Why you should consider a career as an Automation Test Engineer and How to get your foot into this industry even without a Computer Science Background
With the job market being very competitive and more and more millennials finding it harder to land a job , I highly recommend anyone looking for a stable well paying career, with a lot of opportunity for advancement to look into becoming a Software Quality Assurance Engineer.
Why you should consider this career path:
Over the last decade if you look at the top 10 jobs in demand you will consistently see that QA Test Engineer is one of the jobs on the list
It pays well and opportunity to get great raises as you progress in your career
Technological advancements growing at an exponential rate. This is proven by sites like Steemit, the growth of the cryptocurrency market is resulting in a lot of new software tech businesses, everything depends on the internet in our society, smart phones , tablets, and I can go on and on about technology. This is going to be looked back at the era of the Technological Revolution. Just like in the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century created a boom in a whole new line of work
Related to technological advancements, this is causing entire sectors of jobs to die out because of automation. For example the self driving cars are going to kill the transportation industry so that market is going to be phased out and a new market will likely shift in the software sector
Not only will automation engineers be in demand but any software developer job will be in demand. If you know how to make Automation Tests , you will also likely learn how to code in programming languages like C#, Java, Python and others along the way increasing your marketability in the field
Companies are beginning to Realize the importance of Automation Testing because it saves them a TON of money annually and it frees up some manual testers to test the more complex feature of their web applications since the automation aspect frees up there time of doing the same old redundant tests that could easily be automated. Improving the quality of their product results in better sales, a more trustworthy and reliable product . Also Automation Testing is proactive to where bugs can be found much faster and addressed by developers saving the developers headaches in the future.
How can you get your foot into this industry?
There are many resources out there on the internet that you can self teach yourself with along with books. Sites like YouTube and Udemy have great tutorial videos for beginners and they are free for the most part. There are a few on Udemy where you have to pay and they range between 10-60 dollars for these courses and they are all well made. One of the best courses I took is taught by a man named "Mr Karthik KK" on Udemy . It was a paid course(Which I will discuss in another time) but he also has a second course that is for free so you can get an idea of how to do automation testing. The free course link is: https://www.udemy.com/selenium-csharp-and-java-titbits/learn/v4/overview
Since most software companies work on the "Cloud" aka Internet, the best automation tool to learn is called Selenium WebDriver, which is a test application that can be used with just about any programming languages. Most popularly Java, Python and C#.
Even if you know nothing about programming at the moment you should try to apply at a software company as a tech support representative. As long as you know how to work a basic computer and familiar with the operating system (most likely windows) you can get a job without having a technical background or even a degree. Then you use that job to leverage you way into good standing in the company and after about a year try to make a move internally with the company to become a manual qa tester. During this time you can use it to learn automation testing and if there are no internal openings you can try to look for jobs at other companies.
And the last part is continue self teaching yourself and even look for classes at the local JC or extended studies courses offered at colleges and take a few programming or testing courses. Also look on Meetup for QA test group where you can network with others in your field!
Scholarships can be a huge help in financing your education https://spincareer.com/automation-qa/. These scholarships typically don't require repayment after graduation. Thousands of scholarships go unclaimed every year in the United States, and you can take advantage of them to finance your education. It is estimated that each year, approximately $100 million worth of scholarships go unclaimed, due to the lack of qualified applicants.