We at “Trending in Testing” have started an initiative “Global Tester Series”. As a part of this initiative, we have interviewed some amazing Software Testers and we will be sharing their responses with our community. We believe this will inspire other testers and will also provide them with a lot of valuable insights.
The fifth article in the series is an interview with Nisarg Kadam, Senior Consultant at WonderBotz. Nisarg is a UiPath MVP 2021, RPA influencer, a 2x UiPath Global Hackathon winner. He is also experienced in Process Design Document Building and Solution Design Documentation for the RPA process.
Without further ado, let’s dive into the interview session with Ajay.
Question 1. Could you please share your story about how you paved your path into Robotic Process Automation?
Nisarg: When I joined my first organization I was very excited for the work in real-time as a software developer however, I was assigned manual testing tasks and was trained on testing. The work was manual and repetitive so I was not challenged. To avoid repetitive tasks and overhead of stress, I learned Selenium in Java and tried to automate my work. However, despite being trained on Java selenium I couldn’t do it as there was a limitation of data extraction, legacy application, and document processing. I was so stressed due to work overhead.
During this period one of my friends started working as an RPA developer, I was interested in the designation and the work. I immediately started searching for the relevant information on the internet. I searched for the top tools of RPA in the market, I found a rank wise list on google where I saw the number 1 tool was UiPath. As I saw I started searching about the training in my org however I couldn’t get any training in the company. I searched if anyone is aware I still couldn’t get any help in learning. So I started learning UiPath by myself. It was so easy to learn and easy to try hands-on development.
I started learning with academy.uipath.com and started building workflows of automation and you won’t believe within 15 days of learning I automated my 80% of daily tasks and started spending saved time in learning more and more from the UiPath community and academy.
I trained myself in a period of 1 month with rich project experience as per difficult challenges in UiPath certification and completed my certification. In the meantime, my manager saw that I am distracted from work all the time and still I submit my daily status accurately. He asked me and I displayed to him that I have automated my daily routine and the rest of the time I am learning. He loved the concept of RPA and proposed the project client for the same, we did a quick demo that day and pulled RPA into the company.
After that, I started working on multiple challenges and POC’s which have automation dependencies and I was able to crack one after another very easily with the knowledge base. One day I got the opportunity to work directly with a CIO project to make 1000 bots and get it done by employees. I was driving the training and use case building. I completed that training within 3 months and I got wonderful experience and great expectations from RPA.
That’s how I got pulled into RPA Industry.
Question 2. Who is your inspiration or mentor to guide you towards your journey?
Nisarg: I can’t just mention a single name as an inspiration, there are so many mentors who helped me in this entire journey.
- Pratik Malviya – Who introduced me to RPA UiPath.
- Jolly Shringi – Who supported my learning curve and helped me win our first RPA Hackathon.
- Bhanu Sathish Sarella – Who supported my passion for learning at every level.
- Shrippad Mhaddalkar – Who introduced me to the LinkedIn community and the biggest backbone of my RPA journey. He is one of the smartest brains in the RPA Industry.
- Vibhor Shrivastava – Who introduced me to UiPath Community and was an amazing guide of my entire journey, one of the most amazing people I have met in my life.
- Vivek Goel – Who is my Mentor, Guru, Inspiration, Guide, and Friend also, he is an amazing personality in the RPA industry.
- Lahiru Fernando – Is my source of technological advanced mentor
- Syed Pasha – Is a source of motivation, inspiration, and biggest support in the community.
- Parth Doshi – The best developer and best inspiration to keep learning.
Question 3. What are the common challenges that you face as an RPA Consultant? How do you overcome them?
Nisarg: Most common challenges always are always with full utilization of robots. Being Senior RPA Consultant I have job responsibility to look at development, solution architect, design, solution deployment, BOT architecture, and automation strategy.
Most of the time the challenges are in the process understanding stage before automation. Learning a specific manual process completely takes time however the deadline of the project doesn’t allow us to master the process but, expectations are to automate it with all the exceptions in mind.
Question 4. What can people in the RPA profile do to upskill themselves so that they can keep pace with the changing trends?
Nisarg: Keep learning every single day. Don’t rely on only one or two tools of RPA, if you do then master them thoroughly.
Keep learning coding as well to keep in touch with niche technology like C#, .Net, Python or Java. Also, try machine learning domain because in the future every RPA tool is going to be more integrated with ML and AI.
Keep the goal to learn and master AI with RPA tools. Also, try learning process mining tools because they are the most important part of any automation.
Question 5. According to you, what are the important factors to consider for having a successful RPA career?
Nisarg:
- Having a proper understanding of Object-Oriented concepts is really important which most of the time people ignore.
- Having the knowledge on RPA specific lifecycle is also really important because of client-facing involvements.
- Having communication knowledge with proper terminology is next level important in this domain.
- Being active with Community and helping others improves the personal brand value and resume weightage in the RPA industry.
Question 6. What are the upcoming trends in RPA that our audience should know about?
Nisarg: There are so many to list, however, I will list a few which will create a huge opportunity for all to join RPA.
- Process Mining – Process Mining tools to understand the process to be automated on the data layer.
- AI & ML – Are going to increase the scope of data science in RPA for fuzzy and complex automations.
- Chatbots – Integration with RPA is a huge scope for client-facing businesses and helping companies improve customer-centricity.
- RPA Testing – This is a huge scope for all the testing industry to jump in RPA as the number of projects is increasing in RPA which are testing oriented which needs testing skills.
Learn and master these and I will welcome you myself to the RPA industry.
Question 7. What advice would you like to give to aspiring RPA enthusiasts regarding how they can pave their way in the industry and be successful in this field?
Nisarg: Don’t hesitate to switch the domain, this is the right time to start your RPA journey.
Become an RPA developer, tester, business analyst, etc. There are so many jobs available but fewer resources are available in the market. This creates a huge opportunity for good pay scale and challenging job opportunities. You will get an ample amount of time to learn and indulge in the industry.
Just start learning. If you are interested in UiPath start learning from academy.uipath.com and you will get an amazing experience of self-learning within 1 or 2 months. I have my own YouTube channel where I upload RPA training videos which you can refer to.
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/nisargkadam
Start your RPA journey with self-learning, reach out to UiPath community or me personally on my LinkedIn for any queries and I will be more than happy to be of any help.
