Hiring testers - on both sides of the barricades
How to hire a tester if you are an application developer? How to get a decent job if you are a tester? Today we are discussing the testing market - salaries, vacancies, interviews, job seekers ... And of course - is there life after hiring and how long does it last? It is easy to formulate the task of hiring specialists — an employer must find worthy candidates, and the applicant must find the best place to work. Why is it so difficult in practice?
It won't be expensive for both of us.
First of all, because, like in all other markets, employers — especially in the current economic situation — systematically overstate the requirements for candidates, lowering the bar on the proposed income, and candidates, on the contrary, try to get as much as possible for their services. According to the surveys of testers for 2016 and 2017 , in which more than 1.5 thousand people took part, one can see that most often the tester in Moscow receives from 75 to 110 thousand rubles. per month. There is a certain dependence on the experience of a specialist - if a person with work experience of less than one year can hardly hope for a salary higher than 75 thousand rubles, then testers who have worked 1-3 years receive up to 110 thousand rubles, testers from 3– 6 years of experience - up to 150 thousand rubles, and the salary of testers with more than 8 years of experience this year starts from 160 and exceeds 200 thousand rubles.
In St. Petersburg, the growth dynamics of testers salaries is more pronounced - if in 2016 the majority of specialists received 50–75 thousand rubles, then in 2017 - 90–110 thousand rubles. The dependence of salary on work experience is similar to that in Moscow, but the salary ceiling for the most experienced testers rarely exceeds 200 thousand rubles.
In Russia, everything looks a little less impressive. The bulk of software testing specialists can rely on salaries from 25 to 55 thousand rubles, testers with up to 6 years experience - up to 75 thousand rubles, with up to 8 years experience - up to 90 thousand rubles, the most experienced - up to 110 thousand rubles. I would like to say something positive on the results of the survey about the salaries of remote work, but there is too little data to compile a representative sample - you can focus only on the most “heap” answers concentrated in the range from 45 to 75 thousand rubles.
')
Unfortunately, we have very little data on the salaries of Kiev testers. There is a little more data on the territory of Ukraine, and it can be concluded that the salaries of the majority of Ukrainian testing specialists are in the range of $ 0.3–1.3 thousand, which is complementary to the distribution of wages across Russian regions. Salaries of testers with experience up to 3 years reach up to 1.5 thousand dollars, and testers with experience up to 6 years can receive 2.5-3 thousand dollars, as well as their older comrades. A similar picture is observed in Minsk, but for Belarus outside Minsk there is too little data to deduce any patterns from them. However, it is possible that this picture does not fully reflect the performance of Ukrainian companies engaged in outsourcing development for the foreign market, but we still do not have more accurate data.
Of course, it would be nice to update this information. Therefore, we ask you to go through our new survey - and the sooner we get a representative sample, the sooner we will publish updated data on the salaries of testers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Anyway, you now have an idea of ​​the market level of the salary of a testing specialist, and we can proceed directly to the hiring process.
Understanding interviews as a process of screening out unsuitable candidates, we forget that for hundreds of candidates this is the only real experience of communication with the company. Since units of these hundreds receive work, it seems quite natural that for everyone else this single experience of communication becomes negative. But is it right? After all, an interview with candidates is an important way to communicate with a professional audience, which, in fact, would be worth making friends with. Yes, and a suitable candidate - that is, for one who is not only an experienced specialist, but also possesses a set of qualities that will allow him to accept corporate culture and fit into the team, you thus form a negative (at least cautious) attitude towards the company before signing the contract.
The other side of this problem is that, alas, the interview is increasingly turning into the process of screening out suitable candidates. Colleagues, you understand that your favorite question about sewer manholes has become a byword? It is easier to find a candidate who has not watched "Game of Thrones" than someone who does not know about sewers. This also applies to the answers to your other 20–30 favorite questions “on logic, erudition and creative thinking” - all of them have been published on the Internet long ago.
Tell me, why are you so sure that the best candidate is the one who came in an ideally ironed expensive suit, answers questions with the face of a poker player, remembers trigonometry and thermodynamics, and successfully passes stress interviews - or, worse, a polygraph? Why are you so persistently asking about the reasons for leaving your previous job, the reasons for choosing “our company”, about “your main strengths and weaknesses”, marital status and children, who the candidates see themselves after 5-10 years and How can they benefit the company? On all these issues, psychologists, journalists and bloggers have already traveled hundreds of times; In many respects precisely because of such questions, the concept of Eychar has become a household word in the bad sense of the word, and in general this is so last season.
