School of Roq

By Shaheen Gul, Talent Recruitment Specialist - Roq

This year we were delighted to be able to run our Defectives University Challenge face-to-face. Runshaw College kindly hosted our event which took place on the 8th of December. The theme of the event was ‘School of Roq’ and the identified websites for our Defectives were all related to education and learning.

Roq founded the Defectives ten years ago after a colleague decided it would be a fantastic way to bring testers together. It’s proven to be a fun and fast-paced event with teams competing to find bugs on specific websites.

The aim of the event is to introduce students from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to a career in Quality Engineering. This feeds into Roq’s graduate recruitment programme in a fun and unique way. Roq has invested heavily in the graduate programme since its inception in 2014 and has attracted students from a wide range of Universities across the Northwest. In January 2023 we are offering eleven successful candidates the opportunity to join us on a Level 4 Apprenticeship in Software Testing.

Participation from nine Northwest Universities

Teams from Universities across the Northwest took part including: - Edge Hill, University of Manchester, University of Bolton, Manchester Metropolitan University, Blackburn College, UCLAN, Edge Hill, and Runshaw College. Students and Tutors were all in attendance and ready to discover a world of Quality Engineering opportunities and put their defect-finding skills to the test. They worked together within their teams to find an array of defects on specific websites to win the highly sought-after Defectives University Challenge Trophy!

The hosts for the evening were Roq staff Rob Wallace, Grace Byers, Roq Graduate Programme Alumni Amira Begum, and Connor Griffiths who shared their graduate journeys. Our hosts Grace and Rob gave the students a warm welcome and overview of the evening. At intervals spot prizes were announced and there was great competition from Roq Defective Managers to gain prizes for their teams. Students were given an overview of testing and how the industry has grown and how students could become part of the Roq success.

The students obtained points for finding defects on nominated websites and reproducing the defect to their Roq-assigned ‘Defect Manager’. After an hour of searching for defects, the competition came to a close.

Meet and Greet with previous Roq Grads

This was when our graduates from the Roq Quality Engineering Academy shared their journeys. In the background our scorekeepers from Roq, Sarah, Ashley and Sean were adding up the scores and getting ready to announce the winners. Teams eagerly awaited the results as each University was keen to find out if they had done enough to take this year’s trophy home.

The winners announced

Finally it was time to reveal the winners of the competition.

• Edge Hill University team ‘Here for the Pizza’ took first prize.

• Second Prize was one of UCLAN’s team

• Third place was awarded to a team from Runshaw College.

Sarah Riggott, Head of People for Roq, said:

“Defectives is an event we have run for a number of years, and it always amazes me to see the number of students taking part every year. It gives them a real insight into the industry and  it makes me proud to see them inspired to consider a career within Quality Engineering.

Feedback from students included rating the event as “Excellent, the right length and a real opportunity to gain information about a career in software testing”.

I’m super proud of the team for running this brilliant event.  This is a great example of giving back to the community, opening doors for the next generation of talent, and having fun.  Just a normal day at Roq."