1. Remaining Relevant and Avoiding Commoditization
Lee Hawkins & Rajesh Mathur

2. Some hard truths You are not immune from change Technology is changing
Business is changing
Testing is changing (or not)
Testing is seen as a commodity
You can’t fully protect yourself from being replaced
Testing is seen as a commodity by those who don’t fully understand the value of good testing (or just don’t care)
You can’t fully protect yourself from being replaced, but what you can do is make it less likely and put yourself in a better position if it does happen...

3. Commoditization Commodity vs. Price
So, you need to find other ways to compete. Any ideas?
Competition
If what you offer as a tester is seen as a commodity, it’s a race to the bottom on price.
You simply cannot compete on price with testers from offshore test factories.

4. How to avoid being seen as a commodity
Demonstrate your value - how do you do this?
Personal branding
Not being ‘one of those’
Build a reputation
Stay up-to-date, be relevant
vs.
Build your personal brand, both internally and externally
Don’t be a minion, stand out from the crowd
Build a reputation for excellent work
Stay up-to-date, be relevant

5. Remaining Relevant (Rob Lambert)
Rob Lambert (of New Voice Media, UK) gave a talk at the Nordic Testing Days conference (and again at EuroSTAR just last week), titled “Why Remaining Relevant Is So Important”.
How to stay relevant and hence employable.
As a hiring manager, he focuses on behaviours.
Ten tips for staying relevant.

6. Remaining Relevant - 10 tips from Rob
Show your passion in a positive way, be a force for good
Be visibly passionate
Be aggressively open-minded
Draw a frame but don’t restrain yourself, remember opportunities exist for learning between roles
Draw a frame around yourself
Become company smart, you’ll have less surprises with wider awareness
Get smart
Who’s your customer? Who buys/uses your service/software? What values do they have? What do they expect from you? Focus on their expectations.
Find out who the customer is
Improve the process
If you say you’ll do something, do it. Build integrity.
Do what you say you will do
Communicate well
You’ll need more skills than just “testing”, e.g. coding, teaching, management, coaching, foreign languages…
Add skills
Don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo, try new ways of working
Be brave!

7. Remaining Relevant (Lee & Raj’s tips)
Be polite
Acknowledge the kindness of others
Job seeker = Job provider
Expanding area of influence
Soft skills
Cultural sensitization
Be polite to others so that they remember you
Acknowledge others’ kindness: don’t approach people only when you need help
Always remember, a job seeker today can be a job provider tomorrow
Expand your area of influence/ search area
Work on your soft skills
Understanding culture is important

8. Some things you can do - right now, for free*
Start a blog
Internal and external
Advertise what you stand for, what you do well, what makes you different
Become actively involved in the I.T. & testing community, get connected, socialize:
Physically:
Attend meetups and conferences
Start talking at meetups and conferences (SpeakEasy programme can help)
Virtually:
Twitter
LinkedIn
* “free” meaning without needing money, but you need to invest your time, energy & passion

9. Some resources
Tips for writing a blog (Katrina Clokie):
Why you should use Twitter and how to get started (Kim Engel):
“Why Remaining Relevant is So Important” (Rob Lambert):
SpeakEasy - free mentoring to help secure speaking spots at conferences