What job hunting tips can you share? MoT Weekly – Issue 516

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What's been happening in the testing, tech and quality engineering MoTaverse?

— Simon Tomes, Community Lead at Ministry of Testing

Community

Community Stars are awarded to those who have helped expand the community. Let's go celebrate them!

🎧 A lively, voice-only gathering of software testers, QA engineers, and quality leaders unpacking real-world career challenges. From writing stronger CVs to navigating layoffs and building visibility in the community — this episode of This Week in Testing is about staying resilient, visible, and supported.

Chit chats with Sarah and Aafke at TestBash. There's always plenty of opportunity for meeting in the breakout area just outside the workshop space, the Founders Room in the Brighton Dome. It could be a first time or a perfect moment to reconnect. TestBash Early Bird discount ends May 31st.

Important reminders: Become a Friend of the Ministry of Testing and look who is leading with quality 👀

Big data testing with Emma. 🛢

🥞 New collection: MoT Coventry Meetup — Software Testing and Quality Engineer Meetup.

Eamon Droko and Chris Pratt testing out the watch QR code connection thing at MoT London 3.0. See the entire MoT London Meetup collection.

Great talk by Bill Matthews.

Maria would like to know, which testing conferences are on your radar in 2025?

Have you had a look at Swathika Visagn's profile? So many brilliant contributions. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, Swathika. Bonus: We met in person for the first time at last week's MoT London Meetup. 🤩

There's a bug on you!

Hands up if you've been to a MoT London Meetup before.

There's a theme emerging. Pizza and pizza, again. 🍕

Career growth

📌 Quality Assurance Engineer, full-time, Brussels, or remote (European timezone). Belgium.

📌 Lead Quality Engineer, Birmingham, UK - £65-£75K. Contact Matt Drinkwater.

What job hunting tips can you share?

Elizabeth Zagroba describes Spite-Driven Career Development.

Quality Experience: How I Look for Jobs on LinkedIn by Judy Mosley.

Mariem is keen to learn about new types of QA roles given the emergence of AI.

TestBash is going to come around quick. See what's instore and let us know if you need help getting learning and development budget sign off.

ICYMI. New course: A tester’s role in continuous quality. ♾️

Essentials

🤩 STEC: The modern, essential and foundational testing education, co-created with 57 practicing experts.

Testing evidence and Cognitive debt. Definitions you can add to. 🧠

So You Think QA Is Easy? by Shneha Paudyal.

Equivalence class partitioning and boundary value analysis with TestBench.

What should the ratio of automated to exploratory testing be?

👂 Good communication is a vital part of software development and an essential part of a software tester's skill set. Without it, it's difficult to articulate testing goals, share insights on potential risks, or provide actionable feedback. Learn more in MoT's Software Testing Essentials Certificate. Now available: Module 12: The art of communicating testing. 🗣️

23 language shifts every quality engineer can adopt today. The words we use every day matter, let's tweak them!

Leading with quality

"As part of our culture, we want to make it very clear that when done well, with care and with intention, community is the best kind of education out there. This doesn't mean no effort goes into it, if anything, the opposite is true. The heart, mind and souls of so many people go into sharing everything they know, for the benefit of others. Community as education is our thing. It can show up as events, as courses, as conversations, as research…and so much more. The key point is that community is always at the heart of everything we do." – Rosie Sherry, CEO and founder of Ministry of Testing.

We're building space for quality leaders, an intentional community investment to explore and expand the practice of leading with quality. 🤩

How do you determine what you can and can’t change as a leader?

The Software Quality Floor by Josh Grant.

"The moment we ship something is the moment it enters the real world. And in the real world, everything is subject to decay." – Alessandra Moreira.

Chris Henderson is leading with quality. If you’re in the quality leadership space, I thoroughly recommend connecting with him.

Calling ALL leaders for a one-day educational experience to help expand quality engineering and testing practices.

Leading with Quality

📍 Brighton - 30th Sep 2025

Tooling

🛠️ Tool of the week: TestQuality

Try these recipes to reuse login states, reduce test flakiness, and scale your test automation framework efficiently. Simple Playwright authentication recipes: A cookbook for software testers by Swathika Visagn. 🧑‍🍳

Release notes: Squish 9.0.1: Qt 6.9, Android 15, 64-bit Web.

Real-Time database change tracking in Go: Implementing PostgreSQL CDC by Julien Singler.

Postman launches full support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) — Build better AI Agents, faster.

Enhance Squish GUI Testing with AI Assistants Using the New MCP Sample by Otso Virtanen.

Have you recently visited the software testing tools directory? We're always adding new tools.

Automation

Richie Gulati earned a MoT Advanced Certificate in Test Automation. Bug congrats! 🏆

Bug congrats to Kris Lopatko for earning a MoT Advanced Certificate in Test Automation. Along with achieving the foundation and intermediate certificates over the last 12 months, that is some accomplishment. ⭐️

Coding

Do you know how to read code?

What Even Is Vibe Coding? by Ashley Willis.

Andy Bell says: The time for designers to learn to code is now.

Requirements

When has scope creep been good scope creep?

Strategy

"The whole team reviewed poorly written cards, performed root cause analysis and followed the "5 whys" process. This gave the team a greater awareness of which features were testable and the acceptance criteria required to know when the card would be done." Using an Agile definition of done to promote a quality culture by Emily O'Connor.

Netflix App Testing At Scale.

Testing strategies – Android.

Product Party Modes.