What is your job about?
I am working as a Salesforce Quality Assurance Tester for PLDT, the largest fully integrated telecommunications company in the Philippines.
On the surface, I am responsible for ensuring that developments on the processes and systems of the business meet quality criteria through test planning, test execution, and issue tracking.
Daily, I write test cases for different user stories which are aligned with the business requirements. All scenarios where the functionality should be inspected to meet the acceptance criteria must be defined. The business analyst reviews and approve it before I proceed with the test execution.
The whole process goes like manually testing every button on the environment, checking the functionalities which should be working as expected, examining the user interface where the required parameters should be displayed, working together with the QAs to discuss the workarounds in testing some functionalities and assisting one another with the encountered defects, reporting program bugs and glitches, and documenting the test results. Then, attending daily stand-up meetings for the discussion of defects that are blocking the testers from moving the user stories to done and for the strategic planning to meet the client’s deadline and connecting frequently with the developers in resolving the encountered issues. Eventually, when a sprint is done, preparing for the demonstration of the developed sub-systems with the clients.
This is how a day in the life of QA Tester goes. Good communication with the team and an in-depth understanding of the requirements will make the job lighter.
What is your background?
I grew up in Malabon City where I have built my inner circle whom I’ve treated as my own siblings for almost two decades already. My point of view and values in life are heavily influenced by them.
Most of my schoolmates remember me as this big ball of energy who is very spontaneous, adventurous, amiable, straightforward, and a leader.
I was an active student. I love learning through books, especially through first-hand experiences. It was never easy wanting to excel academically and helping the whole engineering community at the same time. I was lucky enough to get the Excellence in Research Award for our group thesis while preparing for the college anniversary week.
I believe that you cannot give what you don’t have. As an achiever, I always strive to get the best that this world could offer so, I would have the capacity to share only the best with everyone.
I took the October 2019 Electronics Engineering licensure examination in which I got a conditional status. This incident brought me to darkness for months. Just when I decided to retake that one remaining subject, a pandemic happens. It feels like life slapped me, left then right.
That’s when I decided to look for fresh graduate jobs on LinkedIn and I landed on Capgemini’s post as it has the most appealing and welcoming content for people who will just start their journey in a corporate world.
Could someone with a different background do your job?
Quality Assurance Testers should always champion quality from the end user’s perspective.
Aside from being extremely keen on details, QA should also possess critical thinking. One should see beforehand all the possible scenarios where a certain functionality could fail. Manual testing is repetitive and tedious work. This includes positive and negative testing. QA Tester is a tremendously challenging role as it requires a long attention span and patience and composure to complete a user story.
As QA, the green light lies in your hands! Being certain is important as giving each test case a pass to the business is crucial.
What is the coolest thing about your job?
I love that I get to learn from Senior Functional Consultants and Senior Quality Assurance Testers in the team on how to think more critically in testing new featured functionality. On how I can put it on different perspectives or scenarios so I can spread it too thin and identify its limitations. In that way, I can help the quality assurance team in shaping the overall quality of systems and processes of the business in getting changes or features released and taking advantage of the out of the box functionalities.
What are the limitations of your job?
QA Tester is indeed a very time-demanding role. Long hours are spent in making sure that every single functionality is running flawlessly. Most of the time, business requirements change. Late office hours and weekend works are often necessary to meet the client’s calendar.
If you have a very short attention span and patience, you are having trouble identifying high-level scenarios a user would likely to face when using certain software, you find it hard to communicate your thoughts, and you take a long time in dealing with the dynamically changing requirements, reconsider taking this role.
3 pieces of advice to yourself when you were a student.