Arsthbt

Context: As been involved in QA hiring positions from last couple of years in different companies, I am seeing a trend QA is getting more and more technical.Now it is reaching to a point where line is getting blurred between QA & Developer in teams working on cutting edge technologies.On the other hand communication has always been and will be important for QA positions.

I have always seen a strong co-relation between communication skills & technical skills. In general candidates with higher technical skills are not super communicators and excellent communicators are generally not very good technically.Although exceptions always exist but they are few and nobody doubts hiring them!

Dilemma :A lot of times been in dilemma situations where between two candidates it becomes hard to choose where one is excellent communicator vs. other is technically superb but not vice versa.

Question: How my senior QA fellows in similar situations, take call when get into these difficult situations of selecting QA candidates?

It depends who you are looking for, what skills your team needs. In my experience soft skills are much harder to learn then technical skills. Especially if you start to learn those later in your career. One of prominent example Linus Torvalds.

I always choose people who are willing to learn new things(I test it) and who know difference between good and bad. If candidate covers those two requirements, I hire even if person has no work experience.

In my point of view, the communication skill is more important than technical skills, if a person has a lot of technical knowledge but does not know how to express or communicate with others is merely waste. Because he doesn't know how to express his thoughts or how to enable others to understand his thoughts and the person who has communication skills can able to express his thoughts and make others understand he can gain technical skill later, it´s not a big deal for that person.