Showing posts with label Software Testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Software Testing. Show all posts
Software Testing Magazine
Ajoy Singha
My own software testing magazine TESTING CIRCUS has completed 5 years in September this year. It is a wonderful experience. Feel free to download a latest copy of the magazine.
Software Testing Magazine
Testing Circus - September 2015 Cover Page
September 2015 edition is available here.

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The world did not end on 21st December.
Ajoy Singha

The world did not end on 21st December. Somebody forgot to test the prediction.

It is the time of New Year. I recently read a wonderful work by Neil Gaiman. It is about New Year wishes. When we wish someone we wish him to do well in the New Year, we wish for the very best of everything he does. Neil says we should wish they made mistakes. "Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you and all of us, and my wish for me. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

With this wonderful thought, I wish you make lots of mistakes in the New Year 2013. And next time when someone predicts the end of the world, get it tested from testers.

- Ajoy Singha

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3 Random Stories and A T-Shirt Competition
Ajoy Singha
I have been planning this post for a long time. Moolya Testing has given me the boost to write this now.

Do I want to win the T-shirt offered by Pradeep, Santhosh and the team? Yes, anything from a great startup with great people and great ethical values would an award worth winning.

So I must share something for which I did not get recognized from my organization. I have many. Randomly chosen 3 stories.

Story 1 – November 2006.

I had just joined my new company then. We were testing an enterprise content management product. That product is a platform independent product of a top listed IT company in the world. Whole lots of patch releases and lots of regression cycle were going on in various application server and operating system combinations. I was just learning the product and how to run the product in UNIX systems and J2EE based application servers. I must say we had around 105 platform (OS vs App server) combinations to test. The product was also using a legacy system as storage engine for enterprise contents.

If you remember starting summer of 2007 US government changed the daylight saving time (DST). From 1987 to 2006, daylight saving time in the United States began on the first Sunday of April and ended on the last Sunday of October. The time is adjusted at 2:00 AM (0200) local time.

Since 2007, daylight saving time starts on the second Sunday of March and ends on the first Sunday of November, with all time changes taking place at 2:00 AM (0200) local time. DST implementation varies from region to region. This means all the computers running with US region configuration had to adjust 3 weeks. Operating systems were pre-programmed to adjust old US DST system. Also application servers, Java Virtual Machines, Legacy systems all had to release their patch/service pack to implement the new DST system.

In our product we had a feature with which we could add annotations to the documents. This is a time sensitive feature. Whenever someone annotates a document it captures the timestamp. So in a workflow application where there are SLAs defined at minutes, these timestamps are very important. So introduction of new DST system with 3 weeks of adjustment would potentially cause problem to our timestamp feature. At the end of 2006, just before 2 months from the implementation of new system, my product development team was very sure that since it was the responsibility of OS, App server, JVM and legacy system vendors to update the systems to fix this problem we had nothing to do and no code changes and hence no testing would be required.

We were carrying a risk of not testing anything for DST. I did some R&D by downloading the available patches and setting the clock forward to 2nd Sunday of March 2007 and looking at the changes. I bumped into some problem during the experiment. I reported this to our product manager. He discussed the things again with development guys but I failed to convince them again. Needless to say I was the only tester in the whole product team with 8 developers. I was new to the team and they are sounding more technically advanced than me at that point of time.

In next one week, I sat late in office trying to set up a small test lab – where all the machines had software with DST patch updates. I deployed our product and set up a small work flow with in the application. I advanced the system dates to 2nd Sunday of March 2007 and reproduced the problem. I captured this information in details. Then I took help of a developer friend from our ODC, not from my dev team to look into the code of the product (I am a no-coding guy). He took 3 nights to come up with the solution. He made a one line code change and we rebuild the product. I deployed the new build in the test lab and tried to reproduce the problem. No I could not find the problem. That means the problem was in the code itself not with patches.

