The 10 Core Values All Expert Testers Have In Common

Kristel Kruustük , Kristel is Testlio's co-founder.

June 4th, 2014

A world-class tester is a person who is able to rapidly discover highly relevant information about the product, who makes the most use of any resource that is available to her, and who has the respect of people involved in a project. It is a person who can be trusted. – Ilari Henrik Aegerter

What we expect and value in our testers?

I have often faced questions on “what makes it a good tester?” or “how I should improve to become a world-class tester?”. Like any other profession, testing needs a lot of practice. It’s important to learn and get feedback from the ones who have become industry experts. Besides that, there are also lots of personality traits that would help you. In this blog post I try to highlight the ones that we value in Testlio. Practicing those would make you a better tester and guarantee a long career in the testing field.

Self-Driven

1. Passionate

We value testers who love testing. It’s all about passion and going beyond what is obvious.

2. Imaginative and critical

Don’t believe everything that you see. You’ll often find that the most rewarding outcomes come from areas less explored.

3. Flexible

The only constant is change. However rather than see it as an annoyance, take it as an opportunity to sharpen your skills by maintaining high adaptability.

4. Committed

When you join a project, you become a core part of their product. Your testing efforts are directly aligned with the reliability and potential success of the client’s product.
By joining a project you promise to make the best effort to make the client happy. You will become responsible for the testing result.

Team player

5. Responsive

No one likes to wait. When you have been chosen to join a project, it is best practice to reply within 24 hours with any necessary information or questions you may have. If you’re asked to clarify any issues, please give the latest information before the end of the cycle.
When invited to a project or a test cycle it’s often first-come-first-served bases. We expect testers to respond within 24 hours. If asked for clarification for some of the issues, we expect testers to give this latest before the end of the cycle.

6. Communicative

Project chat is the best place to post your concerns or questions that you encounter during any testing. We respond to these as quickly as possible and will get additional clarification from clients. If something does not work as expected please notify us as soon as possible and we will fix it immediately.

7. Collaborative

We love testers who share and help others. It helps us all grow as a whole. It is highly encouraged to submit your findings in the Project Chat. This creates a greater level of synergy and could greatly benefit other testers as well. By doing this, you could become a thought leader in the testing community and inspire others. You should value your team as well, if they have any problems volunteer to help, they will greatly appreciate it.

Detail-oriented and devoted

8. Detailed

Always state everything relevant to the issue. Keep your issue reports structured and concrete. For most of the additional data (feature area, device, issue type) we have special fields in Testlio and it’s super easy to always add those.

9. Disciplined

We pay for the hours assigned to you, which is done through task lists in Testlio. Testers are responsible for keeping track of their time and we provide tools to make it more convenient. If a tester exceeds the time assigned, we expect them to notify us as soon as possible. If we see that it’s worth continuing, we will add additional time to the tester and pay for it as well. Test setup and reporting are calculated into the assigned time. If a tester is new to the project, we usually assign more time to the tester in order to let them get accustomed with the app.

10. Accountable

If our analyses show that a tester didn’t contribute on the level we expected or didn’t spend the whole time assigned to her, we might ask clarifying questions. If tester fails to respond within 24 hours we will be inclined to decline the payout.

In return we offer

Working and learning alongside industry experts
Practicing your skills and getting feedback on how to improve
World-class platform tailored for testing
Constant improvements to make your testing even smoother
Your voice to always help us improve our product
Highly competitive monetary rewards