Briefly, my background is in manual black box testing of websites and applications within the Agile/waterfall context.
Over the past four years I was a member of two web development firms' small QA teams dedicated to testing the deployment of websites for national/international non profits, governmental organizations, and for profit business, to name a few:
-Brookings Institution
-Senate
-Tyco Electronics
-Blue Cross/Blue Shield
-National Geographic
-Discover Channel
I have a very strong understanding of the:
-SDLC
-STLC
of bugs and website deployment/development
-Use Case & Test Case development
In March of this year, my last firm downsized and lost my job as a QA tester. I have been networking and doing a very detailed job search, but have had a very difficult time getting my next job within the QA industry, even with my background as a manual black box QA tester in the website development context.
My direct question to all of you:
What are some ways I can be more competitive and get hired?
Options that could get me competitive:
Should I go back to school and learn some more 'hard' skills in website development and client side technologies, e.g.:
-HTML
-CSS
-JavaScript
Learn programming:
-PHP
-C#
-Ruby
-SQL
-Python
-Perl
-??
Get Certified as a QA Tester, there are a countless numbers of programs to become a Certified Tester.
Most, if not all jobs, being advertised now require Automated Testing experience, in:
-QTP
-Loadrunner
-Selenium
-ETC.
Should I learn, Automated testing skills, via a paid course, or teach myself?
--Learn scripting languages to understand the automated testing process better?
Become a Certified "Project Management Professional" (PMP) to prove to hiring managers that I 'get' the project development life cycle?
At the end of the day I need to be competitive and get hired as a QA tester and want to build upon my skills within the QA web development field.
How should I do this, without reinventing the wheel?
Any help in this regard would be fabulous.
Thanks!
.erik