Next morning, I sent out a detailed email mentioning what I found and what code changes we made. I was scolded for sharing the code information with other team’s member. They never recognized the problem I was trying to capture. Later the development manager took 2 months billing for 3 resources from the client sent the patch with my code change. Officially I never got recognition for this story. But I am happy that I saved the organization from some embarrassments that may have happened if I had not rebuilt the product.

Story 2 – August 2010.

I wanted to initiate and take care of a very popular event in software testing. Actually I wanted to head the NCR chapter of that community. I had no direct contact with the founders. I was talking to somebody who was in NCR that time. I asked him with my proposal and he seemed to agree. I was expecting a reply from the founders but I never got to hear from anyone. I was very frustrated because my repeat emails were not answered. One night I decided that I will do something that would one day surpass the popularity of that event. That was how Testing Circus was born in the mid night of 14th/15th August – the independence day of India.

I have been publishing this magazine from last September onwards. I have received many positive and negative feedbacks for my work and effort. I started a truly Indian magazine dedicated on Software Testing. The magazine is aimed at educating professionals at basic levels. That’s why you would not see many pedantic subjects and you would find features like test case writing, QTP code corner etc. Interview with tester is aimed at encouraging new testers to get advice and future trends in testing. I also wanted to let learning testers know who all are there in twitter who are well known in testing domain. This I assume would help networking with other testers and mentors. I have always tried to balance articles from expert people plus encouraged a newbie to write something for my magazine. This is how I wanted to cultivate and encourage new people to write even though it means rewriting the whole article by me and asking him to learn from that and do the same thing again.

How do I collect articles from experts? Few people have always supported me by giving articles and giving permission to print their interviews. I try to write to experts to give articles for the magazine and I have been doing it constantly. I just do not want to copy something from their blogs and re-print the same in Testing Circus. Sometimes people respond, sometimes not.

How do I manage time between my full time job as a project lead and weekend training sessions at my testing coaching class as you might know I teach testing on weekends at my drawing room? Mostly I work at nights for Testing Circus; not hampering my job at office. That means I sleep few hours less than average IT professionals of my age.

What am I getting? No monetary benefit. No Google ads. No paid ads. I am getting few positive and lots of feedbacks that say I should improve. Also my organization never seems to care about my initiative and it has never given me any impact on my appraisals. But I am happy.

Story 3 – November 2010.

We knew one another and have been talking over phone and twitter but we never met or all planned meeting actually never happened because of some reasons or others. But SoftTech Software Testing conference on 13th November in New Delhi actually helped us meet physically for the first time. There we hatched a plan – to have regular testers meet in NCR Region on a monthly basis and of course a free event for test enthusiasts. Today we proudly call NCR Testers Meet (NCRTMM) as our brain child. Two Vipuls (Vipul Kocher and Vipul Gupta) and I cultivated the ground for free testers meet in NCR and we started the journey on 18th December in Noida. Today we are four meets old and we have 410 registered members. We are planning for a full day conference in April in Noida to be attended by speakers from all over India. Thanks to our venue and food sponsors. We are actively supported by Indian Testing Board. We have plans to open a Software Testing Book Library in every city monitored by us. The concept of NCR Testers Monthly Meet is replicated in Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore. Wao! – I am loving it.

My organization hardly knows about this initiative. Even we officially tried to convince the point-of-contacts to sponsor the venue for our meet; we never got any positive reply. But I am happy again.

Sometimes you do not do things to get recognition from your organizations. I believe many such stories exist in Indian Testing Story Book. It is our passions that drive us to do new things, experiment with newer ideas. If I am doing some good work in Indian Testing Domain then it is because of advice, criticism, encouragement and support that I received from few people. I will name those people in a different post.

If I win a T-shirt from Moolya Testing, then I plan to give away that to another passionate tester in the April NCRTMM Conference happening in Noida.

If you have similar stories, share that in http://moolya.com/blog/2011/03/14/10-t-shirt-giveaways-from-moolya/ You might win a T-shirt too.


