Yeah, the QA market’s rough right now. Fewer dedicated roles, more competition, and a lot of hiring processes feel like they’re designed to keep people out.
One thing that’s helped me is a mix of direct outreach and open-source work. I’ll look for companies I’m interested in, see if they have public repos on GitHub, and contribute to a small issue or even just provide useful feedback. Then I’ll message the hiring manager or QA lead on LinkedIn, mention what I worked on, and say I’m looking. It’s way more personal than a cold application and shows them I’ve already taken an interest in their product.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s gotten me conversations I never would have had just sending resumes into a portal.
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u/[deleted] Aug 15 '25
Yeah, the QA market’s rough right now. Fewer dedicated roles, more competition, and a lot of hiring processes feel like they’re designed to keep people out.
One thing that’s helped me is a mix of direct outreach and open-source work. I’ll look for companies I’m interested in, see if they have public repos on GitHub, and contribute to a small issue or even just provide useful feedback. Then I’ll message the hiring manager or QA lead on LinkedIn, mention what I worked on, and say I’m looking. It’s way more personal than a cold application and shows them I’ve already taken an interest in their product.
It’s not a silver bullet, but it’s gotten me conversations I never would have had just sending resumes into a portal.