Top 12 Manual QA Tester Skills to Put on Your Resume
In Quality Assurance, a Manual QA Tester earns attention by showing sharp skills that keep software sane and user-ready. Not just ticking boxes. Thinking, probing, noticing what others miss. Below are key capabilities worth putting front and center on your resume—practical, current, and trusted across teams that care about quality.
Manual QA Tester Skills
1. Selenium
Selenium is an open-source suite for browser automation. Even for primarily manual testers, it’s a powerful ally: quick smoke checks, reproducible scenarios, and validation of workflows across browsers without clicking your fingers to the bone.
Why It's Important
It trims repetitive effort, grows coverage, and helps you catch regressions earlier—especially in fast-moving web apps where small UI shifts can break core flows.
How to Improve Selenium Skills
Learn a language deeply (Python or Java are common) and stick with it for consistency.
Master WebDriver basics: locators, waits, navigation, and handling frames, alerts, and windows.
Adopt Page Object Model and keep selectors resilient (data-test attributes beat brittle XPaths).
Understand the DOM: HTML semantics, CSS selectors, and event behavior.
Practice on real apps, not just demo pages—flaky elements teach hard lessons.
Debug well: screenshots, logs, and explicit waits save hours.
How to Display Selenium Skills on Your Resume
2. Jira
Jira is a widely used tool for tracking bugs, stories, and testing work. It’s the backbone of day-to-day communication between QA, developers, and product.
Why It's Important
Clear visibility. Fast triage. Shared priorities. Jira keeps defects traceable and decisions transparent.
How to Improve Jira Skills
Build dashboards that surface your world: open defects by priority, blockers, current sprint risk.
Create useful filters and subscriptions so the right issues find you.
Use components, labels, and custom fields consistently for sane reporting.
Lean on keyboard shortcuts; seconds saved add up.
Automate repetitive transitions and notifications with simple project rules.
Integrate test management add-ons where needed (e.g., Zephyr or Xray) to connect cases, runs, and defects.
Run regular bug triage—clean backlog, clear owners, crisp priorities.
How to Display Jira Skills on Your Resume
3. Postman
Postman is a workhorse for exploring, testing, and validating RESTful and GraphQL APIs. Manual testers use it to verify payloads, headers, auth, and odd edge cases that UIs hide.
Why It's Important
APIs power modern apps. When the API is solid, the UI breathes easier. Postman helps you validate the heart of the system fast.
How to Improve Postman Skills
Organize work into collections and environments; keep variables tidy (base URLs, tokens, user IDs).
Write lightweight tests in the Tests tab to assert status codes, schema, and fields.
Use pre-request scripts for auth flows and dynamic data.
Leverage mock servers and example responses to test UI when backends are in flux.
Run collections with the Collection Runner or CLI (Newman) for regression packs.
Understand auth types—API key, OAuth 2.0, JWT—so secured endpoints don’t slow you down.
How to Display Postman Skills on Your Resume
4. SQL
SQL lets you look behind the curtain. You verify data integrity, reproduce bugs, seed test data, and confirm the system did what it promised.
Why It's Important
Back-end truth beats front-end illusions. SQL proves it, quickly and precisely.
How to Improve SQL Skills
Get fluent with SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE. Build muscle memory.
Master joins (INNER, LEFT, RIGHT, FULL), subqueries, and common table expressions.
Use aggregates and window functions for sharp analysis (COUNT, SUM, ROW_NUMBER, PARTITION BY).
Learn indexing basics and how they affect query plans and performance.
Understand normalization, keys, and relationships; predict where data should live.
Script repeatable test data setup and teardown; wrap in transactions when possible.
Practice on realistic schemas—orders, users, payments, logs—so edge cases feel familiar.
How to Display SQL Skills on Your Resume
5. Python
Python is approachable and mighty, perfect for small automation, data checks, and glue scripts that clear roadblocks for manual testing.
Why It's Important
Automate the boring. Validate data fast. Parse logs. Generate test inputs. Python turns “ugh” into “done.”
How to Improve Python Skills
Nail the essentials: variables, control flow, functions, modules, virtual environments.
Work with requests, JSON, CSV, and file I/O—everyday QA tasks.
Learn a testing framework (pytest or unittest) for quick assertions and fixtures.
Automate tiny wins first: data seeding, API smoke checks, report formatting.
Write clean code: clear names, small functions, helpful docstrings.
Practice regularly—little scripts add up to big time savings.
How to Display Python Skills on Your Resume
6. TestRail
TestRail is a central place to plan, organize, execute, and report manual tests. It gives structure without shackles.
Why It's Important
Clear test coverage, consistent case design, quick reporting to stakeholders—TestRail keeps testing visible and deliberate.
How to Improve TestRail Skills
Design lean, reusable templates for test cases; keep steps crisp and outcomes measurable.
Use sections and suites to mirror product architecture; navigation becomes effortless.
Create plans that roll up runs by environment, device, or build to track breadth.
