a Software Testing Fresher:

Note: Three to four months time is enough to learn the below specified subjects.

You will have better career in the Software Testing area by learning these specified subjects

1. Operating Computers:

Nowadays most of the people are aware of operating computers, even some Non-IT people also having that knowledge. Knowledge on MS Windows is general, learn UNIX operating system.

2. Knowledge of Various Software Application Environments:

Know about computer software applications like desktop applications, web applications, etc, and mobile software applications like native applications, web apps, and hybrid applications.

Know about types for software like system software (ex: window, UNIX, Solaris, Linux, Mac, etc,), programming software (ex: programming languages and databases), and application software (ex: banking software, erp software, eCommerce software, healthcare software, etc.)

3. Documentation Knowledge:

In software testing, especially in manual testing, documentation is a mandatory task, so be familiar with documentation packages like MS office.

In MS Office MS Excel and Word applications are more important for Software testing.

4. Manual Testing Knowledge:

Most of the manual testing concepts are like theory concepts, you can easily learn them and use practically, Learn the below concepts:

i. Software Development Life Cycle (Phases of SDLC, Requirements gathering, Analysis, Design, Coding/Implementation, Testing, and Release & Maintenance.

ii. Software Test Levels (Unit Testing, Integration Testing, System Testing, and Acceptance Testing)

Note: In the Test levels focus on System Testing (Testing on Integrated System)

iii. Software Test Types (Functional Testing and Non-functional Testing)

iv. Software Test Design Techniques

v. Software Test Life Cycle

vi. Software Test Documents

vii. Software Testing Standards

Manual Testing Material Download Link

Manual Test Video Tutorial

5. Programming Fundamentals:

Programming Knowledge is not required for manual testing, in manual testing, understanding & analysing requirements , documenting test cases, executing test cases, reporting defects, etc, are the important tasks, but manual testing is not enough to survive in this software testing field, automation testing is required, for automation testing, especially for functional test automation, programming knowledge is required.

So you learn the programming fundamentals using any one programming language, most of the programming concepts are similar in all programming language, syntax may vary from one language to another.

My recommendation to software testing fresher is, learn Python programming, it is easy to learn, and it is having popularity in the current IT market.

Note: You can learn Java or any other language also.

Programming Fundamentals for Software Testing Fresher

1. Programming Environment (Install Software, know about editor for writing programs, compiler or interpreter, and environment variable)

ii. Programming language basic syntax, keywords, identifiers, and predefined code libraries.,

ii. Data Types (character, whole number, number with decimal places, text/string, logical value/boolean, etc,)

iii. Variables (Local and Global variables)

iv. Operators (arithmetic, comparison, logical, etc,)

v. Control Flow Statements (Decision making/conditional statements, loop statements, and branching statements)

vi. String handling

vii. Data Structures (Ex: Arrays, Dictionaries, etc, )

viii. Functions/Methods (Built-in and User defined)

ix. IO (Input and Output)