What is the market demand for manual testers compared to automation testers?

It is difficult to answer this question for a number of reasons.

First, each country's job market is different.

There are trends that apply to all countries but there are significant differences as well.

Second, no one has the complete information on all jobs available on a market.

Not even the IT recruiters.

Everyone has access to a piece or a few pieces of the job market puzzle.

The whole puzzle is impossible to see.

Instead of an answer, I have for you a few hints, hopefully useful.

1. Many Test Automation Positions Available, Few Suitable Candidates

Every time I talk to recruiters about market demand, I hear that companies need badly manual testers with good automation skills.

These testers should know manual testing, have technical skills, know good programming and good test automation.

The programming and test automation skills are required by companies that already do automation but also by companies that dont have automation yet.

Because if a company does not have automation yet, it is either getting ready for starting it or thinking about doing automation in the near future.

So recruiters have these days many open opportunities for testers that have programming and test automation skills.

And in many cases, they cannot find suitable candidates for them.

Because not many manual testers have good programming skills.

On the other hand, there are just a handful of "pure" manual testing positions available, from time to time.

2. Job Trends: more automation jobs, less functional testing jobs

The indeed.com site can display the job trends for a specific keyword during a time interval.

Let's see how the indeed.com trends for functional testing and quality assurance look like.

The functional testing trend between 2012 - 2016 is descending.

The similar trend for quality assurance is descending as well.

Finally, lets look at the trend for a popular automation tool like Selenium.

3. Testing Trends: developer and tester roles will merge, more test automation needed

Take for example this survey:

http://www.testing-whiz.com/blog/15-test-automation-trends-of-2016

It says that

The increasing adoption of DevOps principle is expected to break the silos of roles divided in terms of activities between developers, QA/testers, business analysts and production manager. 

We know, with changing times, the developers and operation managers have started adopting testing activity as a part of their day-to-day job.  

In fact, they love to test to ensure the defects do not get carried forward in the production lifecycle.  

Thus, keeping this trend in mind, the experts predict that, the roles of developers and testers will merge in the years to come.

and also that

... chances are that there would be more collaboration among developers, IT professionals and operation engineers leading to increasing adoption of DevOps.  

With more and more enterprises merging the roles of testers with developers and operational engineers due to overlapping competencies and the need to fit in the continuous agile cycles, 
DevOps methodology will be the most In-Thing in the year 2016. 

As per Google Trends, 67% enterprises engage in DevOps principle to tap the benefits of cross-functional skills and speed up the test project deliveries.

Similar predictions are being made by Gallop:

http://www.gallop.net/software-testing-trends/

Test automation in the age of DevOps 

The level of Test Automation is one of the key indicators of a testing organization’s efficiency.  

Test automation adoption is going to grow at a rapid pace this year as organizations looks at delivering bug-free, high-quality software.

4. Google Search: more test automation searches 

Google trends provide details regarding how many searches for a specific topic happen in a time interval.

They show similar patterns with the indeed.com trends.

The trend for functional testing searches is descending.

The trend for quality assurance searches is descending as well.

The trend for Selenium searches is ascending.

So what do all these mean? Is the market demand higher for manual testing or automation?

Instead of a conclusion, how about another question?

Which one do you think is higher?

The market demand for manual testers?

The market demand for automation testers?

Or the market demand for manual testers that know automation?

How to get a test automation job without experience

There is high demand today on the job market for manual testers with test automation skills.

But the paradox is that there are few qualified testers available.

Why is this?

One reason may be that manual testers are not learning programming and test automation due to their concern that it is not possible to get an automation job without work experience.

This article tells you how to get a test automation job without having work experience.

It is based on my personal experience and on the reason for creating this blog.

test-able.blogspot.ca was created in 2011.

I was then a full time employee (last time working a full time job) for a major online Canadian company.

The job started 8 years before so I felt ready for new challenges and projects.

For that company, I created the testing department, hired the testers, implemented the testing processes and tools. The testing team went from 2 testers in the beginning to 14 testers when I left. In summary, I added the testing team to the software development department.

