Software testing is a new career area, but the increasing scale of domestic software industry has led to tremendous demand for qualified software testing talents.
Senior software testing talents are hard to find
It is learnt that the IT talents gap in China is over 1 million, of which more than 300,000 are for software testers. Song Feng said that the increased demand for software testers are mainly caused by China's escalating software industry. Domestic software industry has made breakthrough in the traditional way in producing software, from individual development model to industrialized production-line model.
As the quality assurors of industrial products, software test engineer has become an essential software development part. It is learnt that ratio of software testing and development staff within the country is about from 1:4 to1:5, while overseas ratio is 1:1. We can see that, the domestic demand for software testers and career development for those testers have a bright future ahead.
High-end and middle-level talents are rare to find
It is learnt from the HR of a large number of enterprises that the main difficulty is in recruiting senior test engineers, i.e. high-end and middle-level software testers. It is apparent to see from the recruitment and job requirements of some well-known enterprises.
For example, Microsoft China's recruitment: software test engineer, which is required to have four years or more testing related work experience. And numerous enterprises recruiting software test engineers generally require the candidates to have more than 2 years of relevant experience in testing, and the high-end or middle-level jobs require work experience of at least three years or more.
At present, there are three main sources for software testers in China: firstly, software developers and technical talents who changed their career; secondly, college graduates of computer science; thirdly, experienced professionals after some training. The biggest problem of HR is to find experienced senior software testing professionals. Since software testing is just emerging in China, there is still a long way and great pressure for enterprises looking for high-end talents.
High professional requirements
Although faced with such a big demand for qualified talents, enterprises searching for suitable staff still have their own choice. Those who have a strong spirit of adventure, patience, cautiousness, sense of responsibility, good communication skills, strong logical thinking and learning ability, with a solid foundation of computer knowledge, comprehensive business knowledge and high test skills, have the knowledge of and love the software testing work is the talent enterprises really need. Certainly, it is not difficult to tell that the English skills for this job are also very high from the English recruitment posters of many businesses.
Great room for junior engineer to grow
The survey showed that software testing employees with 1 to 3 years experience account for 45% of the total number, followed by new practitioners with work experience of less than one year, accounting for 39% of total number. 84% have work experience of less than three years and only 16% of employees have testing experience of more than three years.
Because software testing is receiving great attention in just a few years within the country, testers with more than three years work experience are relatively in short of. Therefore it is not realistic to recruit a sufficient number of qualified testing staff for some enterprises requiring three years work experience. Most software testers are in the initial stage of their career development, and junior testers account for 74% of the overall workers in the industry. Besides, 11% of the testers are testing group leaders, and senior test engineers account for only five percent. This reflects the pyramid structure of talents in an industry on one hand, on the other hand reflects the need to strengthen the training of software testers.
Software testing professionals were largely born in the 1980s, the ratio was 81 percent, and 18% for those who were born in the 1970s, while only 1% for professionals born in 1960s. Software testers born in the 1980s are the main force of this job, and due to the lack of experienced testers, the career development room for those testers are tremendous.
Software testing starts late in our country and software testers are mainly in their initial stage of career life, which illustrates the existence of a broad area of career development space.
Remind: choose the right field is very important
Song Feng said that many software testing is typically for a certain specific industry or area. Therefore, the expertise and knowledge of the area is also critical. And with the continuous growth of project experience and in-depth understanding of the industrial background, software testers will be more popular.
According to the survey data, 51% of the employees as software testers perform manual functional testing, followed by the test case design which is 16 percent. The proportions of workers in test management, automated functional testing, performance testing are relatively the same.
66% of the testing staff concern about business knowledge of application software industry, followed by telecommunications / Internet service, the proportion was 42%, the proportion for software outsourcing, typical industries (finance, banking, insurance, etc.), telecommunications / Internet systems and equipment are respectively 31%, 24% and 24%. The academic qualification of software testers concentrates in the undergraduate, the ratio is 70 percent, followed by college graduate, and the ratio is 23%; higher education (including Masters and Ph.D.) is 6 percent and 1% for those below the college degree.
