Becoming an Instructional Designer

Instructional design is a great field that offers a lot of freedom and flexibility. And in this guide, I'm going to go step by step and give you everything that you need to know to become an instructional designer effectively. So I have some updated data from over 100 hiring managers and over 600 working instructional designers, and I'm going to share those insights with you to help you become an instructional designer as quickly as possible. So I'm Devlin Peck and I became an instructional designer back in 2017. I started helping people become instructional designers almost immediately after that, once I realized how much opportunity there was in the field. And then in 2020, I started the ID Bootcamp, and I built a team of my own, and we've been helping people become instructional designers full time ever since. this is the most rewarding thing that I do, it's the most rewarding thing my team does, and this is my favorite video to record, because I've seen the difference that becoming an instructional designer makes in people's lives. Especially coming from fields like education where you might be getting overworked and underpaid. You might be feeling undervalued. It's a really nice breath of fresh air once you transition into instructional design and, people will report making two times their salary or getting their nights and weekends back or just feeling much more fulfilled and relaxed overall. So it's really nice that there is a field like this out there for people who are passionate about helping people learn. Now we're gonna dive into all of that in a minute. I do just want to let you know that this video, we're going to dive deep, we're going to cover a lot of ground. this would be a good video to bookmark, because I'm going to reference a lot of other videos throughout, and this will just be a good video to come back to time and time again on your journey to becoming an instructional designer. So with all of that being said, let's dive into it, and, I guess let's first discuss why you would even want to become an instructional designer? the first big one is that you can help people learn and make a difference. Now this is what draws a lot of people to education, but again, it's nice that there are other fields out there, where you can still do the same thing. So that part of you that really wants to make a difference, it really, it's really passionate about teaching and education, that part of you still can have an outlet in the instructional design space. Also, according to this recent data, which is consistent with the data from years prior, 93 percent of instructional designers are satisfied with their work life balance. I remember getting into the field. This was like a big selling point for me because all the teachers I was talking to, they were like, "Don't go into this field, it's a lot, we deal with a lot of other things, it's not just teaching the subject you love to engage students, for example." So then when I was learning more about instructional design and how much more satisfied IDs are with the work life balance, I was quite intrigued, to say the least. And then the total compensation to the average total compensation is about $87, 000 in the United States. So this covers people who are working full time, people who are working freelance. This is on average how much instructional designers are earning in the U.S. So, pretty respectable, pretty comfortable, about a quarter or a fifth of all IDs are making six figures. So we're gonna dive more into that in next week's video about how much IDs make, but another great part about this is you can leverage your transferable skills. So whatever field you're coming from, if you're coming from education or another design field or maybe from a project management role or even a training role, no matter which field you're coming from, there are some transferable skills. You have that you'll be able to leverage as an instructional designer. It is a really interdisciplinary field. So, again, you have some experience that's valuable in this field and if there's something particular that you like doing, if you really like working with the technology or if you really like working with people or project management, like you will be able to find your place in this field because it is such a big field with so many different skills that are valuable in it. And then also, you'll build new skills that you can use to impact the world. So it is just a good investment in your professional development, like as a human, or as a professional, it's not just going to be valuable only in a little instructional design bubble. So there are a lot of people who eventually move on from instructional design into like user experience design, or user interface design, or computer coding, like frontend development. There are some people who move into that space. And then even outside of, like, your working life, it’s still really valuable. Like for example, over the past few months, I’ve been getting more involved in, like, some community leadership initiatives, like here locally to me. And the instructional design skills are valuable, with like getting to know your audience and designing effectiveLearning solutions to help serve them. it's really powerful in a lot of different contexts. It's not just in a corporate setting where you might be working. So, great field. Now let's take a look at the overview to becoming an instructional designer. the first step is I would make sure that instructional design is right for you. And we're gonna dive into all of these deeper. This is just like in a nutshell, the steps to become an ID. So once you know whether or not it's right for you, if it is right for you, you'll want to learn the knowledge and skills. Then you'll want to create your portfolio, which is where you show off that knowledge and those skills and show off who you are as a person and what you can bring to the table. Then you'll optimize your resume and your LinkedIn profile so that you can start driving traffic to your