I’ve been job hunting in the US for over 7 months now and interviews have been hard to come by. Wanted to put this out to people who actually work in QA, not just recruiters.

Quick background: about 5 years in the field. Started as a manual tester on financial applications, moved into a QA Engineer II role where I led Cypress automation alongside manual testing on web and mobile, and I’m currently volunteering as a QA Automation Engineer where I built a Playwright and TypeScript framework from scratch with CI/CD. I use Postman for API testing and have some SQL background for data validation too.

I know the market is rough right now, but I’d like to know if there’s something in how I’m presenting myself that’s holding me back. If anyone’s open to taking a look at my resume, or just wants to chat about what’s actually working in this market right now, I’d really appreciate it. Also open to a referral if your company’s hiring and you think I’d be a fit, but honestly at this point I just want to talk to someone who gets it.

Happy to share more specifics in the comments or DMs.

Hi everyone,

I’m hoping to get some honest advice from people who have already made the jump from Manual QA to Automation QA.

A little about me: I completed my BCA in 2022 and have been working as a Software Quality Test Engineer for the past 2 years.

My experience has been primarily in Manual Testing, where I’ve worked on the Adobe Acrobat project and handled activities such as test execution, regression testing, smoke testing, functional testing, defect reporting, and end-to-end validation across different environments and operating systems.

Over the last few months, I realized that if I want to grow in QA, I need to move into Automation Testing. Since then, I’ve been investing a significant amount of my free time learning Playwright with JavaScript and TypeScript through Rahul Shetty’s course. I’m not just watching tutorials—I actively practice and build automation scripts to improve my skills.

The frustrating part starts when I talk to recruiters.
Most conversations go well until they ask, “How many years of automation experience do you have?”
I answer honestly: “I don’t have professional automation experience yet, but I’m actively learning Playwright and have hands-on practice.”
The energy of the conversation changes almost immediately. Many recruiters seem to lose interest the moment they hear “0 years.”
This leaves me wondering:
Am I approaching my transition the wrong way?
Should I be targeting Manual + Automation hybrid roles first?
What kind of automation projects would make recruiters take my profile more seriously?
How can I demonstrate automation skills without having automation experience in a production environment?
For those who successfully transitioned from Manual QA to Automation QA:
What worked for you?
What would you do differently if you were starting again?
How did you convince employers to take a chance on you?
I’m genuinely committed to building a career in QA Automation and willing to put in the work. I’d appreciate any advice, feedback, or referrals that could help me move in the right direction.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to learning from your experiences.

Looking for new ways to practice mobile apps besides the sprint projects from my bootcamp if you guys know any 🙏

I have 2.5 years of experience as a Test Engineer in the Telecom domain, but my work wasn't traditional software testing.

I was recently laid off and am trying to move into QA Automation, API Testing, or SDET roles. The issue is that almost every interviewer asks for professional automation experience. Out of about 10 interviews, 9 expected hands-on automation experience in a real project.

My previous role didn't provide any automation opportunities, so I'm stuck in the classic "need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience" situation.

For those who made a similar transition, what helped you break into automation testing?

TL;DR: 2.5 years in telecom testing, laid off, trying to move into QA Automation/API Testing/SDET. Most companies want professional automation experience, which I don't have. How do I bridge this gap?

Hey there

I need urgent help with interview prep as I have an interview scheduled for tomorrow for one of MNC.

Brief about me I am working as Manual Tester for past 3 year and I have no idea about automation and what interviewer going to ask please help me as this is last hope switching from my current company , I haven't added anything fancy about automation in my resume also.Please help

Hey,

Do you work in IT? Do you use tools for API testing?

I’d really appreciate it if you could fill out a short, anonymous survey - it should take about 5 minutes - and it will help me collect data for my master’s thesis.

Survey link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeTt64tjebWPNAQ2uVtv68lZ17XwfPMFGdxSqNXbWXWZGldlA/viewform

Thank you so much!

Hello everyone, I live in the Netherlands and have been looking for a job for almost a year now, but I haven’t managed to find one yet. How did you manage to find a job? In previous years I used to get called for interviews, but that doesn’t happen anymore:/

I want to get into the IT sector as a Software Test Engineer. I am a fresher. I don't have any experience. Can anyone guide me on how to get in? I am ready to volunteer as a tester to gain experience. Please help me.

Used to be among top 10 in school and even college also.But took college placements lite didn't prepare for interviews and gave them like it is 10 mark exam.I am 2022 passout from one of well known government engineering college from Gujarat.After passing out took 1 year of drop to prepare better for placements, but didn't prepared.Joined MNC as QA with relatives' referral. working here for nearly 3 years at very very low scale , no increment from 2 years also.Right now when I am trying to swich companies all they ask is Automation ,but I don't even know single word from automation.Even in telephonic round I am getting rejected hearing that all they need is Automation.Even if somehow I fake out in resume how will get past in interview.

Looking backwards i realized that I should never have taken placements for granted.Didn't skilled up during 3 years of job also.

What should I do?

i have around 1 year of experience in this field, mostly worked as a manual tester around aipos project. i had taken almost 7 months off, due to severe anxiety and panic attacks.. i'm back on track now.

• Supported frontend development by implementing minor features, 25+ bug fixes (Angular & Go), improving code quality, and ensuring adherence to coding standards and proper documentation.
• Performed manual end-to-end testing of an AIOps platform, including regression, sanity, functional, and UI testing across Linux-based environment.
• Identified, documented, and reported 70+ defects across UI & backend workflows significantly improving product stability, reliability, and user experience.
• Authored 100+ structured test cases and validated 300+ bugs, ensuring strong coverage of functional and UI scenarios.
• Improved product quality and reduced field defects by approximately 25–30% through consistent end to-end testing
• Validated system metrics integrated from Prometheus using cURL, ensuring accurate visualization of graphs, thresholds, alerts, CPU/RAM usage, and performance data on the frontend ensuring optimized and reliable monitoring behaviour.
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to reproduce issues, isolate root causes, verify fixes, and maintain clear internal testing documentation.
• Executed daily build validation (smoke/sanity) to ensure stable releases and contributed to maintaining an organized testing backlog with detailed, actionable bug reports.

We’ve all heard the story that manual testing is becoming obsolete, but the rapid development of tools like Playwright with new features suggests the gap is closing unexpectedly. Rather than manual testers being replaced by automation engineers, it seems they are being "supercharged.' Modern AI-powered, no-code tools enable manual testers to manage complex regression suites and create automation without extensive coding.

The question is: does it make more sense for a company to keep three experienced Manual QAs (enhanced by AI) and just one Automation Lead to oversee the architecture, rather than hiring a full team of costly automation engineers?

This "lightweight" strategy allows teams to experiment and "poke at the code" to discover what works best, without the substantial overhead of traditional automation.