Today, we’re focused on continuous learning and upskilling. As you’re aware, keeping your skills and knowledge up-to-date is important, particularly in software testing, where the industry and technology change and advance quickly. By reflecting on your upskilling journey, you can gain a deeper understanding of the skills you have acquired and the impact they have had on your career. Additionally, you’ll have valuable insights into the benefits, challenges, and advice you can offer to others considering upskilling.
Task 28
Reflect on your upskilling experiences: What specific skills or areas of knowledge have you worked on improving throughout your career? Why did you choose to upskill in these areas? How have your upskilling efforts contributed to your professional development? Have you seen any notable improvements in your job performance, has it opened up new opportunities, or increased your value in the job market?
Examine the challenges faced: What challenges did you encounter while upskilling? How did you overcome them? What lessons did you learn from those challenges?
Share your advice: Post your experience in reply to this topic. What advice would you give to others who are considering upskilling? What practical tips can you offer for selecting the right skills to upskill in, finding suitable learning resources or programs, and managing the learning process effectively?
Engage with others: Read other members’ posts and learn from each other’s challenges and strategies. Are there any you can try? Can you help someone with a challenge?
I look forward to hearing about your upskilling journey and the benefits you have gained along the way!
Why complete this task?
Personal reflection: Reflecting on your upskilling journey can help you gain a deeper understanding of the skills you’ve acquired and how they’ve impacted your career. It’s also a great way to acknowledge your growth and achievements, which can boost your confidence and motivation.
Sharing knowledge and insights: Sharing your experiences with others can help them learn from your journey and make informed decisions about their own upskilling. You can also inspire and guide them.
Building your personal brand: Sharing your upskilling experiences can enhance your professional reputation and personal brand. It shows employers that you’re committed to continuous learning and professional growth, and it can open up new opportunities for you.
Self-improvement and adaptability: Continuing training and upskilling foster a mindset of continuous improvement and adaptability. By continuously acquiring new skills and knowledge, you enhance your ability to adapt to changing work environments and embrace new challenges with confidence.
My continuous learning journey is focused on software testing fundamentals, exploring automation, and working with JavaScript.
I find the topics exciting! You can do a ton with JavaScript. I’d love to find time to make tiny JS projects and add my own unit tests. Automation is fun, too, but it’s something I’m doing to better my future career prospects.
The largest challenges that I face with learning are that I don’t have a way to apply what I learn at work, finding learning tools that match my learning style, and making the most of my time.
When I take a course, I need lots of mini exercises to cement my understanding.
I only have about 3 hours a week to work on side projects and learning. It never feels like enough to make progress.
One of the challengesi find with upskilling is not finding an area to use it in work.
Building side projects is not my interest area currently.
I’m trying to read books related to testing and write my interpretation and create content in multiple forms so that I can share it with the community in the upcoming days.
Most of my upskilling is through conferences and job searches because based on that I get to know what’s in demand and what should i learn for a new role.
I’m definitely a fan of trying to find training / upskilling opportunities ‘on the job’, and I encourage my coachees to do this too - the practice (through repetition) and the familiar context of the working environment really helps - maybe that goes without saying and, after reading the comments above, we’re fortunate to be in a position with our employer where we have some scope for this.
A challenge that i’ve witnessed in myself and others is something akin to imposter syndrome, but more specifically about being a little frightened of finding it all too hard and being stuck all the time! e.g. writing Selenium checks / tests in C#, and not only that, but writing “good” code … over a matter of months I have gotten better at asking questions sooner rather than later, and also of not giving up at the first sign of a failed build or a red squiggly error in the code!
I chose to improve my knowlegde on understanding at a deep level the tools that I use in my daily day in work. I chose to improve this becuase I´m trying to internalize this knowledge in order not to forget how to use the tools in the future, and I think this has helped me to improve my work a little bit, since I´m trying to apply this to my work.
One of the challenges that I find while I upskill is that it takes me a lot of work to start studying and searching about the tools or topics that I want to improve.
As an entry-level tester i’m working on QA concepts by doing manual testing. In addition i try to improve my skills on Python and Javascript in order to use those languages on Selenium and Cypress automatin tools respectivelly.
My current position is really the only one I have ever held that actually encourages me to explore my own professional development. I wouldn’t be here at MoT if not for a supervisor that recommended it, as well as a fund that we have in place for all employees for these exact types of professional memberships. So, not only do I benefit from everything here, I am not financially liable for my inclusion! Honestly, a sweet deal (if you ask me).
My current professional development path for this year includes directed reading:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Kahneman (Q1)
Mistakes Were Made (But not by Me) by Tavris/Aronson (Q2)
The No As*hole Rule, by Sutton (Q3)
and Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship by Martin (Q4)
Additionally, for Q1 of this year I completed 5 MoT courses, and obviously am participating in this 30 days of Career Growth. Later on this year, if time allows, I will be also taking some sort of weekend course (TBD), and if funds allow, I will also be attending a virtual conference? Not sure yet. But I am excited that I finally have tangible goals and am fully vested in achieving them.
I have learnt that microlearning works best for me. If there is a larger learning material, I break it down into smaller pieces. That way I have time to chew on it and even use some of it in practice. It has helped me learn many interesting skills - from mobile automation to coaching, mentoring and leadership.
We also created a ceremony with my team called ‘Edu sync’. At the beginning of each week, we share what we learned in the previous week. We share what it brought us, what was challenging and what could be interesting for others. It was very motivating at first, I always read at least one article so I had something to share, and now I am so used to it that I do not need to motivate myself
I also realised that I really learn something when I recall it from memory, not when I store it there. So when someone in the team finishes learning a complete topic, they do a workshop on it and teach it to others. That way, they are really learning it themselves, and they are embedding it in their memory.