portfolio. So now you'll have a lot of people who are finding you, finding your portfolio website, and seeing what great knowledge and skills you have. You're building your case for being a great ID. So you'll be applying to roles and preparing for the interview that once you are doing those interviews, you'll be negotiating and accepting that offer and enjoying your new career. So here's the overview. We're gonna get much more specific in the slides to come This is the general approach though that I would say to becoming an ID now I do want to reassure you like you can do this like you've got this it is a bit intimidating at first it can feel overwhelming when you realize like how much there is to learn. Everyone feels this way and then also I will mention like there have always been fears about the market being too crowded. Like I remember when I first learned about the field back in 2017 and was like, you know learning this information like I'm sharing with you now. I was like, "This sounds too good to be true. Like why don't more people know about this? Like, I'm probably not gonna be able to get work here. Like why would people want to hire me?" And like I've heard the same thing like hundreds of times from instructional designers over the years. You know, every year people are saying, "Oh, the field is getting more crowded. It's getting you know, over oversaturated." These things aren't true, if you put in the work to learn the skills, you are going to have jobs waiting for you. Now, there are caveats to that, it's obviously going to take work, it can be an emotional process, it can feel overwhelming, but the world needs good instructional designers, and the field is always growing. No matter which reports you look at, about the future of our field, it's either the field is growing at the same rate as average, or more often, it's growing more quickly than average. You can think about all the stuff people need to learn out there. instructional designers whole job is like helping people learn more quickly and efficiently and effectively. So, you can imagine, the demand that there will be for instructional designers. So again, I just want to reiterate, if you put in the work, you will be successful. Even if there are times where it feels like, "why is someone going to hire me?" Or you're feeling that imposter syndrome or that doubt in yourself. Everyone who's made this transition has felt the same way. If you're putting in these steps, if you'reLearning these skills, like these skills are valuable and in demand. Again, I felt the same way in 2017, people felt the same way in 2020, people will for sure be feeling that way going into 2024 and beyond. Now, like I mentioned, we want to figure out if instructional design is right for you before you go investing like dozens of hours into pursuing this as a career. So do your research before making the commitment. This video is a good place to start to get an overview of what this process looks like. But you'll also probably want to learn more about what it looks like on the job. So I have, we have a video out called, Is Instructional Design Right For You? We'll link all these videos in the description. So check those out. You can also look at Instructional Design job listings. And seeing what the tasks entail and if that's something that would be interesting to you. So you could just go on Indeed, for example, and look up "Instructional Designer." And look at some of the roles there. Talk to instructional designers in the field. So we have a community space for that at devlinpeck.com ID. Or devlinpeck.com/ID, I should say. We have like thousands of instructional designers in there. You might know some instructional designers in real life. Or again you might start networking with some instructional designers as you follow the steps in this video. Feel free to ask them if they want to hop on an informational interview, if you can ask them about their work. Really try to get a good picture of what this job looks like, keeping in mind that one instructional designer's day to day can look very different from another instructional designer's day to day. So again, these roles, no two instructional design rules are exactly the same, but again, it will just be a good idea to see what's out there and, try to find at least one person doing something where you're like, "that's exactly what I want to be doing. That sounds right for me." Of course, you won't know a 100 percent if instructional design is right for you until you actually get in there and start doing some instructional design work, but I'm sure you can have a pretty good idea based off of what you know you like about. your, past experience. A lot of times people are drawn to ID because they really like that, like designing, learning, experience idea and yeah, designing engaging ways to help people learn. If that speaks to you, odds are, this is probably going to be a good career for you. So again, there are a lot of ways that you can take your ID career. Like I mentioned earlier, if you're really into the technology and the development, you can specialize solely in that and not really have to work with the subject matter experts and, some of the more front end stuff. Or if you want nothing to do with the technology, you could work, directly with the subject matter experts, you could write theLearning experience. And then you could hand those things off to a developer so that you don't have to use the technology as much. Now, the way to like really thrive and really stand out and be eligible for the biggest number of opportunities is if you can do both of those things, like the design and the development. But, again, there's so many different ways to specialize within this space that you don't like have to do something you don't wanna do. and again, we have some "day in the life" videos coming out where we interview a lot of instructional designers who are working in the field and we share those interviews here on the channel. So if you're interested in those and if you're enjoying the video so far, then