Recruiting, Hiring, and Retaining Great Testers

Hiring great testers is the single biggest challenge that test managers face. Unfortunately the number of experienced testers is dwindling while the number of testers with weak skill sets is proliferating. Drawing on his experience of building an independent testing company, Krishna Iyer shares unconventional-yet quite effective-methods to find, hire, and retain great testers. He looks for testers outside the software world and has had success, for example, with auditors-they have the same inquisitiveness that makes testers great. Krishna describes good interviewing techniques such as "vague questioning" that probe the candidates' thinking skills rather than their ability to recall facts. Krishna concludes with suggestions on how to retain great testers, including supporting social responsibility projects and balancing testers' personal needs with the demands of work.

• New pools of talent for recruiting testers
• Improve your selection skills
• Methods of employee retention that help both the individual and the organization