Manual Tester Resume Sample for 2024 (Various Levels)

"A manual tester is just a failed software developer." Have you heard that one already? The truth is, the recruiter doesn't really know what the manual testing job is about. They might think you're just an error hunter.

Prove you're ten times more than that with a manual tester resume that will pass every possible scenario.

Here's how.

The guide will show you: 

• A manual tester resume example better than 9 out of 10 other resumes.
• How to write a manual testing resume sample that will land you more interviews.
• Tips and examples of how to put skills and achievements on a manual testing resume.
• How to describe your experience on a resume for a manual tester to get any job you want.

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Wish to explore your possibilities? See other relevant resume guides:

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• Quality Engineer Resume Example
• Software Engineer Resume Example
• UI Developer Resume Example
• UX Designer Resume Example
• UX Researcher Resume Example
• SDET Resume Example
• 500+ Resume Examples for All Professions

Manual Tester Resume Sample

See how to write a quality resume for a manual tester:

1. Gather Format Requirements for Your Manual Testing Resume 

What’s the rule for building an app? Making sure it’s easy to grow. Venmo took it to heart, and see where they got. Your resume will grow with time, too, so to save you some for regular maintenance, follow the below standards of writing a resume:

• Set 1” resume margins to give yourself enough whitespace.
• Choose one 12pt resume font. Don’t test extreme configurations here.
• Make 1-1.5 line spacing between sentences and double space between paragraphs.
• Pick the reverse-chronological resume format and stick to it throughout.
• Introduce yourself in the resume header by providing your basic personal information.
• Structure your resume and divide it into the following sections: Contact Information, Resume Summary / Objective, Work Experience, Education, and Skills.
• Leave room for other resume sections like languages, certifications, awards, or hobbies and interests. 
• Refer to the job description to find out what file format recruiters need. Have both PDF and Word resumes at hand.
• Write a one-page-long resume or face the consequences of tl;dr.

You can hear here and there that you shouldn’t be afraid of testing in production. But don’t do that with your resume. Check the specs because there’s no going back from hitting that send button.

Here’s our guide that answers all question about resumes: How To Write A Resume

2. Analyze Your Work Experience With Scrutiny

Now’s time for some serious stuff. It won’t be about breaking things, but destroying the illusion that they work. See possible bugs in the work experience section of a resume:

• Overloaded resume with irrelevant experience—it doesn’t matter if you’re on the job market for a long time. Recruiters are interested only in the work experience that has to do with the job you’re after.
• No experience at all—as a junior, you think you don’t have relevant experience. That’s wrong on so many levels. Any internship or volunteering you did, student club or association you joined, and even independent projects can play to your advantage.
• Passive voice—you’ve been an active team member who got the job done and did it well, no? Then don’t hide behind the passive voice and use resume action verbs.
• Responsibilities—one does not simply list them in resumes. To get the gig, use bullet points with the PAR formula. Prove you solved the Problem by listing your Actions leading to Results. Hiring managers are looking for accomplishments in your resume.
• Random sentences—sorry, three times no. Your hiring manager wants specific qualities and skills. Guard the end-user satisfaction realm, find the resume keywords, and scatter them all over the resume.
• Incomplete or confusing details—this one should take you back to resume formatting. You can’t fail to give correct information about your job title and previous companies, i.e., name, address, and employment dates. Your resume often serves as grounds for background checks.
• Lies—there’s little to no chance you’ll get away with lying on your resume or cover letter. If your story doesn’t add up, you’ll get busted. And job-less.

Let’s put them to test now:

Manual Testing Resume for Years of Experience

You own it!

The job title, company details, and dates look perfect. Your bullet points with quantified results prove you had an impact at your job. And what an achievement! A juicy cherry on top.

You know how to follow quality standards. But what if you didn’t?

Next! That’s what your hiring manager said when they took 6 seconds to scan your resume. At best.

So, DO NOT make a list of responsibilities like above. Even though you tried to tailor your manual tester resume and used the keywords, they say nothing about your 3+ years of experience as a manual tester, let alone your achievements. And your job title’s missing.

Gee. Let’s move on to examples for junior manual testers.

Manual Testing Resume for Freshers

That’s so cool! You got the internship while you were still at uni. It won’t go unnoticed. And, instead of creating a random list of responsibilities, you chose bullets that match what manual testers do. Great job.

Plus, who said interns couldn’t have achievements? 

These examples even sound funny. What did you do exactly with that documentation? It seems redundant if nobody knows that.