make sure you subscribe and you'll be the first to know when they go live. Okay, so next up, you'll want to learn the theory. Hiring managers have showed us, they've spoken out pretty heavily this year that they want people who can apply instructional design theory and science. Now, a couple years ago, this survey was all about people who could develop eLearning. "We need people who know the tools and can develop eLearning." Now they want people who know the ID theory and science, so this is more important than ever. So here are some of the questions. We asked these hiring managers, What are the top three skills that you look for when hiring an instructional designer? And number one was the ability to apply ID theory and science, then communication skills, and then eLearning development skills, which we'll get into a little bit later. But those are like the top three skills. If you have those three down, you are going to be very well set up to be successful in the instructional design space. So, applying the theory and science and development. And of course, if you can communicate well, you are going to be amazing as an instructional designer. I would suggest learning these top theories and models and taking notes on them as a first step. Get your knowledge bases covered. Make sure you know what these theories are, what the main point of them is, and like, how to follow them and apply them. So get comfortable talking about them. So again, when I was getting into the field, I was like constantly talking to my girlfriend about this stuff, like basically trying to teach it to my friends, talking to my classmates about this stuff, like basically rehearsing it as much as possible so it became like second nature to us. So between the notes and talking about them, you'll be pretty well set up for talking about it in interviews and for actually like recognizing the language of the field when you see these things in job listings or when you hear your coworkers or peers talk about them, but you'll really need to show off how you can apply them. So this part is really important and that's where your portfolio will come into play because essentially you'll build some portfolio projects and in the write-up for that project you'll explain "here's how I applied this theory, here's how I, here's the model that I followed." So you'll be able to walk hiring managers and other people through your process for applying these theories. Again, that is the most important thing you can do this year to stand out, as an instructional designer and break into the field quickly and effectively. So what are some of these top theories and models? Here are a few, ADDIE for an ID process overview, and again, we have content on all of this stuff, we're gonna link it all in the description, we have a playlist that guides you through it, and a checklist that you can download with the link in the comments, so you don't need to learn it all right now, but this is just an overview of the most important ones. So learn ADDIE, that's like the, that's usually where people start when they try to learn about ID models and theories, so that's a Really good one to begin with. Bloom"s Taxonomy for Writing Learning objectives. You might even already be familiar with this if you are coming from education, but that's an important skill in the ID space is writing good learning objectives. Kirkpatrick's model of evaluation. Now this one has... the hiring managers have said this is more important than ever. So Kirkpatrick's model, learn the four levels. people talk about them quite casually in instructional design, so you should definitely know what each of those levels are and how to evaluate them. Again, we have a good video on that has helped a lot of people. Gagne's Nine Events for streamlined instructional design. So if, especially if you're like brand new to education or you're brand new to designing learning experiences, I would say Gagnier's Nine Events is like the most streamlined way to dive into it. And, in the most, foolproof way, I would say, it makes sure you have all of your bases covered, it makes sure you're giving good practice opportunities, you're grabbing the learner's attention. It's just a really good, model to say, here are the conditions that are necessary for a good learning experience, and you can satisfy all of them in, a systematic way to make sure that all your bases are covered. So check that out if you haven't heard of it, if you're new to it. Mayer's Multimedia Principles. These are really good for designing, If you're interested in designing eLearning or making like educational videos, you should definitely learn these multimedia principles and get comfortable applying them because again, that's a big difference between an amateur eLearning designer and an actual good like skilled eLearning developer or designer. So check those out. and then again, you could check out my Introduction to Instructional Design video. It's like a master class on the theories and the science. We dive deeper into all of these things. so that would be a really good next step if you want to learn the theories and models. So again, bookmark that one too if you'd like. It's a good one to start with. So here's what the hiring managers had to say about the top 3 instructional design models, theories, and concepts that IDs should be familiar with upon hire. As you can see, no surprise, ADDIE is first, then we have Writing Strong Learning Objectives, and then Kirkpatrick's, again, soared up in the rankings this year. That's a good one to keep an eye on. My interpretation of this data is, yeah, hiring managers are getting more and more interested in instructional designers who do know the theory and science, who can justify it with these evaluation techniques, and we're going back to some of these, yeah, foundations of instructional design, and it's changing a little bit because it's, back in COVID in 2020 the rush was all for eLearning. "We want people who can develop eLearning who know the tools." So we're seeing that maybe a lot of people know