It seems that the blackest hatred applicants hate the notorious personnel request, which is formulated as "no more than two jobs over the past five years." This is what real testers with work experience of more than 8 years write - the very ones whose Moscow salaries can now be more than 200 thousand rubles:
“Two“ extreme ”works are not an indicator. I have nine months. ”
“I know on which proposal I’ll change my current job. But I worked in the same team for five years. And I prefer to work for a long time, because interesting results are made for me in 3-5 years, and not in half a year. ”
"In my case, I wanted to change everything not for one reason, but simply because of the psychological fatigue of one place."
Practice shows only one thing: using measures that cause a negative reaction from candidates, you actively screen out suitable candidates. But the company is people, and the specialists you are trying to select mechanically are people too!
So, let's say you imagine what an ideal candidate should be:
• Age: 22–25 years old.
• Higher education: physical and mathematical, economic, in engineering, energy or computer science.
• Experience in testing: 1-3 years.
• Personal qualities: proactivity, dedication, autonomy and organization (when you check it out?)
• Ready for full-time office work.
But life will inevitably make changes to this list. After all, the offer on the labor market of testers is not too rich - there are a lot of candidates with little or no experience. Many candidates are not at all eager to devote all their time to one employer - there are many qualified personnel on the market who want to work part-time or in freelancing format - for example, housewives who are fully capable of performing testing tasks, but only remotely and four hours a day (but no days off) . In addition, the impression about candidates is blurred by a rather poorly written resume. Make the appropriate amendments, soften the conditions!
Now expand your list to the list of required qualities and skills. It is very important to write your list in the language that potential candidates speak, read and think, and not at the corporate argo to which you are used to the company. Unfortunately, incomprehensibly executed vacancies are one of the reasons for the loss of suitable candidates. To understand you correctly, start a job description with what the company does, what the team does, tell us why the vacancy arose. Write very briefly and clearly how the testing process is organized and how automated at the moment, how many people are in a team, what place will a successful candidate take among them, what will be his responsibilities and what are the requirements for his knowledge, skills and experience. Ready for a job? You can prepare for the interview.
A well-constructed interview is no longer a dumb dropout tool. You can find out not only whether the candidate is suitable for your company, but also whether your company is suitable for the candidate. Remember that you will lose much more if you “weed out” a valuable specialist who, because of some nonsense or formality, does not “pass” according to your requirements than if you accept a candidate for a probationary period who will soon have to leave. According to experienced tester Cassandra Long (Cassandra Leung), who previously engaged in staff selection: “There are ... opinions that interviews do not work at all, so treat everything with a certain degree of skepticism, interviewing people ... Of course, everyone wants to find the perfect person on the first try but there is a trial period for this. ” In fact, there are only three large categories of questions - general questions, questions about knowledge and competencies, and questions about development and motivation.
General questions are asked to any candidates. Your favorite questions about leaving the previous place, about choosing a company, about strengths and weaknesses and about where and who the candidates will be in five years, are also related to general issues.
Do not ask why the candidate likes your company. Ask about why he likes the post. Do not ask him how determined and organized he considers himself - ask what his usual working day looks like. Do not ask who he sees himself in the company - better start with a story about the company and who the company sees him. After that, you can fruitfully communicate in the context of the specifics of the business, without fear that the candidate has the wrong idea about the position and company and does not understand what he should say about himself.
Do not forget to offer the applicant coffee or water. Unfortunately, representatives of companies at meetings with candidates (ie, with people dependent on them) often neglect such “trifles”, feeling themselves above them. Do not forget that now you are forming the first impression of the company, and it depends on you what condition - comfort or stress - this impression will be colored.
Questions based on competences and knowledge are needed to assess the professionalism of candidates. But do not be fooled - you will not be able to determine with their help the level of knowledge of the candidate, you only test his ability to maintain a conversation on professional topics. Ask the experts to compile any thematic questionnaire - about Agile, regression testing, error tracking systems or candidate actions in difficult situations (“you have completed the required steps, screen output has nothing to do with the description, what will you do?”) - all this is also important because one of your tasks is to weed out random people.