No specific and quantifiable results and no mention of what kind of internship you did make this entire experience irrelevant. There’s no place for irrelevant experience in your resume.

Find more work experience examples in this guide: How To Write The Perfect Work Experience Section

Creating a resume with our builder is incredibly simple. Follow our step-by-step guide and use content from Certified Professional Resume Writers to have a resume ready in minutes.

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When you’re done, our professional resume builder will score your resume and our resume checker will tell you exactly how to make it better.

3. Design Your Way to Success With Your Education Section

You can, but not necessarily will get a manual tester job without a degree related to computer science or engineering. So if you’re lucky to have one, don’t hold your breath and put your degree in the resume. You’ll be a lot closer to meeting the business requirements with a relevant degree.

In the reverse-chronological format, education section usually sits between employment and skills. If you’re an entry-level candidate, education is your leverage—move it above the work experience section.

How the education section should look like in production:

Manual Tester Resume [Education]

Simple as that.

Spell out the name of your degree and mention the graduation date. You have manual tester experience, so going into the details in your educational background is unnecessary.

What about a junior manual tester:

Junior Manual Tester Resume [Education]

If you’re about to graduate, don’t worry about an unfinished bachelor degree on your resume. Writing an expected date of graduation will do. Hiring managers understand you’ll be trying to secure a job while finishing school.

You can also strengthen your chances by listing volunteering, memberships or relevant coursework. They’ll introduce you to the market as an engaged and growth-driven candidate.

Find more answers to: How To Correctly List Education On A Resume

4. Write the a-List of Manual Testing Skills in Your Resume

Have you ever imagined you’ll be able to listen to audio from your sunglasses? Because you can now, thanks to Bose.

“Shoot!I’d test the heck out of them!” You have to keep up to be on top. Not here to disappoint, but it all comes down to growing your knowledge and skillset. See the list of skills Jerry Weinberg would approve of:

Manual Testing Skills in a Resume

• Development and agile methodologies
• Web & mobile services
• Software development life cycle
• Selenium
• Jira, Bugzilla
• Programming languages: Java, SQL
• Test scripts
• User interface
• Quality assurance
• Attention to detail
• Analytical skills
• Communication skills
• Computer skills
• Creative thinking skills
• Critical thinking skills
• Customer service skills
• Decision-making skills
• Interpersonal skills
• Leadership skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Project management skills
• Teamwork skills
• Technical skills
• Time management skills

So here’s the deal. You can’t just take a few of the above and paste them into your resume. Your resume needs to pass the Applicant Tracking Software to land on your hiring manager’s desk.

To make your resume ATS-friendly, use resume keywords. You’ll find them in the job description. Tailor your skills section by taking out the skills and qualifications your employer mentions in the job ad.

See what the list of skills will look if the company wanted to hire a manual tester who does software analysis and bug fixing, and can work with code.

Sample Skills Section for a Manual Tester Resume

You must’ve written a resume based on our guides because this is fire!

You answered every single requirement your hiring manager has. And what an excellent choice of adding hard and soft skills to your resume! Such a combination is the most desirable—it reverts you to your human form.

Make yourself irreplaceable already at this stage and prove your skills in other sections, too. Work history and resume summary/objective are perfect for such a purpose.

Sample Skills Section for an Entry Level Manual Testing Resume 

That’s exactly what reliable skills for a fresher manual testing resume should look like. You, too, try to sneak them in-between your achievements. Just like dropping little it-doesn’t-work warning signs for software developers here and there.

Remember you mentioned in the education section an award-winning article for the University Newspaper? That’s reinforced evidence of your effective communication skills.

Don’t worry that your skills section seems bare compared to a senior. Hiring managers pay attention to both your strengths and attitude towards getting real-life experience. 

5. Test Out Other Sections on Your Manual Tester Resume

Remember your parents say: “You could at least learn something useful since you’re sitting on your computer all day.” Well, apparently you did, and if you haven’t already mentioned it in the previous entries, extra resume sections are the right place to do it.

Additional sections will give you bonus points for each bullet. It’s almost as if you were testing a feature, and it worked. That’s how your hiring manager feels when they see one of the below sections with relevant examples:

• Licenses & certifications 
• Achievements & awards
• Volunteering
• Extracurricular activities
• Manual testing projects
• Publications
• Languages

What would work for a manual testing professional, then?

Manual Testing Resume Sample [Additional Sections]

That’s brilliant. You’re saying that you cut down on fantasy and got down to serious work. 