the tools now, but we need more people who know these models and these theories and the science and the principles. So if you want like a secret advantage or leg up in the job market, this is definitely the stuff to be focusing on first, I would say. Next up, once you're more comfortable with the theories and the models, and again, it doesn't need to be like one than the other. But after that, you'll probably want to dive into the tech and start getting comfortable with the technology. Because as we saw, the field is still very like eLearning dominant, to say the least. And to really have a great shot at landing roles, you'll almost definitely want to know the technology unless you actively don't to be working with it. So, this is the most common skill gap, especially for people coming from education. Like, if you're coming from education, you mind find that the theories, you might already know them or you might know them but like in by a different name or by some different terms. So usually if you're already really skilled at helping people learn and designing learning experiences in a different context, the theory isn't a huge gap, but the technology usually is I would say start with Articulate Storyline. It's the most popular tool in the field by far. And showing off these skills alone will probably be landing you interviews just because of the demand for people who can design this self paced eLearning. And it's quite fun. So start with that. You probably haven't used that in other fields because it is pretty specific to the instructional design world. And I would say once you've, gotten hands on with Storyline 360, upload an eLearning project to a learning management system. Now I have a video that shows you exactly how to do that. It might sound advanced, I put "SCORM package" in there, like that's technically what it is. You publish the eLearning project as a SCORM package, and then you can upload it to a learning management system, and that's where like your learners will go to take that course. I'm suggesting this here because that is an intimidating thing that you'll see on job listings like experience with learning management systems like be comfortable with SCORM and when you're new to the field it's like what in the world is that but it's actually way easier than it sounds so I have a video about like I think how to use a learning management system and it shows you exactly how to do that so Again, bookmark this, but when you're a little bit further on in your journey and when you are diving into the eLearning tools make sure you do that because it's gonna, it's gonna be very reassuring to hiring managers to hear that you have done that, and it will just be really good at helping you build your confidence on like how the whole process works for getting an eLearning project live. Some other good tools to learn are Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Vyond, and Camtasia. Some of these are from the Adobe suite. Figma is for doing like wireframes and visual mockups. Vyond is a really good tool for making animated videos pretty quickly and cost effectively. And then Camtasia is like a basic video editing tool. So those are all good ones to know. And then I'll also mention that AI tools are becoming increasingly popular. That is something pretty new in the last, six months or so. It's having a big impact on our field and some of these AI tools like Chat GPT do have the potential to become some of the most important tools for instructional design. So keep an eye on that. Things are of course, still developing with the AI tools. We're gonna see what happens with that. I do have a video on the top AI tools for instructional designers. So if you wanna like future proof yourself and see what's out there and maybe contribute in a way that. Instructionals who are, instructional designers who are already in the field aren't really like keeping up with. Then the AI tools, again, check out the video on the top AI tools for instructional designers and see if any of those speak to you because they can give you a really nice advantage in the field. So when we ask the hiring managers, What are the top three tools and technologies that ID should be familiar with upon hire? No surprise, three quarters of them said Articulate Storyline. Again, that tool has, it's really established in the industry and it's the best one to learn. After that, Learning Management Systems. So again, that's why I suggested building that eLearning project in Storyline, publishing it, and uploading it to a Learning Management System. Just by doing that, you're gonna be a good candidate for, three quarters of these ID roles out here. That's what I would suggest. You can look at these other ones. I would also note that a quarter of all of these hiring managers put Chat GPT or other AI tools as one of these, one of these top three tools that ID should know. So that is of course different than anything we've ever seen before. Times are obviously changing with the AI stuff. And I'll show you this question too from that hiring manager survey. Almost half of all these hiring managers are currently using AI tools for ID tasks. And 35% of the ones who aren't say that they plan to within the next year. So if you're someone who's trying to break into the field, I know there's enough to learn already. You don't need to feel overwhelmed by this, but just know this is changing. This is something you might wanna keep an eye on and at least know which AI tools are out there. which hopefully watching that, that other video I recommended will help you out there. From there, it's time to create your portfolio. So again, at this point, you've learned the theories and science, you know how to apply it to some projects, and Articulate Storyline so you can actually bring those eLearning projects to life. Now it's time to start building some projects and putting them on your portfolio website because this is the real money maker. This is what's going to get you hired. So it shows off who you are and what you can do. It honestly helps at