Software testing and VB - very general Q's

Our QA dept. almost exclusively tests software manually.
We do have one automated testing tool but it is very cumbersome and inflexible.
I have noticed that a number of QA companies require VB experience and assume that it is used in software testing.

My questions will reflect my complete ignorance in this matter...

How is VB used in a software testing environment?

Can it be used to, in a sense, create scripts that look for window ids, or captions, or text within message boxes and then, based on the results, run various scenarios of menu choices, filling text boxes, etc.?

Is there a good reference book or site that covers how VB can be used in a QA environment?

Just getting started on this so any type of help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time.

VB can use API functions to read/change/check etc. values by using the Win32 API. But in the same regard, C++ and Delphi can be do what VB does, because the Win32 API is universal, that is, it can work in all languages. In contrast, however, I think one of the good things about VB is that you can easily check/read values and display it with very little effort.