Head of Tester Education Zorica

My name is Zorica Micanovic and I come from a small Serbian village Gornja Koviljaca on the Mountain Gucevo. I graduated from Belgrade University, Faculty of Philosophy, Department for Archaeology as a specialist in Egyptology. Before I joined Test IO, I worked as a field archaeologist, curator in the museum, receptionist in the 4* hotel, blogger, Youtuber, translator, language teacher, high school history teacher, etc.

You can laugh but my biggest hobby is the renovation of my house, and I am still in progress after 3 years of working on it. :rofl: Every time I finish and repair something on the house, something new appears. Like a Sisyphus. Apart from house repairs, I spend my time reading books, belly dancing, lifting weights, cooking and I have recently started making cocktails. My favorite cocktail is Cosmopolitan. Sassy, I know! If I must pick only one food, that would be bread. There is no better aroma in the world than fresh hot bread coming from the oven. That is probably the reason why I was forced to get back to bodybuilding. Too much bread leads to upsizing your clothes. So, instead of buying new clothes, I decided to lift some weights.

My favorite book is going to surprise you I guess because it has nothing to do with archaeology. If I could pick only one book, I would bring to the deserted island, would be Christopher Paolini’s book Eragon from the Inheritance Cycle.

It is very difficult when I must pick only one movie. Ha, ha, ha! Let it be King Solomon’s Mines with R.Chamberlain. Old but good!

After some dramatic changes in my personal life, I decided that I will never ever be weak and that I will become something special. At that point in time, I didn’t know what it would be. In 2019, Test IO was not marked well on the Glassdoor website. Some people took the time to write a really bad review that had nothing to do with the truth. One thing I remember… The reviewer said that he/she worked for 10 years for Test IO and that couldn’t be true because Test IO didn’t exist for 10 years when the review was submitted. So, I thought that I could just join and prove that whoever wrote that review is a liar. Somehow, I felt that I must do that.

After I signed up, I took enough time to read all the articles from the Academy before I started the Onboarding. It was very important for me not to get into the Onboarding unprepared. So, I spent 7 days reading and learning. In 2019, our Academy was not that large but still, the amount of shared information was massive. When I felt comfortable, I joined the first Onboarding test cycle. While back then, we had different Onboarding which consisted of joining the test cycle and submitting bugs. I submitted bugs and got approved as a tester the next day.

The early days of my testing career were filled with reading Discord channels, asking questions, and trying to accumulate the knowledge I didn’t have. One thing that helped me is the mindset archaeologists have: hunger for the unknown and discovery of something special. Finding new bugs was like discovering an untouched tomb filled with gold and jewels.

As time progressed, I became more experienced and active on the Discord server. It was Nikola Jonic who approached me asking if I was interested in becoming a moderator on chat and Community Reporter. He spent a lot of time helping me and we shared a common interest in increasing the quality of our testers’ work. During the first couple of months, my greatest support was Charlie. He was always there. We used to compete on who would find the trickiest bug. Those were the days! Now, when I look back, I feel honored for those who supported me. Can you imagine what it feels like having support from Nikola, Charlie, myroslav, Chandra, av-master, Mircil, Storm, lavoiejsimon2, cris373, mukhinviktors, Miguel, Nikolas, Kija, Ivan, sablina, heidi, Evgeniya, Stefan, Markus and others? To become someone special, you must earn the trust of all those people by working hard and always following the rules.

It was Evgeniya’s bright idea to organize the first Testing Cup and that is exactly where we showed what we are made of. All mods are under enormous pressure to make everything work smoothly. Nikola and I were the team members in the first Testing Cup. We used to call ourselves Greenhorn Suicide Squad. :D You can’t even imagine how much fun we had during the testing rounds! I even had makeup like Harley Quin! :D After the Cup ended, I created the Testing Cup Yearbook to surprise testers with a gift so they can always remember the time they spent in the Cup.

In December 2019, I’ve become a Mentor to US testers and that is when I understood that I really want to share my knowledge with others.

Soon after, Stefan had the first interview with me, and I waited for another 6 months for the second interview for the position of Community Manager at UX Space. During those 6 long months, we had the second Testing Cup. Yuliya was having Covid during the Cup, but she kept a positive spirit and that gave me confidence that I can do anything. I was saying to myself: “If she was able to get everything done while being sick, I can do miracles.”. So, in the meantime, I totally forgot that I applied for the position, continued testing, and did usual tasks on Discord when the second interview email notification showed up. Again, some time passed, and I already said to myself: “Nah! You ain’t gonna get it!”. Then Markus appeared! You won’t believe how amazing he is! I mean, you can imagine a knight on horse riding to save the day… but if we remove the horse from the story, Markus was the knight who saved the day in my case.

After I signed the contract, I became the Community Manager responsible for the UX Space. It was fun to search for testers and discuss with CSMs and devs. Anuar and Markus took the heavy load of Onboarding me for the position. I remember that both were super responsive and polite whenever I contacted them.

When we shut down UX Space, I got the position of Head of Tester Education, Staffing Specialist and Tester Scout. Even though I loved all those tasks, I have to admit that I was hoping to focus only on education as it offers more freedom and creativity. Because we decided to provide better educational material for our testers and include some new resources in learning, we decided to split those responsibilities and distribute them to two people. Tetiana took Staffing and Scouting while I held the position of Head of Tester Education.

My advice for beginners is to read the Academy. Not once but as many times as needed. The first focus should be on the Onboarding Collection. The basic knowledge about testing on our platform is held there. After passing the Onboarding, focus on the Greenhorn Collection. It will equip you with advanced knowledge which you can use in searching for bugs using several devices. Remember: asking questions is free! Getting rejected bugs will cost you your Quality. Ask as many questions as you think you need to ask until the knowledge about testing becomes iron in the stone. Only accompanied by solid knowledge, honesty, and hard work you will push yourself into the Elite testers whom we consider the crowd we can count on for the possible future position in our rows.

A lot of things will change. The Onboarding process will continue to evolve into a specialized process of selection of the best candidates. Also, we plan on restructuring the Greenhorn phase completely to match the skills level of our testers. The Education Team is preparing many new courses for testers which will increase the capacity of our testers.

I would like to learn how to make raspberry rakiya. It seems to be a very popular alcoholic beverage these days in my country, and I would like to learn more about the process of fermentation.

Persistent, tireless, passionate, funny and loyal.

Dancing and reading books.

Love, challenge, and learning.