Putting Your Testing Experience on Your Resume
One of the great benefits of testing with Betabound is a chance to grow professionally. By testing with us, you can learn how to use new products that help your professional life and hone valuable testing skills that can help your career.
As we’ve mentioned before, it can be easy to unintentionally violate your NDA so you need to be careful about what you disclose. Discussing your testing experience with a potential employer doesn’t help you much if you’re violating your NDA at the same time. You don’t want to show an employer that you don’t honor your agreements. We’ve put together some helpful guidelines so you can leverage your testing experience in your career without violating any rules.
Speak Generally
We encourage you to list your testing experience on your resume and as a skill on LinkedIn. You’ve devoted countless hours to testing products and that passion will help you excel in a number of professional fields.
You’re also welcome to discuss your experience in interviews and cover letters to illustrate your skillset. Feel free to talk about how you “thoroughly tested hardware and software products to find previously undiscovered issues” and “worked with the product team to give thorough and complete feedback about your user experience”.
You just have to remember to speak generally. Don’t get into the specifics of the products you tested or the bugs you found. Focus instead on the testing experience and the skills you’ve honed as a tester. Draw those experiences back to the skills the job requires instead of focusing on the specific products you tested.
Be Clear About Your Role
Being a tester for Betabound is a volunteer position, not a job, so be careful not to present yourself as an employee of Centercode or one of our clients. It’s great to list your experience as a product tester on your resume, just be careful not to make it sound like you’re a member of the product development team.
In the same vein, Centercode cannot act as a professional reference for you. With the size of our community and the sheer number of testers we work with every day, our team simply cannot provide the detail necessary to act as a reference for our testers.
Don’t Violate Your NDA
You signed an NDA saying that you wouldn’t discuss the specifics of your beta testing experience. That means you cannot list the specific companies you tested for, released products you helped test, or feedback you gave during the test. You can mention product categories and discuss your experience as a tester, but you cannot disclose details. If you post details publicly about your experience as a tester on a site like LinkedIn, you risk being banned from future Betabound tests, so it’s best to play it safe.
Being a tester gives you a valuable skill set, but it also comes with responsibility. By respecting the NDAs you signed and being clear about the role you played in the test, you’re showing potential employees that you understand the importance of confidentiality and honesty. This will bolster your credibility in the eyes of potential employers more than any name-dropping would.