NOTE - I won the competition and they gave me Two T-shirts actually, instead of one. :)
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Hiring Practice in Testing Industry - Can we change it?
Ajoy Singha
This is my last blog post for this year. In this post I would like to make a point about hiring practice in IT industry specially in testing.

I have been a part of hiring process for my current and previous organizations. I have taken interviews for my project, my client, walk-in interviews and also for fresher hiring at college campus. What did I learn from these interviews? 

Most of the resumes are shortlisted by HR persons and then are sent to us for technical evaluation. Then we talk to the candidate to evaluate him. The evaluation process is generally a set of questions starting from “Tell us something about yourself” to some technical questions about testing/non-testing area. If the candidate is able to answer most of the questions fairly well, we select him or pass on to the next level of interview. If he cannot answer the questions – we simply convey – “You can leave for the day.”

This is a traditional way of evaluating a candidate for a job. Is there a problem in it? I seriously feel yes. Right from the short listing of resumes to offering a job – the system goes through some pre-conceived procedures/filters. I have seen many bad testers passing through these filters easily and many good testers, just because the filter itself is bad-shaped, get rejected.

Bad Shape of filters –
1. Resume Short listing – Resumes are short listed by non-technical people. I don’t know how most of the HR people collect the resumes and hence short list them. My friends’ resumes forwarded by me never got short listed though L. (It is important to have a good repo with HR guys if you want your friends to get a call.)

2. Just in time Hiring – Just in time hiring may sound good to reduce bench strength of the organization. But think of a situation where the person leaving your organization has a particular skill and you do not have a similarly skilled person in bench, you will need to hire from outside. I am not against just in time hiring. I am against initiating the hiring process late. When you know someone has resigned, why don’t you arrange to hire and replace the resigned candidate in the beginning of the notice period? Believe me, 95% of resigned candidates will not take back their resignation. Why try till last date to take him back? If you offer to give him carrots when he resigns, why did not you give that before he had actually resigned? Most of the organization will not allow its employee to leave before they serve their full notice period. But still these companies will want the employees from other companies to join them in short notice. 
Warning – The candidates who can join in short notice are actually fake employees or they are not working anywhere or they are too bad resources. Except, the only situation where he had resigned before your interview process started.
I have even received emails from hiring firms mentioning – “relieving letter not required.” What kind of ethics these firms are practicing? 
If you are forced to hire in short time span – you are bound to recruit bad/fake candidates. So start early.

3. Knowledge of the Interviewer – It is important to judge the knowledge of the candidate. But it is more important to know how much fit the interviewer is to judge a candidate. Bad interviewers just screw up a hiring process and the filters get more bad-shaped. 

4. Questions asked at Interview – If I list down 100 questions for software testing and commonly asked behavioural questions from internet and if I can remember them all, then I think I can clear most the software testing interviews that happens now a days. All I have to do is get someone who can give me answers for those questions and I will have learn like a parrot. I can just repeat the sentences in front of the interviewer and get the job. 

5. Candidates with Certification – Passing an IT certification exam is easy. Please read my post “Investigation on Certification”.  I am not saying certification is bad. I am saying certification has just become very easy and I know few guys who have never tested any software and still they cleared certification exams. It is high time we thought of other methods of certifying people. So don’t just believe that having an IT certification makes someone a good candidate for the job.

Need for a better hiring practice-
What are things that we can do as industry thought leaders in testing? (Sorry, I am not a thought leader yet in testing or any other industry. I am just a follower of good practice.) This is what I suggest – if you care to agree.

1. Follow a hiring practice that companies like Moolya follows. Ask candidates to test an open source product and send the test report. Brilliant process. What you will get is real tester with real result. Bad apples automatically get filtered out. However, this method will need discipline and ethics from the hiring organization. Also you will face challenges as a large service based organization to reach out to more number of candidates. Walk-in type of interview will need more planning and resources. 

2. Do not care about what is written in resume. Do not care about what certificate they have. Do not care about what educational background they have. Just care about if they can really test. Clue – Good testers are thinking heads. Challenge them with problems. See how they have solved problems in real life. 