every single stage of the application process. It helps people find you in the first place. Once people land on your site, it builds their confidence in you and gets them wanting to interview you. And then people can use your portfolio to evaluate and with the interview to determine if they should hire you and what kind of offer they should make you. So again, this makes all of the difference. From our survey, we found that new instructional designers with zero to three years of experience with a portfolio earn around $5, 000 more per year on average than instructional designers without a portfolio. So it does have an immediate and long term impact on your earning potential in the field. And then also it impacts your ability to even land a role in the first place. So over a quarter of hiring managers say that they won't even consider your application if you don't have a portfolio website. And only 7 percent of all of these hiring managers don't consider your portfolio as part of the process. 93 percent of these hiring managers are looking at your portfolio and for some of them it plays a massive role in the hiring decision. So yeah, this is not something you want to skip. Again, as something, there are some people who will be complaining about not being able to find work in this field. Odds are, if they're complaining about that, they don't have a solid portfolio website, or they don't have a portfolio website at all. So when people come to me and they talk about that, I'm like, how does your portfolio look? Because if you don't have a portfolio, trying to land a role in this field is like playing the lottery. And that's obviously probably not where you want to invest your energy when applying to roles does take so much time and energy. So the portfolio is the ticket to landing these roles. Can't emphasize that enough, and the number one thing you'll want to show off in your portfolio is your ability to solve real world problems with instructional design. We have a ton of content here on the channel on how to do that. When you get to that point, you can look at our flagship project videos. It's helped a lot of people and roles with just a single project on their website, We have content to help you out with that when the time comes, but that, these are the things that hiring managers say they want when they're looking at a portfolio. So the ability to solve real world problems, and they evaluate the, user experience of the website and the project. So you want to make sure that people aren't, getting confused trying to navigate the site or find your projects, because that's going to be a fast way for hiring managers to disqualify you. And you obviously want your portfolio working for you and not against you. That would be quite counterintuitive if it was just confusing people. So feedback helps a lot, especially when it comes to like your portfolio projects, these are going to be the public facing things that people see. These are going to be how people are forming their like first impression of your workability, really. So the more people you can get feedback from the better, especially if it's feedback from people who are in the field or who have some design experience. I just want to show you this data. So in the ID Bootcamp, that's like what our, that's like our flagship offer where like my team and I work with you like one on one and give you a ton of feedback, like on all of your instructional design deliverables. Our, we survey all of our graduates from that program and the average salary is $95, 000 for people in the US. The industry average salary for people in the US is $83, 000. Overall, like people, even people with 10 years of experience, the conglomerate. So it's pretty amazing that with some feedback and extra support by showing off these things that hiring managers are looking at, these people who are transitioning into the field with very little experience, in most cases, no formal ID experience or earning $12k more on average than the entire industry. And then. for new IDs, the average is $78k. So quite a big difference. Again, I attribute that to feedback. So and then again, when I was getting into the field, there were no bootcamps or stuff like that. But when I was asking my girlfriend at the time, I was like, "how does this look to you? what's your impression looking at this?" Like when I was going to my master's classes. like before class would start, I'd be asking, my classmates, "Oh, what do you think about these visuals I had here?" Again, it doesn't need to be in a formal bootcamp program, but if you can get feedback from people who have any idea what they're talking about, it will help a lot, because, again, you want to, give off a really good impression. So if you want to see some of these portfolios that come from the bootcamp and that help people land these kind of roles, you can go to devlinpeck.com/showcase that might give you an idea of like what you're aiming for, or like where the bar is at for breaking into the field, like quite effectively with a portfolio website. From there, once your portfolio is in good shape, you've gotten feedback, you've applied that feedback, and you're proud of it, and it presents you in a good light, it's time to create your instructional design resume, because now the name of the game is like, driving traffic to your portfolio website. So you wanna get your resume to the top of the pile, so that you can get those eyes on your portfolio, because that's gonna seal the deal for ya. So on the resume, the main thing you want to do is brand yourself as an instructional designer. So you want to make sure that when a hiring manager is looking at this resume, it reads as, "okay, this person knows the field, this person knows what we're expecting of them, and they have some experience doing these instructional design tasks, even if they haven't held a formal instructional design job title." Reframe your responsibilities in instructional design terms. We have videos to help with that. and then if you wanted, if there are certain roles that you're