I had started my career as an Intern PHP Developer at Techies India Inc. Like anyone, I was quite excited yet a little nervous considering what would be the new environment, what sort of people will I get the chance to meet, what will be the challenges and What should be my strategies to deal with the same. Keeping all these hows and whens I entered in to my professional battle.

I obviously had a lot to learn as everything around was new to me, whether its about my approach to a new organization or learning about new tricks & technologies about web development.

I am a person who likes to have a plan for anything which i opt for and so do anyone else should have. So here i am going to share few things i observed during my tenure which helped me out to make my journey smooth and successful.

Lets start with the approach to appear as an asset for the organisation:-

• You might be overwhelmed by all the new work culture : Don’t freak out about it. There is a theory that you can only retain some part of the information that’s thrown at you during your first day on a job if the environment is a fast-paced one. This is normal. Eventually you’ll get use to it.

• Listen each and everything carefully and sincerely :The first week is about assembling a framework of understanding about company culture.

• Ask more Questions :The important thing is that don’t be shy about asking questions. Frankly, it’s unnerving when a new employee doesn’t ask questions, because this signifies that either you’re too shy or not paying enough attention to realize the things. However, to the extent that you’re able to save up your questions and ask them in bunches. This way, you’re interrupting less and getting the information you need.

• Consider Expectations of your Manager : Try to find out what are the hopes of your manager at the start.Which  are the main and important projects you should be focus immediately? What would be the successful outcomes for those?

• Mental Presence : Pay attention to the culture.Observe how others act and you’ll absorb a ton of information about cultural expectations which obviously depends on your presence of mind. Are people compulsively on time for meetings? What hours do most people work? what is their communication medium? Be yourself and try to fit into the basic parameters.

• Seek Help : Don’t turn down colleagues if they are willing to help. Even if you feel that you don’t need one, accept it as an assistance. In a nutshell, you’ll begin forming bonds and it will be helpful for you to gain information. After all, you don’t know what you might not know.

• Maintain Standards : Being a developer your first consideration should always about standardizing your codes.

• Review Information : Review the gathered informative material and you are good to go. I’m convinced no one does this, and I’m also convinced they should.

So these were the tips towards the general behavior which will make your organisation consider you as an asset but don’t forget your basic agenda like as the internship you are being hired for? As i was being hired for PHP Development, I am going to share things which helped me out to take my development career to a new level. I hope this is gonna help you the same way.

Learn To Set Up Your Own PHP Environment

As a new joinee we are not sure about what will be the output after our coding process. Sometimes our system may hang or be damaged with our wrong process which can create a lot of trouble.So, the solution to the problem is to install the virtualization software. You can install the virtualization software and run a Linux virtual machine.You can literally experiment as much as you want without fear of messing anything up.Experimenting with your own setups will also allow you to get familiar with the different servers.

Exercise Best Practices Early

While writing your code, comment heavily using docblocks and beautify it via indentation. Use documentation tools to extract docblocks and edit them accordingly.

Choose a Good IDE

Choose a good IDE considering the disk space. PHPStorm can be a good choice or if you can’t afford it or have no open source projects with which to ask for a free license, Netbeans is a free alternative. Both are multi-platform.

Try Out Different Frameworks, Choose One

For a long period of time, PHP has huge number of frameworks.When you will use these frameworks.You will learn about a new approach to a common problem every time. you’ll learn about the mindset of others  You’ll see new usages and approaches, and a very good exercise is re-building one of your sample projects in as many frameworks as you can find.This will help you in your work efficiency along with speed of the developing and its performance.

Read Useful Material

Tips and hints on anywhere are the powerful feature. So don’t underestimate it.These links and hints will not take much time but will help you alot. So must be read the tutorials on the website and answers on Stack Overflow,visit the SitePoint Forums, subscribe to newsletters, follow good sources on Google+.Don’t follow the basic PHP tutorial.These are mostly outdated.So focus on up-to-date code to all over the web.

Engage Yourself In Something Fruitful

Keep working, keep yourself interested and engaged. Make a simple address book app. Then rebuild it in another framework. Then rebuild it with another database MongoDB, for example. Keep busy!

So at last i will end up with these  beautiful words by Robert kiyosaki “Face your Fears and Doubts, and new Worlds will open to you.”

Thanks