Motivational questions - the most interesting. The fate of the person you take to the company will depend not on how well he is currently familiar with Redmine, Trac or Jira, but on his abilities and training needs (here you need questions about how quickly he can learn or another system and what plans he has for further education), from his career expectations (it’s worth finding out his views on the development of employees in the organization, combining duties, teamwork and relationships with managers), his ability to cope with stress, and most importantly - because of he really likes to do what contributes to his self-realization, which he would very much like, but he was afraid to try earlier. Will the existing system of "growing personnel" help its development? Or maybe the interview results will help you correct this system?
A separate question is how to complete the meeting, if already during the interview it became obvious that the candidate does not suit you. The two most common strategies are to interrupt the meeting and say goodbye to the person, without explaining the reasons, and bring the interview to the end, say goodbye to the classic “we will contact you” and forget about the candidate forever - equally losing because they leave a negative impression.
Remember that one day the same candidate, who only significantly improved his professional level, can be very useful to you - but he will return to you only if a positive emotional background is formed around your company. Therefore, with a candidate who does not suit you, you should talk about why he does not suit you, what he should do to increase his value in the market, and where, in your opinion, he could be useful right now. Believe me, you will tell yourself many times for this thanks.
Unfortunately, you should not expect that all employers have already taken into account our recommendations and will look to you as a candidate, despite your ugly written resume and short work experience. Learn how to talk about your knowledge and your experience - both in resume format and in person. Systematize your “success stories”, select the most impressive ones, make a portfolio of them. At AGIMA, we hire just such specialists who are able to demonstrate real knowledge and experience.
The answer to the eternal question, where to get experience, when everyone is looking for specialists with experience, lies on the surface. In fact, there are always companies on the market that are looking for “junior” testers - employees with little or no experience. At such a job, if not with the most impressive level of remuneration, you will have the opportunity to gain experience and learn a lot in six months or a year. You will be able to pass the necessary certification in order to validly apply for more interesting positions - in the same company or on the market.
And just in case - nevertheless prepare to talk at the interview about the reasons for leaving the previous job, about the reasons for choosing “this particular company”, about “your main strengths and weaknesses” and about who you see yourself in five years. Iron the suit, it never hurts either ...
A sewer manholes do round so that they do not fail. Remember this - and do not fail.
It won't be expensive for both of us.
First of all, because, like in all other markets, employers — especially in the current economic situation — systematically overstate the requirements for candidates, lowering the bar on the proposed income, and candidates, on the contrary, try to get as much as possible for their services. According to the surveys of testers for 2016 and 2017 , in which more than 1.5 thousand people took part, one can see that most often the tester in Moscow receives from 75 to 110 thousand rubles. per month. There is a certain dependence on the experience of a specialist - if a person with work experience of less than one year can hardly hope for a salary higher than 75 thousand rubles, then testers who have worked 1-3 years receive up to 110 thousand rubles, testers from 3– 6 years of experience - up to 150 thousand rubles, and the salary of testers with more than 8 years of experience this year starts from 160 and exceeds 200 thousand rubles.
In St. Petersburg, the growth dynamics of testers salaries is more pronounced - if in 2016 the majority of specialists received 50–75 thousand rubles, then in 2017 - 90–110 thousand rubles. The dependence of salary on work experience is similar to that in Moscow, but the salary ceiling for the most experienced testers rarely exceeds 200 thousand rubles.
In Russia, everything looks a little less impressive. The bulk of software testing specialists can rely on salaries from 25 to 55 thousand rubles, testers with up to 6 years experience - up to 75 thousand rubles, with up to 8 years experience - up to 90 thousand rubles, the most experienced - up to 110 thousand rubles. I would like to say something positive on the results of the survey about the salaries of remote work, but there is too little data to compile a representative sample - you can focus only on the most “heap” answers concentrated in the range from 45 to 75 thousand rubles.
')
Unfortunately, we have very little data on the salaries of Kiev testers. There is a little more data on the territory of Ukraine, and it can be concluded that the salaries of the majority of Ukrainian testing specialists are in the range of $ 0.3–1.3 thousand, which is complementary to the distribution of wages across Russian regions. Salaries of testers with experience up to 3 years reach up to 1.5 thousand dollars, and testers with experience up to 6 years can receive 2.5-3 thousand dollars, as well as their older comrades. A similar picture is observed in Minsk, but for Belarus outside Minsk there is too little data to deduce any patterns from them. However, it is possible that this picture does not fully reflect the performance of Ukrainian companies engaged in outsourcing development for the foreign market, but we still do not have more accurate data.