really excited about, you can tailor your resume for those roles specifically by using the language, not just of the field, but of that specific job listing. So again, we have videos to give you better ideas of that, but as a very quick example, if you're coming from teaching, you might have on your teaching resume that you "created lesson plans," but for an instructional design resume, you would change that to "Designed Learning Experiences." So this is just one quick example, there are hundreds of more examples like this and things that we can do where you're, talking about the same thing, but you're using terms that instructional design hiring managers won't understand more. And you'll be using terms that translate better to instructional design. So it's like your job to show, you have your past experience. You're going to learn what an instructional designer does. It's your job to bridge that gap for the hiring managers and show "here's how this past experience actually is very close to what I'd be doing as an instructional designer." And, especially if you're coming from anything like education or design related, you will be able to do that, it just takes some practice and internal reframing, I would say. And then, the second thing that people should see on your resume is the link to your portfolio website. The first thing they should see is your name, right beneath that, hopefully emphasized in some way, is the link to your portfolio, because again, that's the main purpose this resume is serving, is getting people to your portfolio website. So that they can see what you're really capable of. And then you'll be optimizing your LinkedIn profile for a similar purpose. So this will help you land interviews and freelance clients. Like again, this helps people break into the field. And then once you are in the field, if you have a well-optimized LinkedIn profile, there will be people reaching out to you consistently about freelance projects. And around 10 percent or so of instructional designers also take on freelance projects in addition to their full time role just for some extra income or to work on some projects that are exciting to them. So again we have full videos on all this stuff, we have deeper LinkedIn videos. But the general idea is to use keywords like "Instructional Designer" and "eLearning Developer" throughout your portfolio. So all of the keywords that hiring managers would be searching for when they're trying to hire an instructional designer. And then once your, profile is a bit more optimized, you'll be growing your network and building your presence. So you'll want to connect with as many people in the field as possible so that you show up in more searches, so that your feed has more instructional design relevant content. And if you want to post about your journey or comment on people's posts like thanking them, like those things will build your presence too. And if you're like showing up in the community in that way, Sooner or later, it's going to pay off for you, especially if you can be consistent with it. So that part isn't required, but again, it can only help if you have the bandwidth for it or if it speaks to you. You can also use LinkedIn to do informational interviews, if you find someone who's working as an instructional designer at a company you want to work for, you can run it by them. You can introduce yourself, you can ask if they're up for a quick, 15-30 minute coffee chat so you can ask them about your role, their role because it's your dream role. More people, some people will definitely be open to that and more people than you might expect would be open to that, especially if you approach it in the right way. You can also use LinkedIn to research companies, research the people who work at the companies you might want to work for, and overall, again, drive traffic to your portfolio site. So pretty early on in your LinkedIn profile, you're going to say, You can view my work and learn more about me at, you know, devlinpeck.com, for example. And then, doing, that, that's how I built my freelance business very early. I came into this field right out of undergrad. A week later, I started my master's program and, got my, my first freelance client that same semester. And I was able to build a six figure business only through LinkedIn. Nobody was finding me through Google. People were finding me from LinkedIn. They're finding my portfolio website on my profile. They're going there and they're saying, "Hey, I love your work. can we hop on a call and chat about a project I need help with?" So every year as a freelancer, once I finished school, I was making six figures, which blew my mind because I thought I'd be making like $60k or something as a full time employee. But yeah, there's a lot of opportunity in this field and I attribute like almost all of my success to my portfolio website. So using LinkedIn to drive traffic to that portfolio website is a very, powerful combination, I would say. And then the other thing I would say about LinkedIn is, don't get discouraged by the negativity. That's something I've seen happening more since COVID, especially with the industry getting shaken up a little bit. COVID already took a number on, like, all communities, I would say, not just the ID space. But with all of the, teachers coming into the field, it's been causing some reactions, right? Some people are losing out on opportunities to teachers with less experience and they're coming in and making more money and taking these roles with really impressive portfolios. So there's been some negativity around that. There's, yeah, so I would say, I guess just know where that is coming from. Don't let it discourage you, right? I've had to give people a lot of pep talks where they're like, "on LinkedIn, I see that the field is oversaturated or I won't be able to make this like salary I want to make," or, yeah, just some fear mongering. again, if you're doing these steps and if you can create an impressive portfolio and if you, have the motivation and like time and availability and all