"Planit empowers their employees to be the best version of themselves, and this means encouraging them to continuously upskill to sustain a competitive advantage... The ability to work abroad with Planit exposed me to new areas of testing and also contributed to my growth as a person."
Anna, Test Analyst, Planit

Variety is what attracted Anna to testing. “Depending on which phase you are in the project, you’re always doing something different,” she said.

A tester typically uses their analytical skills to understand the requirements and derive test conditions, or using their technical skills during test execution. And even then, there are many different types of testing, such as automation, performance, business intelligence.

“Getting into the testing industry was the first stepping stone of my career,” Anna said. “I knew the transferable set of skills I acquire would form an essential foundation to whatever path I might take next.”

Anna began her Planit journey as a Graduate Tester through the company’s Graduate Programme. “Planit promotes a ‘work hard, play hard’ work culture. It’s a place where employees are driven to perform at their best and to celebrate these wins afterwards, and this really appealed to me,” she said.

Another attraction of Planit was that the learning only stops when you want it to, since the company offers classroom training opportunities as well as an extensive online learning portal. This makes further learning easily accessible for everyone in the company, and encourages employees to build their existing skills or learn new ones.

“Planit empowers their employees to be the best version of themselves, and this means encouraging them to continuously upskill to sustain a competitive advantage,” Anna said, who also regularly gets certified to bolster her career as a tester. “Knowledge is power, so the more I learn, the higher the chance I will be able to use my new skills and be an asset for the client.”

The ability to move around with Planit’s mobility programme also presented an exciting opportunity for Anna to make a move from Auckland to live and work in Melbourne for one year. “The ability to work abroad exposed me to new areas of testing and also contributed to my growth as a person,” she said.

Anna’s advice to anyone starting out in testing is to be “passionately curious,” or question why things work the way they do in order to really understand what you are testing, as well as discover better ways to test. “When you are passionately curious, you create an opportunity to challenge the comfortable way you think, enabling you to learn more and become a better all-round tester,” she said.

It is also important for a tester to be forward thinking, “keeping up with the rapidly changing pace of the tech industry, and learning alternative ways of doing things to improve efficiency,” Anna said. “We need to be able to easily adapt to change and understand how we can use software as a driver to add value to the business.”