Integrate with issue tracking so failed steps turn into traceable defects instantly.
Adopt naming conventions and tags; searching and reporting will thank you.
Review and prune cases regularly; retire stale tests, refine flaky ones.
Export meaningful reports—execution trends, failure hotspots, coverage by feature.
How to Display TestRail Skills on Your Resume
7. Jenkins
Jenkins automates building and testing so QA gets fresh, predictable builds without manual chasing. Pipelines keep the conveyor belt moving.
Why It's Important
Fast feedback loops. Reliable artifacts. Fewer “works on my machine” mysteries.
How to Improve Jenkins Skills
Adopt Pipeline as Code (Declarative or Scripted) for visibility and versioning.
Trigger smoke tests on every commit; reserve deeper suites for nightly or gated runs.
Run tests in parallel where possible to shrink feedback time.
Set up notifications (email/chat) with actionable summaries, not noise.
Cache dependencies and containers to speed builds; keep workspaces clean.
Harden security with role-based access, credentials binding, and minimal secrets exposure.
Scale agents elastically (containers or cloud) during heavy test windows.
How to Display Jenkins Skills on Your Resume
8. Cucumber
Cucumber enables Behavior-Driven Development with human-readable scenarios written in Gherkin. It draws product, QA, and dev into the same conversation.
Why It's Important
Shared language reduces ambiguity. Features meet real requirements, not assumptions.
How to Improve Cucumber Skills
Learn Gherkin well: clear Given/When/Then steps, focused scenarios, solid examples.
Refine step definitions to be reusable and intention-revealing; avoid duplication.
Use example mapping to slice features into testable, bite-sized behaviors.
Keep scenarios at the behavior level—avoid UI implementation details in wording.
Pair with product owners to validate acceptance criteria before writing steps.
Review scenarios like code; readability beats cleverness.
How to Display Cucumber Skills on Your Resume
9. Git
Git tracks changes across scripts, docs, and test assets. Collaboration without chaos.
Why It's Important
You can experiment safely, review changes, and roll back when things go sideways.
How to Improve Git Skills
Get comfortable with the essentials: clone, pull, branch, commit, merge, revert.
Adopt a branching model (feature branches, short-lived) and keep merges small.
Write clear commit messages—what changed and why—not just “fixes.”
Use pull requests for review; learn to resolve conflicts calmly.
Learn rebasing for tidy histories; use it carefully on shared branches.
Tag releases tied to builds so defects map to exact versions.
How to Display Git Skills on Your Resume
10. Appium
Appium automates mobile testing across iOS and Android with a single API. Native, hybrid, mobile web—one tool, many targets.
Why It's Important
Mobile moves fast and breaks subtly. Appium helps you verify flows on real devices and emulators without endless tapping.
How to Improve Appium Skills
Understand drivers (UIAutomator2, XCUITest) and their platform quirks.
Use Appium Inspector to locate stable elements; prefer accessibility IDs.
Handle permissions, deep links, and system alerts gracefully.
Practice gestures and W3C actions: swipes, long-press, drag-and-drop.
Balance emulator speed with real-device accuracy; test on both.
Stabilize tests with thoughtful waits, retries for flaky animations, and clean app state resets.
How to Display Appium Skills on Your Resume
11. LoadRunner
LoadRunner (now under OpenText) simulates heavy traffic and measures how systems behave under stress. It spots bottlenecks before your users do.
Why It's Important
Scalability isn’t a guess. You learn where performance bends, and where it breaks.
How to Improve LoadRunner Skills
Learn the tool’s flow: scripting in VuGen, orchestration in Controller, insights in Analysis.
Parameterize data and correlate dynamic values to keep scripts realistic and robust.
Design scenarios that mirror real user mixes, pacing, and think times.
Monitor servers and services alongside client metrics to pinpoint true bottlenecks.
Interpret graphs and percentiles, not just averages; latency tails tell the story.
Iterate: tune, retest, compare. Performance work is a loop, not a leap.
How to Display LoadRunner Skills on Your Resume
12. Charles
Charles is an HTTP(S) proxy that lets you watch, throttle, rewrite, and stub network traffic. A magnifying glass for APIs and web calls—desktop and mobile.
Why It's Important
You can see exactly what the app sends and receives, reproduce tricky states, and test edge cases the UI won’t expose.
How to Improve Charles Skills
Set up SSL proxying correctly and install the certificate on devices/emulators to decrypt HTTPS.
Use Breakpoints to pause and tweak requests or responses mid-flight; explore failure paths safely.
Throttle bandwidth and add latency to mimic poor networks; watch timeouts and retries.
Leverage Rewrite and Map Local/Remote to stub services or swap payloads without backend changes.
Filter noise with precise include/exclude rules; save sessions for reproducible bug reports.
Compose and Repeat requests to iterate quickly on headers, bodies, and auth.
Export HAR and share minimal, sanitized traces with developers for fast fixes.
How to Display Charles Skills on Your Resume
