I need your ideas and thoughts on changing a career from business analyst to testing. Any help appreciated.

Just to give some background -

All of my below experience is in financial services industry with strong domain skills.

I started off my career as a developer, However even in the development role, it was a mix of BA and development as I spoke to clients to gather requirements, prepared specs and also did code changes. It was more of changing code rather than developing from scratch.

After that  I moved onto a IT BA role within a bank where I was actually doing more of functional testing and less of BA work. This was BA for IT systems.

I did that for a year and then took up a more strategic role where I was actually doing process reengineering and redesign and speaking to top management. This had nothing to do with IT systems but very high level business processes. After 5 months my position has been made redundant. I also had feedback that I my skills were not upto the mark and that my verbal communication skills were not effective.

This has led me to think if I made a wise move. I am now wondering if I should consider moving into manual/functional testing or look for another BA job. I can do testing roles as - 

- I come from dev background
- Good understanding of financial services industry so can get test roles in banks.
- used tools like QC and also did testing as part of being a developer.

Or should I continue to look for BA roles within the industry? Personally I do feel that my verbal communication skills need to be improved but I think that is only with very senior CXO level stakeholders, as I feel slightly intimidated talking to them.

Just asking for thoughts and ideas and which is a better option in terms of long term growth.

Metal,

"believe in yourself!".

I cant find anything wrong with your written skills; therefore I assume that your verbal skills are just as good. Now feeling a bit intimidated is ligitimate, but there are ways to overcome these. A course in Good communication skills would do you well. May I suggest that you focus on your verbal communication skills. There are places where you can do listening and assertiveness skill courses.

The reason for my suggestion is primarily that once you've ascended the Testing ladder you'll once again have to deal with senior management. So take the Bull by the horns NOW and go do a few personal development courses. There are psychologists who specialise in interpersonal skills!

If you are a fulltime employee of the bank, their Personne/HRl should provide you with a list of courses that you can do.

So, continue with your BA/Strategic process analyst and hone the personal skills.

warm regards,
K