3. See how passionate the candidate is about testing. Is it just another job (money earning machine) or he really thinks about testing? Ask him what he wants to do in testing or what he has done in testing. 

4. Do not discriminate people from another industry. Do not just throw him out just because he is from BPO, Medical sales or HR background. I am a Mechanical Engineer and had worked for a year in chemical industry before moving to full time testing. If you think I have done something in testing, then every other guy from other industry has a potential to do magic in testing. 

5. Do not discriminate people with gaps. We tend to filter out people who have gap period between two jobs. Investigate why there is a gap. I have seen many female testers who left their jobs because they got married and they had a kid to care about. Now that the kid is grown up, they can join back testing job. They face lots of challenges in even getting an interview call. I understand that those who have not worked for last few months/years may not be as smooth in working as compared to those who have been working continuously. But a passionate tester can ignite the passion anytime. You just need to give them a chance.

6. Do not ask lots of definitions during the interview. Do not care about skills which can be trained. Only care about skills/traits that cannot be trained. Attitude, interest, motivation, commitment, vision – these can be changed but it takes time. Think what you want – a person with full of definitions or someone who wants to learn and can be moulded to do good testing. However, do check if the candidate knows about coding if you are hiring a white box tester for example. Special skills are important too.

Testing is not everybody’s cup of tea. It requires thinking. Passionless testers will get bored in few years of testing. Choose good people for testing, not just another job seeker. Today, testing is not regarded as a class one job in IT industry. ‘They’ think testing is a low skilled job. You know what I meant by ‘they’. 

It will take time to convince everyone to change their hiring practices. Thanks to Pradeep and Santhosh. Moolya has started the trend. Others will follow. Let us make a New Year resolution – to uplift the image of software testing professionals by adopting a good hiring practice and not to be the same as what other bad recruiters are doing. Do you support me?

I promise to offer my free professional help to organizations who want to change their current hiring practice and adopt new better practice. Write to me.

I have used ‘he’ in this post to mean the “3rd person singular” gender. ‘He’ here is just a pronoun meaning both he and she. And I do not intend to discriminate male and female. 
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My Investigation on Certification Exams - Time to CHANGE the Method
Ajoy Singha
Let me be very clear. I am not against any Certification program. I just wanted to share few incidents that I came across recently.

I saw an advertisement few days back in some orkut community. Somebody called ‘super boy’ claimed that he can clear any certification exam and he has a good ‘link’ with testing centers. He had given his email with the advertisement. I shared the advertisement link with few of my seniors and mentors in testing community. They too expressed their disappointments about this.

I wanted to know what he is actually doing it. So I sent him a mail asking what all exams he can clear for me and what are the charges involved. Next day he replied with a link to blog. I do not want to give link of his blog here because that way I will popularize his blog and more people will fall for fake certification exam. Anyway I visited his blog and found what process he is adopting to clear the exams.

This is what I got from the FAQ section of his blog –

1. How can you clear a certification exam in 1000 rupees?
A. I have very good relation with the testing centers. I pay a lot of money to them and purchase the exam question papers from them in black and sell the same paper to many people and gain profit. So for 1000 rupees I will give the exam question paper in pdf format.

2. Certification is an online exam, and exam questions are not same for all then how can you sell a single question paper (same paper) to many people?
A. Your exam questions will be selected randomly from the exam server. The question paper includes all the questions that are there on the exam server. So all your exam questions will be selected from my question paper only.

3. Will you also provide the answers for the questions?
A. Yes.

4. What is the guarantee that I will pass the exam? What if I fail the exam?
A. Till now I certified many number of people not even one person failed the exam. 100% exam pass is assured. Since I am giving you the exact question paper with answers the probability to fail the exam is negligible. If you fail the exam send the hard copy of your score card to my address, your money will be refunded. No questions will be asked. I guarantee you pass the exam.
For double security I will give you 2 sets of question papers. You will find 90% of the questions similar in both the sets which give you confidence and double security.

