English | EN 
I want to tell you about our recruiting and training program, the Test Automation Academy, that we have at Sogeti Finland. We are recruiting 5-10 new young professionals who we train test automation developer skills and offer them their first client assignment after graduating. I’m teaching courses about test automation and Robot Framework, an open-source generic automation framework that we use to teach test automation.
The first question is, of course, what do we teach at the Test Automation Academy? When you think about that question deeply enough, you can restructure the question as “What skills does the market demand from a test automation developer?”. So, we look to our clients – what do they want? They want to deliver quality software as fast as possible. There are different needs for different customers, but we have identified some key skills that we deem necessary for every test automation developer: ability to automate tests using a test automation framework, ability to work in an Agile environment, knowing about software testing practices, knowing about DevOps and Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery and the software pipeline, knowing about software development practices and knowing about digital assurance.
I want to focus on the test automation and Robot Framework courses that I’m teaching. We start by installing Python 3, installing Robot Framework and SeleniumLibrary, downloading Chromedriver and moving it to our local Python 3 installation folder. After that we can start automating, simple as that! I want the students to get their hands dirty with automation quickly. So, we start with a course we call “Adventures in Robot Framework”. Robot Framework is an open source, Python based software automation framework that’s keyword-driven. It’s really popular among our Finnish clients and growing in popularity around the World -it’s what the market currently wants.
We start our Robot Framework adventures by showing browser automation examples. The funny truth about test automation is, that as most new software has some kind of a web UI, that means that most test automation is in fact, browser automation. So, knowing how to automate the browser is essential in working as a test automation developer. In our first exercises we automate basic site user functionality, such as logging into a website and doing searches. I want our student to experience the magic of automation! I want them to feel like they are in control of their own perfect little world – the computer executes their assigned automation steps in a test environment, such as they ordered it to.
We have courses about other topics as well, such as AI, automation & analytics, about working in Agile environments, about exploratory testing and performance testing. There’s also one important topic we don’t want to miss, which is knowing about general software testing practices. It’s hard to be a test automation developer without knowing software testing principles. That is why, we have included the TMAP Test Engineer certification as part of our program. Our experienced TMAP teacher makes sure that all our students learn the most important testing principles and pass the exam.
I want to remind everyone about one thing. It’s not possible to teach everything about test automation in a month or 4 weeks. Finishing the program is just the start of long journey. But we can teach the essentials and show what test automation is all about. To inspire our students to learn more. We can give them a path forward in their journey in becoming test automation developers.
I’m very glad to have the chance to talk at Sogeti’s Got Talent 2021 and to tell more people about the Test Automation Academy. It’s great to be able to share our story with our consultants all over the World. Looking forward to the event on 17th of September!
P. S. Our next program begins in November. Apply now (in Finnish)
