Writing a resume is something of an art form, and can often depend on using the right keywords to get your resume shifted toward the top of the “heap.” Testing tools are sometimes the essential or relevant keywords that can make all the difference in your application noticed or filed without being read. You might associate testing tools with laboratory experiments or with software development, or you might have seen them used in game development. They can be used in almost any setting where teams are working together to produce a product.
Learning to Use the Tools
You don’t have to be in the research and development department to realize value from these products. Human resource and management teams can also use them, not only to stay in touch with what is going on in R & D, but to keep up with your own team’s trial and error processes.
Here, in alphabetical order are 7 testing tools to mention in your Software developer resume to get the job. You don’t need a paid subscription to learn how to use them. Most offer trial subscriptions and directions for use on their home page.
image taken from gcreddy.com
- Bugzilla – Here is a quotation from the Bugzilla copyright documentation, “You can download it, install it, use it for any purpose whatsoever without the need for a license or payment. Isn’t that refreshing?” It is refreshing, but it isn’t perfect. It is “free” in the sense that it can be downloaded, improved, integrated and a number of other things. But you might have to pay for the original software. It is open source, which means that you are allowed to go “under the hood” and tinker with the programming. There are a number of versions of Bugzilla, and if you can master using it, you are certainly ahead of the game. The catch is that it isn’t necessarily user-friendly for the average computer user. It is capable, however, of doing all the things that the other programs on this list can do. You just might have to tinker with it a little bit.
- JIRA – This is a user-friendly bug tracking program that can be used to keep up with who is testing what when you are working on a project. It was developed by an Australian company called Atlassian. The name is based on Gojira, which is the Japanese name for Godzilla. You can use it to assign tasks, track whether things are done and, yes, what happened when you tested a portion of a program. Practitest and Zephyr work with it.
- Practitest –An application management program “designed to help you control your testing and development process.” With Practitest, you can assign tasks, identify tests to run, view results, and create reports. It can work with JIRA or with Bugzilla – which, just incidentally, means that not everyone on your team needs to know how to use Bugzilla, while allowing your development team to use the open source flexibility.
- TestPad – This is a super simple test tracking program set up to look like a sheet of paper with columns and check marks to show when something is done. It is incredibly user-friendly so it can be used by your development team and your office teams alike. Over time, it can be set up to collect data about projects and the way they are going.
- TestRail – Works a lot like TestPad, but is web-based, making it super easy to share across geographic locations, a feature that is valuable for international development teams. It is easy to scale to the size of your company, so if you have only a few team members, it will work well for you but it can also be scaled up for larger companies.
- Tricentis – One of the older DevOps testing programs, it was created in Austria in 2007, using Series B funding from Venture Partners. It has several software trial management programs that work together for various tasks. In many ways, it is the grown-up big brother of all the other software testing programs.
- Zephyr – Zephyr is very user-friendly program that interfaces nicely with Jira to track testing, group projects, and create reports.
What Exactly Do These Programs Track?
These software programs are frequently used to track testing of various parts of software programs. They could be used to track and manage other sorts of testing as well. Tracking software, however, is their biggest strength since some of them are set up to run programs and auto-test portions of them. This is often done at night while programmers are sleeping.
Why They Will Look Great on Your Resume
Facility with these programs often means that you have worked on a team using the program. Not only will the company not have to train you to use the software, it is a possible sign that you are familiar with the R&D testing process. Furthermore, when electronic document readers scan your resume and find one of these used as a keyword, it can pop your resume into the right selection list.
A Word of Caution
Familiarize yourself with one or more of these programs before using them on your resume. Sign up for a temp position that uses one of them and get your feet wet with the test process. If that is not possible, download a trial version of the program and just play around with it.
Be honest about your level of familiarity with these utilities. But do learn about them. They could provide the keywords that will get the person in charge of hiring to look at your resume. Of course, you want other great skills and abilities to back up your familiarity with these testing programs.
If the Programs are New to You
If you are just learning how to use the programs, pick out one that makes sense to you, and practice. Once you know how it works, feel free to add that skill to your resume.
