Oleksandra Pervunina, QA Engineer at Wix.comImage by You X Ventures on UnsplashWhat are Soft Skills?What exactly are soft skills? There are a lot of different definitions floating around on the Internet. Some articles suggest that they are personal attributes crucial for job success. While others describe them as non-technical skills that relate to HOW you work.In my view, soft skills are an aggregation of your time management skills, creative “out-of-the-box” thinking, teamwork, networking, problem-solving ability, communication skills, listening skills, etc. The list can be expanded with additional characteristics.But I guess, we need to know how to accent the most useful soft skills for people who are working in the High Tech industry, and particularly in Software Testing.Why do we need to develop and enhance Soft Skills for our daily work activities?Why are soft skills so important in our daily work life? Let’s imagine a highly skilled professional with a lot of tech expertise, but lacking negotiation or communication skills, or with very limited abilities in these areas. Will this type of person succeed in their career? Will they effectively solve problems/issues/questions at work or presenting their own ideas to colleagues through networking? I believe the answer is no. Soft skills will help us to build our careers and make the development of our hard skills a smoother and more enjoyable process.Essential Soft Skills in High TechFor IT professionals, there are a few crucial soft skills we need to possess:Communication and networking skills: These skills help us to express our thoughts, ideas, discuss features and bugs with customers, product managers or developers, and collaborate with the entire team to find common solutions.Proactivity: Being proactive helps us suggest and implement changes within the team. It allows us to take initiative and contribute to the team’s growth.Time management: The ability to create your own schedule will help to minimize problems related to the release time of features or products.Team work: This skill answers the question of how to communicate with a team and share knowledge, ideas, and information with other team members to foster collaboration.Decision-Making: While mostly an important skill for managers, decision-making skill helps to increase productivity and save time.So, enhancing these soft skills enables us to collaborate better with team members, take initiative, prioritize our tasks, and actively listen to others.Essential Soft Skills for QA EngineersWhat about Test Engineers, in particular? What are some soft skills that will lead to positive results at work? Here are the most essential soft skills for QA Engineers, in my opinion:Curiosity: This is #1 in the list. This characteristic keeps QA professionals asking questions and pushing tasks. Being creative and always having some innovative ideas are good characteristics that employers love.Attention to detail: This skill is vital for QA Engineers and needs no explanation.Adaptability: Being flexible and being able to work in different teams even across one company is an essential skill for QAs who are working in outsourcing and service-based companies. Adaptability allows testers to learn new tools and technologies quickly and with minimal effort.Critical thinking: This skill helps identify unexpected and unusual issues.Creativity: It’s not just about being open to new ideas, but also about generating innovative test cases for checking products.Positive mindset: Demonstrating motivation, initiative and proactiveness is crucial in maintaining a positive work environment.Independence: What do I mean here? Of course, it is not about being against working in teams. Independence for QA Engineers means making decisions, reporting bugs, creating test plans, and prioritizing tasks independently while still fostering teamwork.Tricky Soft Skills that “help” you to do your job better.So, what about the negative results of some soft skills? Are all soft skills equally important and productive in our daily work? In my opinion, there are some “tricky” personal traits that can negatively influence your daily work. Here are some examples:1. Multitasking:Nowadays, there is a lot of discussion around this skill. Is it myth or reality to be able to do a few tasks simultaneously? So, multitasking as a soft skill is the act of doing multiple things at once. While it may appear beneficial to juggle multiple tasks at once, it can also have detrimental effects on job performance. Is it good to have this soft skill for QA Engineers? I doubt it and will try to explain why I think so.As testers, we are always faced with multitasking in our jobs. At least once, we’ve all had several tasks with urgent deadlines and needed to do them immediately, or we were trying to complete a particular job and needed to quickly switch our focus to another task. If you remember yourself in any of these examples, congrats! — you were able to multitask. Was it successful? Were the results good in the end?First, when a QA Engineer is multitasking, it is easy to lose concentration. And to lose focus at our job means to skip or not to report some essential issues that can harm the quality of our product.Second, it is very hard to do several (or even two!) tasks simutanuasly. It is a very high risk that your two tasks will be not so clean and professional, with some quality issues and missing some important details to be completed. Delete this skill from your daily QA activity, as it can have a direct impact on the quality or quantity of production issues. Or, at the least, reduce multitasking from your job.What can you do about it?Try to create a to-do list every day (week, month) with some priorities and deadlines; try to estimate the number of your tasks and create a schedule for them; try to delegate some tasks, if possible. But don’t try to do several things at the same time, all on your own.2. Confidence:We all know what confidence and self-confidence is, but why is it important for QA Engineers? What does it mean to be confident at your job? Is it true that self-confidence drives success? Or maybe vice versa — sometimes it can hinder your success?Let’s imagine a QA Engineer without any fear or questions and with high self-confidence. Will this person really do the QA job correctly, without any issues and mistakes? The true job of each tester is to ask a lot of questions about the product to everyone on the team — developers, product managers, business analysts, other QAs, etc. And for sure, good QA Engineers have a lot of questions for themselves, their jobs, written test plans, test cases, even small checklists.What am I trying to say? QA Engineers need to be “unconfident” at all times. It is essential to have lots of ideas and different ways to test the product, to have a curiosity for learning new items, methods, technologies, etc. So, being confident is for sure a good thing in our life, but to become a professional QA Engineer you need to always have extra questions for yourself and for your work.3. Inability to say ‘no’:So, how does the inability to say “no” to your colleagues in some working cases influence your QA job? Saying “yes” and agreeing to do more tasks every day can have negative results on your mental health and lead to burnout. Working under emotional burnout always leads to mistakes, inattentiveness, distraction and missing some bugs. All of these are negatively affecting your QA activities.4. Empathy and FriendlinessFor sure, there are great soft skills — at work and in our life. These important soft skills help us to understand each other, to listen to each other and understand another individual’s emotions and experience. But at the same time, it can be very tricky in your QA daily activity. What do I mean? These warm soft skills can make you a person who will not be able to delegate tasks or, as mentioned previously, say “no” to your colleagues. Finding the right balance between empathy and assertiveness is essential for effective team management as well.5. Willingness to break the rules (in your professional area):I am pretty sure that you will agree with me, that a great QA Engineer will sometimes break a rule! Sometimes a QA Engineer needs to try to find vulnerabilities when testing products as much as possible (let’s say for example some cases of Security testing or Load testing). And of course, a good QA tries to find unusual solutions, testing ways to find more unique and special bugs.In conclusion, I want to clarify that this article does not suggest that you need to get rid of these “tricky” soft skills. Of course, not. In my opinion, good QA Engineers need to be able to minimize its influence in our daily work and be able to distinguish artfully in which cases some soft skill will bring success, and in which they will lead to a negative result during testing. Striking a balance and being able to switch between different soft skills as needed will make us well-rounded QA professionals.