Industry certification proves you’re serious about your career and that you’ve made an effort to get better at your job. And, it’s a fantastic way to support your qualifications.

Junior Manual Testing Resume Sample [Additional Sections]

Again, well done! You shouldn’t give up on listing your hobbies and interests if they have a clear connection to what you want to do as a career. 

Volunteering is also an example of your motivation and engagement that hiring managers seek in their entry-level employees. They believe you’ll be as much active at your job and getting real-life experience as you are with your extracurriculars.

Wondering what to write on your resume to beat the competition? See Ways To Make Your Resume Stand Out

6. Deploy Your Manual Testing Resume Summary or Resume Objective

You’re almost done, so it’s time for software testing documentation. Report on the characteristics and include a strategy on how to bring improvements. There are two ways of doing it:

A resume summary is a summary of your key accomplishments, work experience, and skills. So, you do that at the end, or else there’s nothing to summarize, amirite? But—

If you’re just kicking off with your career, a resume objective is a right choice. A resume objective includes your skills and distinctive traits while highlighting your career goals. You use it to reinforce what you wrote in other sections of your resume. So, it needs to come last, too.

For both, relevant and ATS-compliant are the buzzwords. Take a glance at your resume and mark all the items you are the most proud of. Choose 2 or 3 of them—the statement shouldn’t be long—and use the below formula to create your selling points:

Strong character trait + Job title / Position you’re applying for + Company name + What you want to do for the employer and how + Key achievement / 2-3 Skills

After deployment, they look like this:

Manual Tester Resume Summary

Ugh. One person wrote these two. Can you imagine? How can they be so different!

The first example follows the formula. No magic spells, no creativity potions. There are action verbs, strong character traits, relevant skills, and achievements. There’s also a promise of coming crashing down and bringing improvements. You’d better keep it when you join the ranks!

The second one, though, is correct. But correct is not enough for landing the job. You must stand out, and you can do that only when you show off your results. 

Junior Manual Testing Resume Objective

This is a classic example of achievements winning over wishful thinking. If there’s a skill you want to boast about, you’d better back it up with evidence.

You don’t think you can personalize your resume? See: How To Describe Yourself In A Resume

7. Maintain Your Hiring Manager’s Interest With the Cover Letter

Good news! Employment of manual testers is projected to grow 22 percent from 2019 to 2029. You’re probably asking yourself now: why, then, is a cover letter necessary? Around 50% of hiring managers still expect to get one.

Plus some job ads will require one… So here’s a checklist of what you need to do to write the perfect cover letter to support your manual tester resume:

• Be consistent. Use the same cover letter template as you used for your resume.
• Format your cover letter similarly, too, so that it doesn’t make an impression of coming from another candidate. 
• Think of a clear cover letter outline that transitions from your career purpose to qualifications to a call to action.
• Greet the reader properly in your cover letter. Using Dir Sir or Madam will do you no good.
• Stay away from writing a generic cover letter.
• Start your cover letter with an intriguing thought that makes your hiring manager carry on. Why not using one of your accomplishments for that?
• Sell yourself in the cover letter middle by referring to your relevant qualifications and skills. Prove you’ve got everything your hiring manager needs from an entry-level or experienced manual tester.
• Finish your cover letter with a bomb call to action, and ask for scheduling a meeting with you.

Read more about: What To Include In A Job-Winning Cover Letter

Plus, a great cover letter that matches your resume will give you an advantage over other candidates. You can write it in our cover letter builder here. Here's what it may look like:

Create my cover letter now

See more cover letter templates and start writing.

Key Takeaways

Here’s how to write a manual testing resume with years of experience or a junior:

• Start right. Choose a professional manual testing resume template.
• But don’t just start. Find resume keywords in the job description and keep them in mind every time you tap the keyboard.
• Use the P.A.R. formula throughout the entire resume. Each of the sections should speak about your accomplishments and prove your skills.
• Either you have experience or not, be relevant in your manual tester resume.
• Write the resume summary / objective last. It’ll be easier for you.
• Remember about bonus hiring points from the additional sections.
• Support your manual testing resume with the cover letter that reinforces your application.

Thank you so much for reading my guide!

• Is there anything you find difficult in the resume or cover letter writing? 
• What do you struggle with the most when working on your manual tester resume?

Let me know in the comments, and hop onto the discussion!

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Sources

• https://www.wellesley.edu/careereducation/resources/how-write-effective-resume-bullets
• https://youth.gov/youth-topics/youth-employment
• https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/software-developers.htm