the Wond'ry

Jon has helped build and lead a wide variety of teams across all aspects of QA over the past 11 years, and recently launched The QA Consultancy, which specializes in helping organizations improve their overall Quality. Having worked with organizations like HomeAdvisor, ScrippsNetworks, and Victoria’s Secret in the past, Jon has battle-tested his sometimes unique approach to QA in some incredibly demanding environments. He recently worked with Denver Public Schools and their CareerConnect program providing mentoring and internships to high school students, and was a pilot employer sponsor for their CareerResidencyapprenticeship program at HomeAdvisor.

A. The opportunity to work with young people that are passionate about building something they can call their own, and to help instill in them a sense of quality and pride in that. I want to pass on the lessons learned and best practices I’ve experienced over the course of my career.

A.

1. Teaching and mentoring are a large part of how I operate my teams/departments/company. I love working with younger people to help them capitalize on the skills and passions they have, while guiding them through the pitfalls of those same things.
2. I have an incredibly broad knowledge base of the development space, mobile products (apps and hardware), and general business practices, and that allows me to help in a wide variety of ways in terms of understanding what direction to take.
3. I can put myself into the shoes of a consumer, and help understand whether a product or service makes sense, or how to improve it.

Q. What has been your proudest moment in your career?

A. Watch the first 3 hires I made at a compay, and 4 of 6 the members of my team win the top tech award for our entire organization within the first 6 months. This was a peer nominated award, and was across all of technology, which was roughly 200 employees.

Q. What has surprised you most about your job?

A. How many of the critical thinking skills are missing when I talk to job applicants. We have put a lot of attention on the hard skills/tools, and not near enough on the softer skills that are often far more important in the long run. I can teach you the technical aspects of the role, but I can’t teach you how to think critically, or to think outside the box very easily.

Q. If you could do everything over again, would you make the same career choices?

A. I used to think no, but the last several years have changed my opinion on that. If not for the career decisions I’ve made, I would have not gotten the opportunities and experiences that I have. Everything I did up to this point has made me into the person that I am, and I am incredibly happy with that, both personally and professionally.

Q. In your opinion, what is the most important quality for success?

A. If you aren’t passionate about something, it is very hard to stick with it when it gets hard. Passion makes you demand better, and be willing to do all of things that need done, even when you don’t want to. No matter the role, or your place in an organization, if you have passion, you will succeed.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up

A. A professional baseball player. I was thoroughly convinced I was going to be the starting SS for the Chicago Cubs when I grew up. Sadly that did not happen, but I did get to see them win a World Series!