Quality is the biggest priority for all software products. With the booming software testing industry, the demand for skilled testers is on the rise like never before. With the right set of skills, you can not only gain projects in software testing but also advance in your career as a tester. Here are a few tips to help improve your software testing skills:

1. Invest in learning
Testing is all about providing vital information to stakeholders to help them take informed decisions. To provide meaningful information, you need to know the app and its production environment well. Having sound technical skills will help you in detailing specific bugs & issues that are easier for the stakeholders to interpret. Don’t miss out on any opportunity to pair up with other teams like development team, sales team etc to gain new insights and overall business perspective.
Invest in learning new strategies, techniques, and tools. Additionally, you can follow blogs by professional testers like James Bach, Michael Bolton, Michael d Kelly & Ben Simo. You can even start your own blog and actively participate in discussions and forums on the blogs.
2. Practice testing & writing:
One of the simplest ways to aid your learning & improve your reporting skills in software testing is to take down notes. Make it a habit to learn and jot down new aspects you come across in testing. Practicing your writing skills will help you document the bugs more concisely. Analyze bug reports created by you and even other testers to find ways to improve your reporting style. Can you make the information more accurate? Is there scope for expressing the content in a way that is best suited to your stakeholders? Are all screenshots and data required provided? Is there any new perspective that you can bring to the table?
3. Participate in training & seminars:
The scope for learning never stops in the testing field. The best way to stay updated is to actively network and participate in testing seminars, meet ups, conferences and training. Be it knowledge of a new application or new domain information, never miss out on an opportunity to learn and grow your testing skills.
4. Master test case design:
Find out all the attributes and probabilities required to create detailed and effective test case designs from scratch.
To grow up the career ladder, it helps to know coding that will help in fixing the bugs. So that when you present your reports, you can also provide valuable advocacies that can help fix the issues you report. You can invest your time in learning the basics of coding and also equip yourself to read the source files. This will also enable you to pick up automation skills faster.
5. Build Your Professional Network
Contribute to the software testing community whenever you get an opportunity. Be more active on testing forums, discussions, and platforms related to software testing. Joining crowd testing platforms like 99tests, will not only help you build your professional network but also enable you to work on new and interesting testing projects from anywhere in the world.
These are a few tips for improving your software testing skills. If you would like to add any more tips, please do add them in the comments below.Click on the given link to learn more about, the 99tests Testing Community where you can work on paid projects and enhance your testing skills : https://99tests.com/
While testing a software application, testers have to focus on various types of tests to ensure that the software meets all business requirements – http://bit.ly/1keqS6U