5. You said you already certified many people, what is the proof?
A. I can show the screen a shot of my email conversation, people saying thanks to me.

6. Where do you stay? Can I meet you directly, what is your contact number?
A. I am staying in Bangalore. You can meet me. My mobile number +91-XX601226XX.

7. After the payment, how do I get the question paper and how long it will take?
A. Question paper will be sent in email with in 24 hours, after receiving the payment.

8. For how long the question paper will be valid?
A. I suggest you to write the exam within 2 weeks. Please send me an email 3 days before writing the exam asking for the updates. If there are any new questions added, I will give you the new set of questions. You need not pay anything for this.

9. I am busy with my schedule and I cannot write the exam with in 2 weeks, I want to write the exam after a month or later will you provide the latest one at that time?
A. Yes. You can write the exam at any time. Just contact me 2 weeks before writing the exam I will give the latest ones.

10. Can you write my exam?
A. No.

11. I'm in Canada/US/UK so will I still get the same questions writing it here. Do you have any international people passing the exam?
A. Certification is an online exam and exam questions are same all over the world so you can choose any testing center of your choice (world wide).

12. How can I pay the money? What are the payment modes?
A. You can pay the money in any of the 3 ways.
1. You can transfer the money online or deposit by cash by visiting the bank.
Andhra bank Account number: XX0810XXXX53XXX. Account is in the name of Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx. Bangalore - J P Nagar branch. MICR code: XXXX011XXx, IFSC code: XXXXB0001X0X. Account type: savings. 
Or 2. You can transfer the money to my PayPal account. Please transfer the money to this PayPal account: xxxxxxxxsales@xmail.com. If you are transferring through PayPal please transfer 25 US $ because to receive and with draw the money using PayPal charges applicable.
Or 3. You can transfer the money through western union money transfer. If you wish to transfer through western union please ask me for the details.

Wao! Lots of information and a well planned method of exploiting present certification exam method. He claimed he can clear almost all certification exams that includes Adobe, Apple, Avaya, BEA, Black berry, Cisco (CCNA, CCNP etc...), Citrix, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Lotus, Microsoft (MCDBA, .NET, MCPD etc..), MySQL, Network Appliance, Oracle (OCA, OCP), Redhat RHCE, SAP, SUN (SCJP, SCWCD, Solaris), Sybase, SAS etc.

I contacted him further asking whether he can clear my ISTQB exam. He took two days to reply to my query. He confirmed that he cannot clear the exam as this exam. It is because the ISTQB exam in India was still pen and paper based, not online. ISTQB India has recently started allowing online exams. So I contracted him again. This time I also mention ISEB ISTQB exam (Exam code ISEB BH0-004) which is also online based and the exam commonly taken at Prometric centers. He confirmed again his inability to provide the questions and answers of ISTQB India exam and ISEB ISTQB exam as according to him “these exams are not conducted from dumps (exam server)”. However, he said he can clear other popular Software Testing certification exams such as QTP, LoadRunner exams.

I said I am not against any certification exam. But after the above incident (kind of investigation on certification) I might want to change my opinion about exams which are based on dumps or question banks. ISTQB still passes my investigation. But then ISTQB should also come up with more stringent measure to stop any misuse of its exam facility. Should not the certification exams include some kind of practical examinations too as we did in 10+2 Science Chemistry Salt analysis practical session?

A good cook will know all recipes and he even can recite them at times. But just memorizing recipes does not make anyone a good cook. Certification doesn't convert a bad tester to a good tester. A good tester with certification doesn't automatically become a bad tester either. But it is high time we should improve the examination method that we follow today.

Your thoughts?
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Testing Circus - Another e-magazine on Software Testing?
Ajoy Singha
There are hosts of journals available on software testing on internet. Another one is being planned for launch on 1st September 2010. This is a mission by a group of software testing professionals from NCR/Delhi area. I happen to associate with this mission.

