How to start your IT career as manual tester?

Intro

IT(Information technology) is expanding quite rapidly and touches almost all industries, this leads to high demand of IT professions, one of which is testers/quality assurance engineers. Easiest start in IT would be manual tester/manual test engineer/manual QA, beside it has smallest list of requirements.

Some interesting number found(ICT - Information and Communications Technology):

• The number of ICT specialists in the EU grew by 36.1 % from 2007 to 2017, over 10 times as high as the increase (3.2 %) for total employment.
• Today, 40% of companies have difficulties
  finding ICT specialists
• There will be 500,000 unfilled vacancies
  for ICT professionals by 2020
  

Requirements:

• English
• Some computer skills mainly - googling
• Interest

 Hint: Everyone with mentioned skills can become a tester.

First steps

1. ISTQB Foundation certification
Whole book is available online and free. You will need to read whole syllabus. This will give you an introduction to quality assurance and vocabulary. It covers all needed info: basics, techniques, management topics, software life cycles and software quality.
Hint: If you have 150-200 euros you could pass the exam and receive this certificate - it would be a great benefit during your job applications.
Total time: 4 weeks

2. Register at testing services and get real experience

Just google "become tester online"(For example: https://www.webemployed.com/how-to-become-website-tester/). You could see that some services pay for finding bugs so beside of just gaining knowledge you might get money as well.
What you can learn from these services? Based on my experience, I used https://testlio.com/, there you would learn process of testing, defect/bug reporting, management, real tools like JIRA and other skills depending on the projects(example in my case: how to install/remove external application to my android phone). You will get real experience as if you would work in this company.
Hint: Register and try several of them to have different experiences.
Total time: min. 4 weeks

3. Software development process

Different  companies use different processes but common ones are covered in ISTQB and in this course - https://www.coursera.org/learn/software-processes. After this course you would understand software development lifecycle, how software is create and where your place might be in this process.
Total time: 4 weeks

4. Git

Git is one of the most popular version control system. It would be a good point in your resume and it would be very helpful and a must in future. Here is good course about that: https://www.udacity.com/course/how-to-use-git-and-github--ud775. This course would not only theoretical knowledge but practical experience as well. At the end of the course you will have your own GitHub account and repository with practical examples made by you. This should be added to your CV and mentioned during your interviews.
Total time: 3 weeks

5. Choose your area and get familiar with it

Software could be split into these main areas:

• Web
• Mobile
• Desktop
• Embedded

Chose one of them and start to dig into the area by checking job position and technologies which are mention there.
Hint: Most jobs are in Web and mobile but this highly depends on your location.
Total time: several days

6. Prepare your CV and motivation letter

Your CV might not be big but you should definitely mention about ISEB, courses and experience in testing services(step 2). Here are good links for preparation:

• udacity.com/course/refresh-your-resume--ud243
• udacity.com/course/craft-your-cover-letter--ud244
• udacity.com/course/optimize-your-github--ud247

After passing these courses you will get good CV and motivation letter. Now you are ready for job application.
Total time: 5 days

Apply for jobs

Here is list of possible job title that you should look for:

• Tester
• Manual tester
• QA engineer
• Test engineer
• Software test engineer

Go to as many interviews as you can - you would learn different questions, technologies, companies, fields, policies and processes. The more interviews the confident you will be even if they won't choose you - it is experience which will help you in future. Negative experience would be very valuable as it could help you to choose things which suit you and you don't want to deal with. Pay special attention to startups they are modern, agile and focusing on people itself not on degrees/papers/certificates.

Sum up

#	Step	Length, worst case	Length, optimized case
1.	ISTQB Foundation certification	4 weeks	4 weeks
2.	Register at testing services and get real experience	4 weeks	This will be done during whole time
3.	Software development process	4 weeks	4 weeks
4.	Git	3 weeks	3 weeks
5.	Choose your area and get familiar with it	several days	This will be done with step 6
6.	Prepare your CV and motivation letter	5 days	5 days, round it to 1 week
	Total time*:	17 weeks or 4 month and 1 week	12 weeks, 3 months

* 1 week time means around 10 hours per week

You can see that during 3 months you will definitely get good theoretical knowledge of software testing, receive some experience and be prepared for an interviews. This whole package should be enough to start your career in IT.

Hope it was useful.