If you are looking for a job, it’s quite evident that the job sector is getting more challenging with time. In today’s world, job recruiters look beyond the educational qualification of the candidates. As much as your skill and experience in the relevant field are vital, soft skills tell a lot about your competence to work effectively in a team. Thus, your organizational ability and personal attributes are widely assessed in all mega-corporations.
What is Soft Skill?
Let’s start with the basics of soft skills. Soft skills are significant interpersonal skills that help situational awareness and enhance an individual’s ability to get a job done. These skills can never be achieved theoretically. How you manage, interact, and communicate shapes your practical experience. Soft skills are personality traits that contribute to improving the overall organizational performance of a company.
7 Top Soft Skills to Boost Your Quality Assurance Career
A thriving QA tester professional must emphasize soft skills. The QA job role highly caters to team engagement as a QA tester inspects software products to find all the bugs, issues, and defects. This allows them to have all the necessary details at every stage of the development process. As a result, a QA tester is bound to communicate with everyone on the software development team. So if you are thinking of building a bright career as a QA engineer, read through the article and take notes. Here are the top 7 QA Engineering soft skills that will help you shine in your career.
Strong Communication
Strong communication skills are critical to a successful QA career, as the job involves engagement with various organization members during the development stage.
Communication skills develop over time. You cannot be a proficient communicator over time. If you are a student, start participating in extracurricular activities, such as student club engagement, seminars, and workshops. Read, listen, and speak to various kinds of people as much as possible.
Volunteering for various events allows you to interact and deal with diverse people in different situations.
Remember that good communication is a two-way process. So it’s crucial to articulate your thoughts and closely listen and understand what your teammates have to say.
Adaptability
In the world of information and technology, new trends and updates in software are a common phenomenon. The website or software development requirement can change at any time. So to survive in this immensely competitive sector, you must stay informed about all the upgrades to QA Engineering. Adjust your bug-tracking plans and techniques as per the updates.
In addition to that, always have a positively-driven can-do attitude. You are not born an expert. You’ll make mistakes, learn from them, and explore new perspectives to enhance your growth. So, it would be best if you always strive to learn something every day. Such as time management of your tasks, organized work arrangement of your bug tracking data, active communication, etc. These will boost your daily performance and make you a more efficient QA professional
Time Management
Time management is one of the most demanding soft skills in any profession. QA testers often struggle with deadline challenges to submit an error-free software or web application on time.
So set a plan. Segment all your tasks within a specific time frame. Try to complete all the tasks within the time frame. Organized planning will save you time, stress, and risk of last-minute errors.
Critical Thinking
Solving critical issues related to software bug errors is crucial in QA Engineering. Hence, every QA tester requires critical thinking to provide solutions to complex software defects. So try to participate with the team in solving critical issues. You may not instantly come up with a sharp idea. But the more you engage and discuss the matter with your team, your thinking capacity increases.
Decision-Making Ability
As QA testing covers critical and analytical issues, you are bound to make decisions whenever any challenge arises. Now you might ask, “How to make the right decision?”. Well, back up some information and alternative options suitable to tackle the issue. Next, take the opinion of your teammates. After that, weigh the pros and cons of each alternative solution. Do not overthink. Just follow your instinct and go for the bug-fixing resolution that you find more feasible and beneficial.
Use the Language of Business Stakeholders
Language is essential in all facets of life as it is a medium of communication. Hence, the QA Engineering field is no exception in this sector. As a QA tester, you understand the software defects and bugs that are essentially harmful to the software’s functioning. However, your client or business owner may not know the QA engineering terms and techniques. So when giving a presentation to your client, use one presentation slide that shows business risks and delivery timelines due to software defects.
A mutual use of language ensures strong communication and team effort.
Work Ethic
As a professional, there are specific work-ethic codes that you must nurture in yourself. Entering the office or attending meetings on time, delivering bug reports within the deadline, and completing tasks timely are some of the major work ethic codes each QA tester must develop over time.
When you apply your QA testing skills according to your work ethic, your work performance will be much swift, accurate, and convenient for you and the company.
That’s all about the essential soft skills that each QA tester must develop. These soft skills will undoubtedly sharpen QA Engineering proficiency and lead you to ultimate IT career success. If you are interested in emerging as an efficient QA Testing Professional, join Transfotech Academy as we provide hands-on IT training that covers theoretical and practical knowledge.