March 31, 2007 - Software QA Certifications - An Aid To Gaining Employment?

"Will obtaining a CSTE or CSQA certification improve my chances at getting a QA job?"

On SQAForums.com (where I help moderate), there are many questions about QA certifications as an aid to gaining employment.

Now, I want be right up front here.  I don’t own a certification.  I’ve never mentioned certification in any job description I’ve written.  And I've never hired anyone based on a certification.

I’ve known some great QAers who had one or more certifications, but I’ve known many more equally great QAers who were not certified.

Still, I wondered if perhaps employers were now starting to require some sort of certification in their hiring practices, so I decided to check.

Monster.com is perhaps the leading online career network.  And the CSTE and CSQA are two of the most popular QA certifications – administered by the Quality Assurance Institute.

So I decided to see how often CSTE and CSQA were required in jobs posted on Monster.

I went to Monster.com and searched for “Software QA”.  I got 4458 results.

When I searched for “Software QA CSTE”, I got 32 results (a bit over 0.7%)

Of those 32:

• 4 indicated that certification was required.
• 24 indicated that certification was “desired, a plus, nice to have, preferred, etc”.
• 1 indicated that it was “experience with the Body of Knowledge” for this certification that was desired.
• 3 had the phrase in a hidden keyword.  Basically they used a white font on a white background.  So it wasn’t actually mentioned in the job description at all, and certainly wasn't required, but candidates searching using the word CSTE would find the job. 

When I searched for “Software QA CSQA”, I got 26 results (a bit less than 0.6%)

Most of those 26 were the same jobs returned when searching for CSTE:

• None indicated that certification was required.
• 24 indicated that certification was “desired, a plus, nice to have, preferred, etc”.
• 1 indicated that it was “experience with the Body of Knowledge” for this certification that was desired.
• 1 had the phrase in a hidden keyword.

So will having a CSTE or CSQA help you get hired?  Perhaps.  But it probably won't matter.  I guess it couldn't hurt.

Have you ever required any sort of Software QA Certification when hiring?
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