Good question from Deborah Reid (@deborahreid) over on the MoT Slack:
If someone had been away from the testing and quality field for the past year, what would you say are the key highlights or they should catch up on?
So, how about it, what are some of the key highlights they should catch up on? And where should they go to be brought up to speed?
If someone has been away from testing for a year or more than that, they can start by reconnecting with the community through LinkedIn, Slack, Discord, or Mastodon to see what is trending. Obviously AI in testing is trending and along with that low-code automation, shift-left testing, and performance engineering are some other topics that are trending.
Without connecting with fellow testers it will be a bit difficult to know what is currently in the market because those who are working know better what companies are actually looking in testers these days.
They can also start by reading blogs on Medium, MoT, etc… along with that they can also attend webinars and conferences to know what people are talking about in testing. They can also go through interview questions on Linkedin to see what companies are currently asking.
They can also join Udemy, YouTube, or TestAutomation University to start with any video tutorials.
And of course, the Ministry of Testing is always a great place to start in such cases as it has everything from courses to community 
Great points by ujjwal.singh, above. i don’t have much to add other than emphasize AI. I don’t see it going away and if you ignore it I think you will be left behind. I have started using it for creating automation code and so far am quite happy with how much faster writing has become.
As someone that’s been away from a testing job for a while now, what really helped me (and still does) is subscribing to newsletters.
Getting a weekly update on the latest trends and tools in testing is a great way to stay in the know. I recommend David Dylowicz’s Software Testing Weekly which I’m sure a lot of people are familar with.
Once I became more active in trying to catch up and get more involved in testing again, podcasts have been really great for me. The Testing Peers podcast was the one that really got me into testing podcasts and going back through their episodes has been really informative and helpful for me.
Other than those two things, MoT meetups, the Club and the live events that MoT has like Software Testing Live yesterday are great ways to see what the test community are currently up to.
Finally, I think just doing a project on your own is a great way to get back into the testing mindset. Do some exploratory testing on a popular website, try using one of the popular automation frameworks and writing some tests. Once you get going, I’m sure your testing muscle memory will kick in!
The last two TTPs have been good on trends towards Quality Engineering / Continuous Quality mindset, imho.
Plus MoT Weekly, Testing Trends, MoT events, local MoT Meetups and understanding we update the MoTaverse daily! 