Of course, it would be nice to update this information. Therefore, we ask you to go through our new survey - and the sooner we get a representative sample, the sooner we will publish updated data on the salaries of testers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
Anyway, you now have an idea of ​​the market level of the salary of a testing specialist, and we can proceed directly to the hiring process.
What are you collecting?
Understanding interviews as a process of screening out unsuitable candidates, we forget that for hundreds of candidates this is the only real experience of communication with the company. Since units of these hundreds receive work, it seems quite natural that for everyone else this single experience of communication becomes negative. But is it right? After all, an interview with candidates is an important way to communicate with a professional audience, which, in fact, would be worth making friends with. Yes, and a suitable candidate - that is, for one who is not only an experienced specialist, but also possesses a set of qualities that will allow him to accept corporate culture and fit into the team, you thus form a negative (at least cautious) attitude towards the company before signing the contract.
The other side of this problem is that, alas, the interview is increasingly turning into the process of screening out suitable candidates. Colleagues, you understand that your favorite question about sewer manholes has become a byword? It is easier to find a candidate who has not watched "Game of Thrones" than someone who does not know about sewers. This also applies to the answers to your other 20–30 favorite questions “on logic, erudition and creative thinking” - all of them have been published on the Internet long ago.
Tell me, why are you so sure that the best candidate is the one who came in an ideally ironed expensive suit, answers questions with the face of a poker player, remembers trigonometry and thermodynamics, and successfully passes stress interviews - or, worse, a polygraph? Why are you so persistently asking about the reasons for leaving your previous job, the reasons for choosing “our company”, about “your main strengths and weaknesses”, marital status and children, who the candidates see themselves after 5-10 years and How can they benefit the company? On all these issues, psychologists, journalists and bloggers have already traveled hundreds of times; In many respects precisely because of such questions, the concept of Eychar has become a household word in the bad sense of the word, and in general this is so last season.
It seems that the blackest hatred applicants hate the notorious personnel request, which is formulated as "no more than two jobs over the past five years." This is what real testers with work experience of more than 8 years write - the very ones whose Moscow salaries can now be more than 200 thousand rubles:
“Two“ extreme ”works are not an indicator. I have nine months. ”
“I know on which proposal I’ll change my current job. But I worked in the same team for five years. And I prefer to work for a long time, because interesting results are made for me in 3-5 years, and not in half a year. ”
"In my case, I wanted to change everything not for one reason, but simply because of the psychological fatigue of one place."
Practice shows only one thing: using measures that cause a negative reaction from candidates, you actively screen out suitable candidates. But the company is people, and the specialists you are trying to select mechanically are people too!
So, let's say you imagine what an ideal candidate should be:
• Age: 22–25 years old.
• Higher education: physical and mathematical, economic, in engineering, energy or computer science.
• Experience in testing: 1-3 years.
• Personal qualities: proactivity, dedication, autonomy and organization (when you check it out?)
• Ready for full-time office work.
But life will inevitably make changes to this list. After all, the offer on the labor market of testers is not too rich - there are a lot of candidates with little or no experience. Many candidates are not at all eager to devote all their time to one employer - there are many qualified personnel on the market who want to work part-time or in freelancing format - for example, housewives who are fully capable of performing testing tasks, but only remotely and four hours a day (but no days off) . In addition, the impression about candidates is blurred by a rather poorly written resume. Make the appropriate amendments, soften the conditions!
Now expand your list to the list of required qualities and skills. It is very important to write your list in the language that potential candidates speak, read and think, and not at the corporate argo to which you are used to the company. Unfortunately, incomprehensibly executed vacancies are one of the reasons for the loss of suitable candidates. To understand you correctly, start a job description with what the company does, what the team does, tell us why the vacancy arose. Write very briefly and clearly how the testing process is organized and how automated at the moment, how many people are in a team, what place will a successful candidate take among them, what will be his responsibilities and what are the requirements for his knowledge, skills and experience. Ready for a job? You can prepare for the interview.
I need a worker ...