of that to get this done, you are going to be able to become an instructional designer successfully. It won't be easy, but it is definitely possible. And, yeah, I would say just keep in mind there are a lot of different perspectives on LinkedIn. but please don't ever feel like it's impossible to accomplish these goals that we're going through in this video. And once you've got that done, the last thing you can do to really accelerate this process is apply to roles directly. So you have that resume in hand, you have that really nice online presence with your LinkedIn and your portfolio. So now it's just applying to positions that seem like they'd be a good fit for you. You definitely do not need to meet every requirement. That's a very common mistake for people who are getting new to the field. if you can meet 50 percent of the requirements, that's great. The people we work with in the bootcamp, we encourage you, apply to roles that are asking for 5 to 7 years of experience. And that was something I had to learn, too. I, when I was getting into the field, I was like, "I'm not going to be able to get any of these roles. I don't have 5 to 7 years of experience." But if you have the portfolio that shows off the skills that people would be developing over that 5 to 7 years, that is going to be, again, doing way more heavy lifting than you would expect. Yeah, you don't need to be going for like a junior instructional design role, especially if you're putting in all the time and effort that it takes to learn these skills and do this portfolio. You're going to be applying to roles that ask for experience. You know, people go directly from teaching to senior instructional design roles. I wouldn't say that's the norm, but it definitely happens, and very few of them, I would say, go to like junior instructional design roles. So you're looking for a solid ID role. There's going to be some years of experience requirements, but again, if you're doing the work to internally reframe your experience and think about how the ways in which you have been doing instructional design work, even if you haven't thought of it that way before, if you can translate that again in an interview, you're, going to be just fine applying to roles with experience requirements. I would say research terms or concepts that are new to you. that's probably not like a groundbreaking suggestion, but try to know what's going on these job listings at least so that it doesn't feel like you're reading a foreign language. And it very well will feel like that in the beginning, especially like SCORM and LMS and xAPI and like all these different abbreviations. But, give it a month of looking at these job listings and it's going to feel very different. So it's overwhelming at first, but over a few months you're going to be absolutely surprised at how far you've come with this transition process. We're going to do a deeper video on like how to look for instructional design roles and how to evaluate these job listings But here are some search terms you can use. Again, feel free to screenshot this or just you know You'll be able to find your way back here if you've bookmarked the video but "instructional designer," "eLearning developer," "learning experience designer," "Curriculum developer," "learning specialist," "course developer," and then any combination of these different terms like These, jobs are listed with a wide variety of titles, so don't feel like you have to stick with just the "instructional design" keyword. That's gonna, you're not gonna be doing yourself a lot of, service by just sticking to that, so keep that in mind. And then for interview prep, you should have, you should definitely be landing interviews at this point. If you're not landing interviews, it means there's either, either an issue with your resume or your portfolio. and it is a numbers game, so I don't mean like you've applied to three places, you should be landing an interview, but if you've applied to 10 or 20 places, you should at least, you should definitely have a few interviews out of that. This may be discouraging, but this is just the reality, like it may take over 100 applications, it may take over 10 different interviews to find the perfect offer. it's really easy to feel discouraged once you've put in all this work, you start applying, and then if after, a couple or a few weeks, you're not really getting any traction, it's easy to feel really discouraged and be like, "what did I do all of this prep for? Like, I'm doomed." It's an emotional part of the process to be going through the interviews . It's easy to get discouraged, but the reality is: it is going to take a bit of time. It is going to take a lot of applications, but you will find the right fit if you've put in the work building these skills. There is a demand and it really depends on like where we're at in the year, I would say. Like where we're at in the hiring cycles, like some parts of the year, like the end of the year, it's pretty slow. Some parts of the year, yeah, you can get a role in three weeks. So I would say it probably takes between three weeks and on the long end, three months to really land that perfect offer and get the role that you're going for. You want to ideally build a human connection with your interviewer, treat it like a two way conversation. We have some good videos on the channel that kind of, show some examples of this and dive into it, but, yeah, don't sell yourself short, you're interviewing the interviewer also. And keep in mind that everything is negotiable. So you can negotiate on salary, you can negotiate vacation time, remote options, the list goes on. There are especially people coming from education, like they're used to like a very structured pay scale. Like, "if you have these requirements and have this many years of experience, like this is how much you're going to make." It's not like that in the corporate world. There is a lot of room to negotiate in most cases and at most places. Yeah, if you have someone in your court who can help you out with the