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How to Write a QA Tester CV That Gets Interviews (UK)

A qa tester CV lives or dies on describing tests written rather than the regressions caught and the coverage gained. Most qa tester applications never reach a human: the ATS filters them on missing keywords, and recruiters bin the rest in seconds. Here's how to tailor a QA Tester CV to the specific job ad in front of you.

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What a QA Tester CV needs to pass the ATS

Applicant Tracking Systems screen qa tester CVs on exact-match keywords. Stuffing backfires (the recruiter still has to read it), but missing the obvious terms gets you binned before anyone sees the document. The keywords most qa tester job ads scan for in SaaS, e-commerce, financial services and insurance platforms:

  • test automation
  • Cypress
  • Playwright
  • Selenium
  • regression testing
  • exploratory testing
  • API testing
  • Postman
  • CI integration
  • defect tracking

Hand-curated for this role, not auto-generated. Use the exact words from the specific job ad you're applying to, that's what the ATS is scanning for.

What recruiters look for in a QA Tester CV

Past the ATS, a recruiter gets seven seconds with your CV before deciding whether to read further. The top third (the title, professional summary and key competencies) has to answer their screening questions instantly. For a QA Tester, that means:

  • Your automation framework (Cypress, Playwright, Selenium, WebdriverIO)
  • The platform under test (web, mobile, API, embedded)
  • Coverage, defect-rate or release-confidence numbers

Before and after: one QA Tester bullet

Weak

Wrote and maintained automated tests and reported bugs.

Strong

Built and maintained the Playwright end-to-end test suite for a UK insurance broker's quote-and-buy journey (340 scenarios across 4 product lines), raising regression coverage from 41% to 78% in 2023 and catching 6 release-blocking defects before production.

The weak version is QA boilerplate. The strong version names the tool (Playwright), the product (quote-and-buy for insurance), the scale (340 scenarios), the coverage movement (41% to 78%) and the operational outcome (6 release-blockers caught). QA hiring screens for whether you've prevented prod regressions, not just whether you've written tests.

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Tailor your QA Tester CV in 30 seconds

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QA Tester CV FAQ

Do I need to know how to code as a QA Tester?

For any modern role, yes, at minimum to read code and write automation in JavaScript / TypeScript / Python. Manual-only QA roles still exist but are diminishing; pivot if you haven't already.

Should I differentiate manual vs automated testing on my CV?

Yes, in a skills section, but lead the experience bullets with whichever you spent most time on. Recruiters bin candidates whose experience reads as 'automation' but whose work history shows 80% manual.

How do I move from QA to SDET?

Frame your bullets as the engineering decisions behind your tests. 'Refactored the Cypress page-object model to reduce duplicated locator code by 60%, cutting test maintenance time across 3 dev squads' is SDET-grade. The work is QA; the framing is engineering.

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