First day on a team - MoT Bloggers Club July 2021

Change can seem difficult and scary, first day on a new job will always impact you emotionally, to a certain extent - even if you changed many jobs before. In this blog post I will share a few tips to help you make the transition easier and how to beat the fear of the unknown! 

Keep Your Ego in Check

Important thing is to be humble and kind, and leaving a good first impression (of course also make sure that the good first impression is also the lasting impression) as this will affect how people on your team perceive you. Don't be a cocky show-off, be polite and nice to everyone. Naturally this does not mean that you should put up with any abuse.

Meet Everyone 

Taking time to meet your new teammates is very important, and not just meeting them, getting to know them as individuals. People who are already working at your new workplace will be a lot more busy than you are so they might not initiate these kind of things, instead, you should be the one inviting people to lunch to get to know them in a more of casual setup. If you're working remote a virtual cup of coffee would be the rough equivalent to this. Another good idea would be to setup short reoccurring weekly meetings with the members of your team so you can keep in touch and be up to date on what's happening.

Be Proactive

Ask for resources, documentation of the project, check with people if they have other knowledge-transfer materials available, for instance in video format. Apart from that, asking to watch other testers while they work can also be very eye-opening - as a dear friend of mine says: "Be Wise Pairwise"!

Make Use of Mentorship

You will most likely get a mentor for the first three months probation period - this may vary from company to company but this is the most common timeframe. Try do make full use of your mentor, after all that person will be dedicated to training you and answering your questions, generally people get paid extra for being mentors so be sure to ask your mentor a lot of questions.

Take it Easy

As a new arrival, people won't expect too much of you - provided it's a reasonable and a healthy workplace, so make use of that to better prepare for the actual work. No need to put unneeded pressure on yourself, everyone is clueless at a new job, so your situation won't be any different. This is particular true for tester roles as testers are required to have good domain knowledge and learning the ins and outs of a new system can't come over night! Keep improving one day at a time.