The e-magazine named Testing Circus is supposed to be free to the subscribers and they claim it would be a magazine with a difference. Testing Circus will attempt to capture the readers who are novice in this field. Most of magazines that are already available in web world are targeted at expert testing professionals. Over the years I have felt that there are very less reading materials available for students who want to learn software testing from the beginning. Books available in the market are kind of advanced level structure. There is no book like what we have for dot net, java, sql - teach yourself software testing in 24 hours. Testing Circus e-magazine attempts to capture that market section. 

The idea is noble. The name Testing Circus is little tricky. Circus word is usually synonym with undisciplined works. But I feel circus here means 'tricks'. So we meant to convey 'testing is no magic, it is a pure trick, it is a circus.' Testing Circus - magazine on software testing should therefore help new learners of software testing the platform they were missing for years.

Subscribe the magazine at www.testingcircus.com Or you can follow them on twitter at http://twitter.com/TestingCircus

I wish all the best to Testing Circus e-magazine on Software Testing.
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Best Software Testing Institute in Gurgaon NCR
Ajoy Singha

**We don't have very fancy decoracted class rooms but we promise to give you best knowledge from practical and hands on training point of view.
Course Content:
Our courses are divided into mainly two categories –

Course 1: Manual Testing + Basic Automation Course – This course is suitable for who want to pursue their career in Software Testing. It starts with basic foundation of Software Testing and gradually progresses towards advanced concept of Software Testing enhanced by basic idea of Automation Tools such as QTP and Load Runner. Lots of mock interview practices with feedback on speech and body language.
Duration – Approx 10 weeks – weekend classes
Fee – Rs. 0000/-



Course 2: Advanced Automation – QTP – This course is suitable for people who have already attended Course 1 or the testers who have at least 1 year of experience in Manual Testing concepts. This is a pure project based hands on tool learning aided by understanding of advanced concepts of QTP, framework, real life automation issue resolution with advanced level scripting technique.
Duration – Approx 6 weeks – weekend classes
Fee – Rs. 10000/-


»Additional advantage with all courses

  • Free E-Books/Tools/Software
  • ISTQB Exam Support
  • HR Interview Sessions
  • Resume Preparation
  • Access to JOB Alerts – Lifetime job alerts in Mail Box

Please feel free to contact us –
»Call us at 9911449111
**We don't have very fancy decorated class rooms but we promise to give you best knowledge from practical and hands on training point of view.

For more information - please visit - http://talentplusplus.com


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New Website on Software Testing
Ajoy Singha
Testing is often considered as a thankless job.
While developers say with pride: "Wow!! My code is running in production and application is running all fine", testers usually don’t say "Wow!! The code that I tested is running in production"!!!
Testing identifies faults, whose removal increases the software quality by increasing the Software’s potential reliability and thus removing the risk associated with application’s failure. Testing is the measurement of software quality. We measure how closely we have achieved quality by testing the relevant factors such as correctness, reliability, usability, maintainability, reusability and testability. It is rightly said – Testers don’t make software, they make it better.
Read more about software testing and issues that affect software testing at my new Software Testing Website.

Please visit http://www.ajoysingha.info/

Thanks,
Ajoy Singha
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To Mohit and etc who want to join Software Testing !
Ajoy Singha

Mohit wrote this in one of the orkut communities.

"Hi Friend,
Actually I am working in a call centre in technical support Division. Work is related to maintenance. I passed out with electronics from an REC in 2003. But looking the family conditions I have to join whatever got that time. with a bond on 2 years. Now I managed to setup my family and want to come in real field. I come to know from my friends about software testing , which an emerging field and easy to get into.I also have done Software testing course of 2 months from xxx training institute.
In my present field there is not so growth, and moreover I have to work as a technician.
There are not vacancies for fresher or they prefer 2006/07 pass outs.Dear friend can you advise me? Should I apply as a fresher or with showing 2 years of experience in software testing? In this case , will company investigate my past?
I have not made my resume yet. Please advise me. I have taken the firm decision to change my field. Looking for a job at Delhi.
Thanks again."

