Which should it be, Certification in WinRunner/QTP ( Specialist Exams) or ISEB Intermediate
I have a little money approx £250 and 2 months to use on some study before starting my new job. I have already done my ISEB Foundation, but wish to maybe use the time and money in obtaining some certification. but which should I work on and study for? Some sort of specialist exam or the ISEB Intermediate. What would you do and why?
Answers (9)
It depends on what you want from your career. Are you interested in functional testing or in automation?
Personally I've rarely seen a job req looking for a process certificaton but I've seen a lot of req looking for a tool certification.
So if your interest is in getting a job I'd go with the QTP cert.
Due the same reasons given by Corey, I also suggest tool certification. HP has come up with a career ladder of certifications for Quality Center and Performance Center. I find those quite helpful in the job search.
Mark,
As a recruiter in the UK I am continually searching for both manual and automated testers I would advise you to go down the automated test route and gain tool certification. There are so many manual testers out there, it is easy for an employer to provide a tester with industry specific knowledge or product knowledge they require to fulfil a given role. However, from experience it is very much harder to find high calibre candidates with experience and certification in automated test tools and there are not many employers who are willing to provide this level of expertise.
I hope this helps your dilemma and if you have any further questions, feel free to drop me an email mark.sturgess@sword-uk.com
Regards,
Mark
From reading your profile and your questions I can gather / assume that you have chosen a career path in software Quality Assurance / Software Testing, you have a position lined up in 2 months which I assume is a tester role and to date you have limited experience in a formal quality assurance / test team? If this is the case I would opt for the more generic ISEB / ISTQB Intermediate - jumping into automation and automation tools can work OK but until you grasp the overall process (SDLC) and how Manual testing / regression testing is turned into a formal automated approach I feel it may be a struggle to turn your specific tool knowledge into a usable asset in your new position.... unless of course your new role requires QTP and you are starting as an Automation Engineer :-)
I worked for Mercury for a long time. If you want to make more money, go down the automation path. If you want to end up in management, process will be more important. Typical QTP guys (WR is a retired product) end up being focused on code, not people.
Steven
I would have to agree with Craig. Although getting a QTP certification will make more recruiters call you, it won't necessarily improve your chances of getting an SQA position.
When I've been conducting technical interviews with QTP experts I'm often dismayed at finding that it's become the only tool in their toolbox. Given a hammer, the world becomes a nail and they propose using "automation" to test everything. And they can't tell me much about what a good test case even looks like.
If you have a firm grounding in solid test principles and can put them to practice finding bugs in software you will be a valuable asset. Given a rudimentary training in a new problem area you will be valuable quickly as you work the basis test data into aggressive tests and find new bugs. If you were to "automate" your way you'd *still* need a good grounding in test theory in order to produce useful automated tests.
Personally, I've given thumbs-down on people with good automation credentials because I didn't trust that they would write decent tests.
I agree with what everybody has already said however I'd suggest either just giving the money to me or purchasing books covering automation principles and different testing subjects.
The BCS will have a study guide for the Intermediate exam in Sept. (or at least it was Sept. last time I checked) and I believe you can already purchase sample questions from the BCS site and there are alot of resources (blogs, forums, etc) online to help gain a better understanding of different life cycles, methodologies etc and the same for automation.
Tool Certification without experience isn't really going to help much.
Also agree with above mentioned thoughts.
Just a fact that Winrunner is not supported by HP and it won't be. So there is no sense to pass related certification for sure. I would say that this tool is a dead tool.
Mark,
I have a couple of clients that can sponsor CPC qualifications in QTP - give me a call and you could pay for the ISEB Intermediate and still get the CPC - best of both worlds!!
On a less cheeky note (since you have accepted a job), the decision has to be based around your future career plans. Automation roles pay well, and lend themselves to the contract market, but you might want to consider getting some more experience under your belt before specialising.
The CPC also costs more than £250 I believe, and you need to be at a certain level before you can consider it - for example have you written many scripts? Done keyword/data driven testing? Have you used Descriptive Programming?
A lot of my clients are increasingly looking at open-source tools because of Mercury's licence prices and a lot of other will take people with a good understanding of automation in general rather than being tool specific. For example knowing when not to automate (e.g. unstable/changing scripts) is as important as knowing how to automate. So you could easily argue that the ISEB would be of more benefit.
It all comes down to what you want to do in the future.
Best wishes.
Paul
