Software testing is a challenging job. It’s also one of the most important phases of software development — part of the final, most essential steps of the entire process.
If you’re hiring testers for your team, good news – the opportunity to recruit a remote, global team means that the world is your oyster when seeking out new talent. In this blog post, we discuss how to hire software testers remotely so that your company keeps growing stronger every day. You will learn about what software testing entails, the importance of software testers, and tips on how to select the perfect applicant for the position.
What Is Software Testing and Why Is It Important?
In the software development lifecycle, testing comes in at the very end of the process. They’re there to handle:
- Finding bugs in the software working
- Writing test cases
- Testing user interfaces
- Writing automated test codes
- Outlining test plans and test strategy
Your team of software testers should verify the functionality and stability of any critical programs your business relies upon or an app built for your customers. They’ll check if the software runs according to its requirements, and if there are any issues, they’ll make suggestions on how to fix them. Software testing is a wide field, and there are different types of testing available — these include (but are not limited to):
Functional Testing — In functional testing, each function of the software application is tested to ensure that it meets the requirements. This testing mainly involves black box testing, meaning that it doesn’t examine the source code or internal workings of the software, only how it functions from an end user’s perspective. In order to test every functionality of the system, inputs are provided, outputs are verified, and actual results are compared to those expected. During this testing, the user interface, APIs, database, security, client/server applications, and functionality of the application under test are all checked.
Non-Functional Testing — Used to check non-functional aspects such as performance, usability, and reliability of software. It is explicitly designed to test the readiness of a system as per nonfunctional parameters which are never addressed by functional testing. As an example, a non-functional test would be to check how many people can log in to your software at once — this is referred to as ‘load testing’.
Integration Testing — Integration testing ensures that an entire, integrated system meets an accepted set of requirements. To ensure that the entire system is functioning appropriately, it is done in an integrated hardware-software environment.
Regression Testing — Regression testing is undertaken to determine if certain code modifications will break an application or consume resources.
Security Testing — A security test uncovers vulnerabilities in a system to ensure that it is free from any threats or risks. The purpose of these tests is to discover any potential flaws or weaknesses in a software system that could result in a loss of data, revenue, or reputation for an organization or its employees.
Usability Testing — In usability testing, real users are observed as they attempt to complete tasks on a website, app, or other digital product. In usability testing, your software testers are specifically looking to identify areas of confusion and ways to improve the overall user experience.
Infrastructure Testing — Every piece of software needs an infrastructure to function. Infrastructure testing process includes hardware, software, and network testing. This testing process checks any code that reads configuration variables from various components of the IT architecture and compares them to intended results. This testing helps improve Infrastructure monitoring capabilities, as well as scalability, accessibility and adaptability of an application in the cloud.
So, software testers are responsible for making sure the software functions properly after development — this much is evident. They’ll make sure the program runs as planned and is stable, even under a heavy load. This is important because if a program has a lot of bugs, it could cause the entire system to crash. However, Quality Assurance, or QA, is a term that often gets used interchangeably (and incorrectly) with software testing, but there are some very important differences to note — let’s dive into these below:
What’s The Difference Between Software Testing and Quality Assurance?
Quality Assurance ensures that appropriate processes and procedures are in place (and adhered to) to ensure that products and services meet an agreed level of quality. QA is much broader than software testing, because it includes more than just the outputs of software delivery (the end product), but also how the product is developed, to improve the likelihood of success.
In software development, QA works out ways to prevent possible bugs. Stakeholders, business analysts, developers, and testers are all involved in the QA process as part of the software development lifecycle (SDLC). By defining and establishing software development processes and quality standards, the QA process assists the project team in improving the productivity of the project.
The purpose of software testing is to validate the product against specifications and customer requirements and to identify and report defects within it. Software issues can be detected by using various testing techniques such as functional, and non-functional, along with all of those other types we mentioned above in the previous section. In addition, the software testing process aims to ensure that any defects found in the product are fully fixed without any side effects before its final release.
Why Hire Remotely?
Remote hiring lets you find the best talent regardless of geographical location. As long as they have an internet connection, they can work for you. There are a few reasons why remote hiring is beneficial for any company
- There are a greater number of candidates to choose from — this allows you to find the best possible employee for any position — especially highly-skilled positions such as software testing.
- Remote recruiting is less expensive and more scalable — hiring in-house is expensive and time-consuming, but with remote hiring, you can scale your hiring efforts quickly and easily.
- You can hire employees who can’t relocate — not everyone can relocate to work for your company. With remote hiring, you can hand-pick the best personnel, regardless of their location. This is made simpler through services such as Remote.com. Their EOR (Employer of Record) service makes it simple to employ talent from anywhere in the world. They handle all of the legal aspects — payroll, benefits, taxes, stock options, and local compliance, freeing you to focus on building the perfect team for your business.
- You can retain employees who want to work remotely — the pandemic changed the way the world approaches the workplace. Many employees not only prefer to work remotely, they expect the option to do so when seeking out a new position. By hiring remotely, you can keep the top talent at your company (and prevent them from straying to another company offering a remote working environment!)
How To Hire Software Testers Remotely
Hiring software testers remotely can be challenging, but it also has its advantages. You get to choose from a wider pool of candidates, and you can hire the most talented applicants without worrying about their geographical locations.
Before you begin the hiring process, make sure you have the following prepared:
- Have a detailed and highly-defined job description ready, and make sure you define the responsibilities of the position in extreme detail. Detail the project’s scope so that candidates can envisage exactly where their skills and expertise will fit in. This may involve having an open discussion with the hiring manager and creating a hiring checklist.
- Build a testing environment so that candidates can see how they would work remotely. If your business hasn’t hired any talent remotely before then this step is incredibly important.
- Ensure all the necessary communication channels are available. Does your business communicate and collaborate through Google Workspace? Does your organisation make use of instant messaging clients like Slack or Discord? If so, your candidate will need to be introduced to these elements beforehand if they’re not already familiar with them.
- Outline a ‘cultural fit checklist’ in the hiring process so you can make sure the candidates are a good fit for your company.
- Once you’ve made your selection and are beginning the onboarding process, give your new hire the option to use whatever software they need to stay productive while working remotely. Need some inspiration? We’ve drafted up a list of our favourite remote work tools on our blog.
Software testers are a crucial part of ensuring your program or application performs properly, is fully functional, and meets the expectations of your organisation and the end user. There are plenty of challenges when it comes to hiring remote software testers. To overcome these challenges, you’ll need to define a clear and concise hiring process and make sure you’ve got a suite of tools to ensure there’s a solid bridge between the physical and virtual working environment.