How do you mentor and coach junior quality assurance professionals?

Observing their natural curiosity and approach to quality issues will help identify strenghts and weaknesses, and it is something that can lately be discussed in 1v1s.

One very important skill in quality engineering is effective communication. As as qa, one would find themselves in a situation where you need to push back or push forward on things countless times. As a coach, it’s really helpful to highlight the importance of that and provide pointers on how to handle situations like these via effective communication

Establish Clear Expectations: Clearly define the roles, responsibilities, and expectations for the junior QA professionals. This includes understanding project goals, quality standards, and timelines. Build a Supportive Relationship: Create an open and supportive environment where junior QA professionals feel comfortable asking questions and seeking guidance. Foster a positive mentor-mentee relationship. Provide Comprehensive Training: Offer training sessions covering both theoretical concepts and practical skills relevant to QA. This can include test case design, execution, defect tracking, and test automation.

The best way is to identify the area of interest , understand their approach in solving a problem , their thought process to break the application . This will help understanding their abilities and then they can be nurtured to excel in the respective areas

Make sure you develop an Individual Development Plan with them. Review it quarterly and use regular 1:1s (weekly) and various meetings to give your own examples of how you've resolve certain issues in your own career. Let them know what worked and what you would have done differently.

I would also add that while reviewing regularly and adjusting the plans etc, this should be done in conjunction with and discussion with those learners. They may not wish to continue down the path you originally laid out for them, and may show interest in other activities that should be exploited. If you try to push them down a path they don’t want to travel, they will lose interest, and you will lose them!

People call 'Experience is the Best Teacher' for everyone. It has the great potential and learnings. To mentor the Team and be a ideal #Leader, one should be Open and Flexible to share their experiences and the values they gained from them to their team which in turn helps to: 1. Creates a better rapo within the #Team 2. Understand the #Communication and Experience gap within the team 3. Provides a clear picture of what needs to be done 4. Sets the required Expectations 5. Promotes #TeamCollaboration

AI powered generic information here. We haven’t defined an agreed curricula of skills necessary to success in a very broad career, and as such cannot assess gaps, only opinions.

Connecting with the right people early on can help accelerate your career growth, it is important to understand though that you must provide some value to others the relationships need to be reciprocal

This is exactly what we are trying to do at the RQA - providing platforms to professionals around the world to connect in the hope that we can cultivate a community that can thrive on it's own, and with help from more experienced members of our community. Social learning is such a key part of the learning journey as you can't learn everything through formal training - it's the parts of a role that you have to live through and gain experience on how to deal with a second time that are the hardest parts.

Formal training lays the foundation, but true growth for junior QA professionals lies in granting them the freedom to explore and embrace creativity. It's through getting their hands dirty and breaking away from rigid plans that they can truly flourish. Nurturing a mindset that goes beyond conventional testing requires leaders who foster an environment of openness, valuing insights and opinions from all levels. By embracing this approach, leaders become catalysts for unleashing the full potential of their QA teams.

When they are very new to the job, shadowing someone with experience a few times help them. Later on, doing pairing on tasks where they not only witness, but the do the task themselves can help