Software testers travel a varied road: some love writing code and automating otherwise tedious testing tasks, while others enjoy strategic exploration of software to find the trickiest bugs, doing things that “no user would ever try”. Many enjoy a balance of both. Almost all software testers that I know suffer in one area: a living portfolio of work that they are able to present and discuss with hiring managers.

Developers have a lot more visibility in the github ecosystem to build a portfolio: their work necessitates frequent interaction with the platform, and developers have more obvious choices when it comes to showing their skills in the github medium. Many job postings for software developers and software testers ask for the applicants to share their github username, so that hiring managers can review their portfolio. Software testers are asked for this information, but the path forward (What should be included? What matters? Where do I even begin?) is daunting, at best.

I know, because I was one of those testers. I had heard, mostly from developers, to “go look for a project and find a way to contribute”. When I was a software tester, I couldn’t readily determine what contributions would be helpful to a project.

#github #testing #recruiting