I thought that I knew my job very well.

But in the same time, I was a bit anxious and wondering if I would be capable of performing well for other employers.

So, to get control of my job change anxiety, I pushed the pedal a little bit on self training and looked into things that I did not know yet like:

- exploratory testing

Good books such as the "Exploratory Software Testing" by James Whittaker and "Lessons Learned In Software Testing" by James Bach taught me what exploratory testing is and how it is done.

- mobile testing

"Tap Into Mobile Application Testing" by Jonathan Kohl has been of great help here.

After the learning phase, I practiced both mobile and exploratory testing for about 2 years in more than 800 projects with uTest.com with great results.

- test automation

The first test automation tool that I worked with was Quick Test Professional (QTP).

My employer at that time purchased the full suite of Mercury Quality Assurance tools which included Quality Center, Load Runner and QTP.

Even after learning the new skills, something was still missing.

I was looking for a way of making public who I was from a professional point of view.

I was also searching for something that will make me different and more interesting for recruiters than the other testers.

I always considered that having a work portfolio is the best instrument of getting more work.

After seeing the quality work produced already, new clients have the confidence of giving you more work.

But what portfolio did I have at that time?

What could I show about "Alex the tester" to a recruiter or a company interested in hiring me?

After reading James Bach's advice to new testers that they should blog about testing, I created the blog.

Initially, the blog had 1 purpose only: to expose more information to public about my testing experience, knowledge and skills.

What I do, what I learn, what I read, what is interesting for me, what testing problems I am struggling with.

My thought was that exposing lots of information about my testing on the blog will help me find other jobs.

And it did.

It really did.

Recruiters and companies interested in hiring me were able now to not only see my resume but also read my blog and find there evidence about my testing skills.

After a while, the purpose of the blog changed.

I started being more interested in test automation so I thought that the blog can become the repository or portfolio of my test automation experiences.

Everyone interested in hiring me was able to read the blog and based on the information found there decide if 

• I have the required skills
• I have the proper mindset when it comes to testing
• I did relevant work in the past
• I am a good candidate for the interview

The blog became a way of providing proof that I can do test automation through the published articles, code samples, articles published on other blogs, etc.

I am talking about my blog but what does this have to do with the article's topic?

So going back, how can anyone get a test automation job without having any automation experience?

This is one of questions that I am getting from people that want to learn test automation.

They think that learning test automation is good and useful.

But, in the same time, they don't have the confidence that companies will hire them due to the lack of practical experience.

So this concern holds them back and in many cases they postpone the test automation learning until later.

Learning test automation is obviously not easy for manual testers.

It includes learning a programming language, a test automation framework and unit testing.

It takes time, focus and perseverance.

So let's assume that you took a test automation course or learned all these things by yourself.

What do you do now?

How do you get a test automation job without experience?

There are a few things that I did with this blog that you can do as well.

They will help a lot with getting your desired automation position:


1. create your own blog and dedicate it to learning and practicing test automation

Choose a name for the blog that is related to test automation:

Example:
test-automation-practice.blogspot.ca
learn-and-practice-test-automation.blogspot.com

You can create the blog in minutes for free using Blogspot or Wordpress.

Or any other blogging platform that you like.

You can even build your own site.

2. write on the blog for recruiters and companies

Everything that you write on the blog should have one purpose only:
to convince other people that you know test automation and can write code for it.

When writing for the blog, try writing less articles but with more content instead of more and shorter articles.

Try writing more about what you learn and do and less about general topics such as what test automation is and how it works.

IT recruiters are interested in finding you a job in test automation.

Learning about test automation in general is not so important for them.

3. keep the blog focused on test automation

The blog becomes less effective if you mix test automation articles with articles on other topics.

If you want to blog on other topics, consider creating a separate blog.

4. while learning test automation, start writing articles about

• new things that you learned; write about new programming concepts, about new test automation framework components, about unit testing, about other skills like xpath and css selectors
• post samples of code that you wrote, lots of samples
• obstacles for your learning and their solutions
• questions that you have about test automation

5. as soon as your automation knowledge gets better, start working on a project that automates the functional testing for a well known site

Choose a well known site first.