A well-constructed interview is no longer a dumb dropout tool. You can find out not only whether the candidate is suitable for your company, but also whether your company is suitable for the candidate. Remember that you will lose much more if you “weed out” a valuable specialist who, because of some nonsense or formality, does not “pass” according to your requirements than if you accept a candidate for a probationary period who will soon have to leave. According to experienced tester Cassandra Long (Cassandra Leung), who previously engaged in staff selection: “There are ... opinions that interviews do not work at all, so treat everything with a certain degree of skepticism, interviewing people ... Of course, everyone wants to find the perfect person on the first try but there is a trial period for this. ” In fact, there are only three large categories of questions - general questions, questions about knowledge and competencies, and questions about development and motivation.
General issues
General questions are asked to any candidates. Your favorite questions about leaving the previous place, about choosing a company, about strengths and weaknesses and about where and who the candidates will be in five years, are also related to general issues.
Do not ask why the candidate likes your company. Ask about why he likes the post. Do not ask him how determined and organized he considers himself - ask what his usual working day looks like. Do not ask who he sees himself in the company - better start with a story about the company and who the company sees him. After that, you can fruitfully communicate in the context of the specifics of the business, without fear that the candidate has the wrong idea about the position and company and does not understand what he should say about himself.
Do not forget to offer the applicant coffee or water. Unfortunately, representatives of companies at meetings with candidates (ie, with people dependent on them) often neglect such “trifles”, feeling themselves above them. Do not forget that now you are forming the first impression of the company, and it depends on you what condition - comfort or stress - this impression will be colored.
Knowledge and competency questions
Questions based on competences and knowledge are needed to assess the professionalism of candidates. But do not be fooled - you will not be able to determine with their help the level of knowledge of the candidate, you only test his ability to maintain a conversation on professional topics. Ask the experts to compile any thematic questionnaire - about Agile, regression testing, error tracking systems or candidate actions in difficult situations (“you have completed the required steps, screen output has nothing to do with the description, what will you do?”) - all this is also important because one of your tasks is to weed out random people.
Development and motivation questions
Motivational questions - the most interesting. The fate of the person you take to the company will depend not on how well he is currently familiar with Redmine, Trac or Jira, but on his abilities and training needs (here you need questions about how quickly he can learn or another system and what plans he has for further education), from his career expectations (it’s worth finding out his views on the development of employees in the organization, combining duties, teamwork and relationships with managers), his ability to cope with stress, and most importantly - because of he really likes to do what contributes to his self-realization, which he would very much like, but he was afraid to try earlier. Will the existing system of "growing personnel" help its development? Or maybe the interview results will help you correct this system?
A separate question is how to complete the meeting, if already during the interview it became obvious that the candidate does not suit you. The two most common strategies are to interrupt the meeting and say goodbye to the person, without explaining the reasons, and bring the interview to the end, say goodbye to the classic “we will contact you” and forget about the candidate forever - equally losing because they leave a negative impression.
Remember that one day the same candidate, who only significantly improved his professional level, can be very useful to you - but he will return to you only if a positive emotional background is formed around your company. Therefore, with a candidate who does not suit you, you should talk about why he does not suit you, what he should do to increase his value in the market, and where, in your opinion, he could be useful right now. Believe me, you will tell yourself many times for this thanks.
Going without knowing where
Unfortunately, you should not expect that all employers have already taken into account our recommendations and will look to you as a candidate, despite your ugly written resume and short work experience. Learn how to talk about your knowledge and your experience - both in resume format and in person. Systematize your “success stories”, select the most impressive ones, make a portfolio of them. At AGIMA, we hire just such specialists who are able to demonstrate real knowledge and experience.
The answer to the eternal question, where to get experience, when everyone is looking for specialists with experience, lies on the surface. In fact, there are always companies on the market that are looking for “junior” testers - employees with little or no experience. At such a job, if not with the most impressive level of remuneration, you will have the opportunity to gain experience and learn a lot in six months or a year. You will be able to pass the necessary certification in order to validly apply for more interesting positions - in the same company or on the market.
And just in case - nevertheless prepare to talk at the interview about the reasons for leaving the previous job, about the reasons for choosing “this particular company”, about “your main strengths and weaknesses” and about who you see yourself in five years. Iron the suit, it never hurts either ...
A sewer manholes do round so that they do not fail. Remember this - and do not fail.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/337818/
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