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Tips for Hiring QA Engineers for an Internet Startup

The one position I continue to have trouble hiring for is QA.  I manage a development team of 8 others.  5 Ruby on Rails developers, 2 Java and C# developers, and a system administrator.  My team is quite sharp.  Finding a QA person that can fit in to a Internet Startup Agile Development team has been quite a challenge.  And if you are a small company, like mine, you only get one person for this role.  The person you hire needs to be a rockstar.  No budget to have multiple people.

So what makes a great QA person?  Well I believe you should look for the following qualifications:

• QA Vocabulary.  Nothing is more annoying than a QA candidate who can’t tell me the difference between white box and black box testing.  There is a good set of software QA terms here http://geekswithblogs.net/srkprasad/archive/2004/06/02/5795.aspx and here http://www.aptest.com/glossary.html
• QA testing skills.  I usually take a story that is ready for testing and have the candidate take a shot during the interview.  I find it useful to leave the candidate alone while they do this. 
• Resumes that have grammer/spelling errors… trash ‘em.
• Extension of the product manager.  I don’t get to review every story that is developed and release, but the QA engineer does.  So your QA person is an extension of your product people/person.  It is critical the QA person get a feeling for what your product manager likes and dislikes. 
• Hard Ass.  You need to make sure that your QA candidate can stand up to manipulative developers that try to convince the QA person to “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature”.  The QA person needs to not roll over everytime they are steamrolled.
• Flexible schedule.  That’s right, the QA candidate needs to be comfortable with working long days and nights, especially just prior to a release. 
• Relevant experience.  Hiring a QA person for web testing that only has tested windows clients is not a good idea.  You are a startup, you need results fast.  Your not in training mode.

And of course, finding this person sure isn’t easy… so good luck!

December 14, 2008 - Posted by Keith Forsythe | Development Management | hiring, hiring tips, internet startup, internet startup hiring, qa, QA hiring tips, quality assurance, tips