Select a few functional scenarios that the users of the site are going through.

If you select a site that has an ecommerce component, avoid automating scenarios related to user login and shopping cart.

Start writing the test scripts for the selected user scenarios.

6. keep improving the test scripts for the selected site while your knowledge gets better

As soon as you learn things like explicit waits, implement them in your scripts.

After learning how to create your own classes using the page object model, change your scripts for these new concepts.

Refactor the code of the scripts to make the scripts easier to understand, easier to modify and shorter.

7. create a public repository on GitHub.com and publish there your code from time to time

Give access to the public to the code.

Share the GitHub repository link on your blog.

8. keep learning about programming and test automation and keep improving your code

One of your goals is to use the blog to convince recruiters and companies that you know programming and test automation.

The IT recruiters do not know how to evaluate if your automation code is good or not.

But your potential employer can do that.

So work hard on creating the best code that you can.

9. start connecting on LinkedIn with IT recruiters

You are building the blog for recruiters and potential employers so you need to link with them.

10. from time to time, add links of articles from your blog to your LinkedIn profile

You can also publish articles on LinkedIn.

All your connections including IT recruiters will get your test automation updates.

11. update your LinkedIn profile with your new programming and test automation skills

12. keep learning and keep blogging

13. add the blog link to your resume

How do all these help you finding a test automation job?

The blog and your GitHub code repository will be the proof that 

• you do know programming
• you do know test automation
• you can write good test automation code

The blog and the GitHub code repository become your test automation experience.

There are more benefits to having a testing blog.

First, your technical writing will improve a lot by creating articles for the blog.

Second, writing about test automation will make you think more about what you learned.

In order to explain other people about test automation, you will have to have everything clear in your head first and this will just strengthen your knowledge.


You can apply at this point in confidence to test automation jobs since you have everything that it is required

- skills

- experience

- proof

Good Luck with the job search!

From Manual Testing To Test Automation

The tester profession is relatively new compared with to the developer one.

Initially, the testing jobs were mostly about manual functional testing for client-server apps and websites.

Mobile devices and mobile applications existed on a very limited scale until a few years ago.

Many companies did not have a testing team at all so the testing of their products was done by their developers and clients.

Slowly, these companies begun to realize more and more that having a testing team is as important as having a development team.

So they hired many manual testers.

Being a manual tester was not difficult as, due of the novelty of the testing field, there was no formal education available.

Without formal education, a manual tester needed mostly soft skills and almost no technical ones:

– cognitive skills

– attention to details

– willingness to learn new things

– verbal and written communication

– ability of questioning how things work

– creativity

Testers were not technical compared to developers.

Test automation was in its infancy and the manual testing was in many cases the only testing done:

Things were good for manual testers for a number of years but then things started to change.

Websites were no longer sufficient for businesses so they launched mobile sites and native mobile apps.

The technology and testing advanced too with Selenium, cloud computing, test automation and API testing gaining importance.

The amount of manual testing done for business applications started to change as companies began looking at automating the repetitive testing tasks so more complex testing is possible:

So where is manual testing today?

I occasionally speak to IT recruiters about the job market.

I asked them about the testing jobs available today.

Are manual testing jobs still in high demand?

One answer was the “pure” manual testing opportunities are few.

When one is available, the competition is fierce with 40-50 people applying for it.

There are, however, more and more opportunities for testers with test automation skills.

Many companies have test automation frameworks that need to be maintained and improved or want to start their own frameworks.

Another answer was that most of testing roles seem to be hybrid roles.

The job requirement is that the tester is cross-functional and know both manual testing, a programming language, and a test automation framework.

For this type of job opportunity, the competition is low.

The recruiters cannot often find qualified people available and positions stay open for a long time.

Will this trend continue?

I believe that it will.

Testers that invest in their own career, know a programming language and have other technical skills will have the first chance of getting into the most of the job interviews  going forward. 

These testers will continue to get closer and closer to software developers in their daily job requirements and skills.

So manual testers will become software engineers in test or test developers.