..... And there are so many Mohits in today's IT industry, specially in software testing. People think software testing as a launch pad to IT industry, easy, and not requiring hardcore technical, coding, system knowledge etc. It is not. Software testing is not an easy job. It requires skills to find defects in software, ability to think beyond the obvious, think in different ways. Doing a 2 months theoretical course is not enough to become a software tester. Developers write codes, testers find defects. It is similar to students writing paper and professor checking them. Testers are the guardians of the product. They are responsible for software's quality. It is well said that "testers do not make software, they make them better."

So here are some advice for Mohit and etc:

1. Yes it is very easy to use software testing as launch pad to IT industry, but it is equally difficult to keep flying if you do not have the real skill. It is very easy to clear interview, but equally tough to do the real work.

2. If you show 2 years (fake) experience, most of the companies will do a background check. If you are caught, you are black listed.

3. Doing a course in software testing is good. But do not assume that the training provider will get you a job. It all depends on your skill. Do not listen to fake promises by training institutes.

4. Learn skills that are required to be a tester. Talk to the experienced people who are in the same profession. Keep your eyes, ears open. Learn about the new technologies. Prepare for ISTQB exam. If you can, do this certification.

5. Enhance your reasoning ability. Try to think every possible thing in different ways. If you are a fresher, download some beta version software and test it. Compare your results with other fellows testing the beta software. If you find some bugs, mention them in your resume.

6. Be honest. Say that you are a fresher in software testing. But mention that you have work experience (Call center technical support in Mohit's case). Prepare a valid reason why you want to join IT industry. Don't say growth opportunity. Show your passion for software testing.

7. You will eventually become a technician if you do not have skills. To achieve growth (in any industry), you have to be proactive, prove your skill and perform better than the team. This is same in IT industry as well as in BPOs.

At the end, anyone who is hard working, smart working, skilled and honest will lift the cup. Prepare yourself. Don't be knocked down by your past. You have a war in future to be won. All the best Mohit.
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What is the difference between Smoke and Sanity testing?
Ajoy Singha
SMOKE Vs SANITY TESTING

From Devankur Thakur's Blog:

I have gathered a few points about the difference between smoke and sanity testing from the responses of two software testing groups. I have added the points below.

However, my experience of executing the Smoke and Sanity testing has been the following:

Smoke Test:
When a build is received, a smoke test is run to ascertain if the build is stable and it can be considered for further testing.

Smoke testing can be done for testing the stability of any interim build.
Smoke testing can be executed for platform qualification tests.

Sanity testing:
Once a new build is obtained with minor revisions, instead of doing a through regression, sanity is performed so as to ascertain the build has indeed rectified the issues and no further issue has been introduced by the fixes. It’s generally a subset of regression testing and a group of test cases are executed that are related with the changes made to the app.

Generally, when multiple cycles of testing are executed, sanity testing may be done during the later cycles after through regression cycles.

1)Smoke testing originated in the hardware testing practice of turning on a new piece of hardware for the first time and considering it a success if it does not catch fire and smoke. In software industry, smoke testing is a shallow and wide approach whereby all areas of the application without getting into too deep, is tested.
A sanity test is a narrow regression test that focuses on one or a few areas of functionality. Sanity testing is usually narrow and deep.

2)A smoke test is scripted--either using a written set of tests or an automated test
A sanity test is usually unscripted.

3)A Smoke test is designed to touch every part of the application in a cursory way. It's is shallow and wide.
A Sanity test is used to determine a small section of the application is still working after a minor change.

4)Smoke testing will be conducted to ensure whether the most crucial functions of a program work, but not bothering with finer details. (Such as build verification).
Sanity testing is a cursory testing; it is performed whenever a cursory testing is sufficient to prove the application is functioning according to specifications. This level of testing is a subset of regression testing.

5)Smoke testing is normal health check up to a build of an application before taking it to testing in depth.
Sanity testing is to verify whether requirements are met or not, checking all features breadth-first.

http://geekswithblogs.net/dthakur/archive/2004/08/24/10144.aspx
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