Tricks to Increase Software Testing Interview Calls


Software testing is one of the most sought-after IT professions. Testers from different organizations always try to enhance their testing skills in order to crack QA interview and up in a well-paid testing project. Testers go through the latest testing techniques, methodologies, and tools to gather as much information as possible. And with working project experience, their knowledge base increases.

But merely adding new skills won’t be of any use, if employers or job providers are not aware of your current expertise. And this is why software testing professionals keep adding new skills and keep their resume updated so that they get the best opportunities that the market has to offer. In spite of adding proper skills and keeping the resume updated, most software testers complain of reduced QA interview calls. What is the reason behind fewer interview calls? How to increase interview calls? In this post, we would talk about the primary reasons as to why professionals experience a dip in interview calls and share a few popular tricks to increase QA interview calls.

Why do some Candidates receive fewer QA Interview Calls

There are a number of different parameters responsible as to why some candidates receive fewer QA interview calls. We will talk about the most common and the obvious ones.

Improper formatting

Resume is a professional document, and you can’t be casual while creating it. There are many instances when applicants due to their negligence completely disregard the norms that need to be followed while creating it. You should avoid putting your picture in the resume or any form of background color or highlight. In case proper margin, alignment and line spacing are not maintained throughout the resume, it creates a negative impression for the recruiter. Also overusing “Bold” or “Italic” steers the recruiters’ attention and renders the information redundant.

Missing keywords

In most companies, every resume sent to the company is filtered using an ATS (Applicant Tracking System). This is the first screening process which searches the candidates’ resume for relevant keywords. If the required keywords for the job position are missing, the candidate’s resume is rejected. For this reason, candidates whose resumes were rejected by ATS doesn’t receive any QA interview calls.

Lacking Quality

In the case of a resume, quality is much more important that quantity. Resume must be to the point, should depict the right information and should not misguide the recruiter with ambiguous data. The tone and content structure should be professional. When candidates stuff in words to lengthen their resume and use improper writing style, it creates a negative impression and lessens the chances of QA interview call.

Job Openings don’t relate to Candidate’s Skills

This is one factor that candidates can’t change. When a software testing position opens up in a company, recruiters hire testers based on their merit and how to fit they are for the job position. But when the job position closes, the interview process ends.

How to Increase QA Interview Calls

Now that we have talked about the possible reasons responsible for lower QA interview calls, the only plausible solution is to create the resume properly and upload it at the right places. Below, we have listed down some tricks for creating the perfect resume and discussed the ways by which you can ensure that your resume reached the right places.

Make your Resume Aesthetically Pleasing

The first impression does matter a lot especially when recruiters get less than 20 seconds to scan through your resume. So you have to take some efforts to make it pleasing. 
  • Provide a margin of 1 inch to 1.25 inch so that your text resides inside a strict boundary. Provide lines to separate one section from the next. The goal should be to make your resume’s design minimalistic.
  • Divide your resume into different sections so that recruiters can easily focus on one section at a time.
  • As resumes are professional documents, you should refrain from putting any image, highlight or background color/ texture. Even though using such highlights would make you stand out from the rest, it won’t go well with your project manager who might be interviewing you. Also, if print-outs are made of your resume from a blank & white printer, it would look patchy and would do more bad than good.

Easy to read Resume

Now that you have made the resume structure appealing, it’s time to add some elegance to the actual content. Once the recruiter is impressed by the overall look and feel of the resume, your next goal should be to ensure that he is able to scan through the resume easily.
  • Using a consistent font and the right font-size is vital while creating your resume. You can make used of Bold and Italic styles to highlight headings or certain areas of the resume, but most of the content would use the regular font & size.
  • You can use bold style to highlight your summary and the names of your previous companies, while the general description would be normal. Ideally Times New Roman, Arial, Verdana or Calibri can be used to write the resume while the font-size can be kept between a range of 10 to 12.
  • You can even change the line-spacing from 1 to 1.15, to make your resume easy to go through.

Dividing Resume into Sections

You would never want your resume contents to be jumbled up in a single section. Giving a recruiter a cocktail of skills and past experiences in a couple of sheets, to go through in less than 20 seconds is not the right choice.
  • You must divide your resume into different categories and provide information in each category. The most common sections are: Contact information/ Summary/ Skills/ Work History/ Education.
  • In each section, you should provide related information and try to make it as concise and straightforward as possible. Providing Summary and Skill sections on top of the page quickly draws the recruiter’s attention to the areas where you have pointed out your key strengths and where you want to see yourself in the near future.
  • Whereas the details about your past companies and the roles that you played in each of them would be added later after the skills section.

SEO Resume

To get QA interview calls, you upload your resume in different job portals. There you create your account and add relevant work experience and enter skills. But the search engine or job portal only tracks your profile/ resume on the basis of relevant keywords. For this reason, you must optimize your profile on job portals.
  • You must add relevant testing related keywords on the portal as well as in your resume. For example, if you are in automation testing, you must mention Selenium/ QTP at least twice in your resume and at least once in your profile.
  • If your resume is perfectly constructed with proper keywords, but your profile on the job portal lacks such inputs, recruiters might not even look at your resume and steer away by simply looking at your profile on the portal.
  • So you must always provide all testing specific keywords related like, tools used,automation framework worked on, known scripting languages in your profile as well as in your resume. It will surely help increase the number of QA interview calls.

Using Action Verbs

As we have earlier mentioned, every resume first goes through the ATS where they are scanned for the keywords required for the job position. So, if you don’t provide the right keyword in your resume the ATS would skip forward and search for any other resumes that have that keyword.
  • Apart from tools, key skills and roles, adding action verbs based on your role are very important. If you are a junior tester, adding action verbs like tested, attended calls, documented test cases, e.t.c. would be a great practice.
  • The action verbs depend on the years of experience you have and the position you hold. For senior testers, action verbs like mentored new testers, organized meet-ups, client negotiation, e.t.c. can be helpful.

Uploading it at the Right Places

Even after creating the perfect resume, you can’t expect any QA interview calls unless you have uploaded it on different job portals and other networking sites.
  • So, the best practice would be to upload your resume on at least 2 different job portals, with 100% profile completion. This will provide complete visibility to recruiters who look at your profile or download your resume.
  • Apart from job portals, you can also apply for job QA interviews on LinkedIn or directly on a company’s website. Every company has a career section on their website where they allow candidates to apply in their company.
  • If you don’t mind working abroad, you can even post your resume in foreign recruitment forums, and increase your chances of getting calls from different entities.

Making the Best out of Recommendations

You should never take recommendations lightly. QA Interviews that started from recommendations have higher success rate than the ones that started from a walk-in drive. As recommendations are done by trusted employees of a company, they need to invest any time to search for the right candidate. Also, the scrutiny process is pretty straight forward.
  • So, if you really want to increase the number of QA interview call, you should ask your friends in other companies to recommend you.

Updating your Profile/Resume Periodically

When you update your profile on a job portal, it moves up on the stack. So when recruiters look out for candidates having testing skills same as your profile would be amongst the first he/ she sees. So while you are searching for a job, you must update your job profile once a month.
  • In addition to that, when you learn new testing techniques or test automation tools, you must add them to your resume. This not only makes your resume ready for sudden QA interview and also prevents you from missing out of items to put in the resume.

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