negotiation, it will probably pay off very big in the long run and then enjoy your new career. So again, if you've done all these steps, you will find a new role. That doesn't mean it's immediately going to be like all like rainbows and butterflies. there is always an adjustment period after the transition that can be overwhelming in a different way where you have to get up to speed on the new lingo, especially if you're going. If you were in education your whole life and now you're moving into corporate, like there is a new kind of culture to adjust to. But, again, the things that most people mention are like the increased pay, having nights and weekends back. Those pieces have a really big impact on people's quality of life. and then also, especially if you're coming from education, you may find that some of the, some of the things that felt normal to you in education and some of the ways that impacted your mental health. It doesn't just immediately go away once you leave education, it does take some time to mentally adjust to the new career and the new work environment and all of that. And it's in a good way, but it's still an adjustment nonetheless. And then, as you can imagine, your confidence and skills will continue to grow over time, so it just gets better and better as the months and years go on. So what's next? Again, ID is a great field. Your success depends on the strength of your portfolio. I can't, again, I can't emphasize that piece enough. That's what it all comes down to. And for a step by step guide through the transition, through building your portfolio, through learning all of these skills, you can grab the free Become an Instructional Designer checklist. I've linked that in the description. People have been using it for years to find really good success and we're always updating it so you can grab that so you have something to refer back to and check off as you go. And then if you want some additional help and support feel free to subscribe to the channel because we have a lot of videos coming out in the weeks and months to come that will give you a really good advantage on making the transition and landing an ID role successfully. So thanks for making it to the end again. Please subscribe if this video helps you and I will see you in the next video

Instructional design is a great field that
offers a lot of freedom and flexibility. And in this guide, I&#39;m going to go
step by step and give you everything that you need to know to become an
instructional designer effectively. So I have some updated data from
over 100 hiring managers and over 600 working instructional designers, and
I&#39;m going to share those insights with you to help you become an instructional
designer as quickly as possible. So I&#39;m Devlin Peck and I became an
instructional designer back in 2017. I started helping people become
instructional designers almost immediately after that, once I realized how much
opportunity there was in the field. And then in 2020, I started the
ID Bootcamp, and I built a team of my own, and we&#39;ve been helping
people become instructional designers full time ever since. this is the most rewarding thing that
I do, it&#39;s the most rewarding thing my team does, and this is my favorite
video to record, because I&#39;ve seen the difference that becoming an instructional
designer makes in people&#39;s lives. Especially coming from fields
like education where you might be getting overworked and underpaid. You might be feeling undervalued. It&#39;s a really nice breath of fresh air
once you transition into instructional design and, people will report making
two times their salary or getting their nights and weekends back or just feeling
much more fulfilled and relaxed overall. So it&#39;s really nice that there is a field
like this out there for people who are passionate about helping people learn. Now we&#39;re gonna dive into
all of that in a minute. I do just want to let you know that
this video, we&#39;re going to dive deep, we&#39;re going to cover a lot of ground. this would be a good video to bookmark,
because I&#39;m going to reference a lot of other videos throughout, and this
will just be a good video to come back to time and time again on your journey
to becoming an instructional designer. So with all of that being said, let&#39;s
dive into it, and, I guess let&#39;s first discuss why you would even want
to become an instructional designer? the first big one is that you can help
people learn and make a difference. Now this is what draws a lot of people
to education, but again, it&#39;s nice that there are other fields out there,
where you can still do the same thing. So that part of you that really wants to
make a difference, it really, it&#39;s really passionate about teaching and education,
that part of you still can have an outlet in the instructional design space. Also, according to this recent data,
which is consistent with the data from years prior, 93 percent of
instructional designers are satisfied with their work life balance. I remember getting into the field. This was like a big selling point for me
because all the teachers I was talking to, they were like, &quot;Don&#39;t go into this field,
it&#39;s a lot, we deal with a lot of other things, it&#39;s not just teaching the subject
you love to engage students, for example.&quot; So then when I was learning more
about instructional design and how much more satisfied IDs are
with the work life balance, I was quite intrigued, to say the least. And then the total compensation to
the average total compensation is about $87, 000 in the United States. So this covers people who are working full
time, people who are working freelance. This is on average how much instructional
designers are earning in the U.S. So, pretty respectable, pretty
comfortable, about a quarter or a fifth of all IDs are making six figures. So we&#39;re gonna dive more into that in
next week&#39;s video about how much IDs make, but  another great part about this is you
can leverage your transferable skills. So whatever field you&#39;re coming from,
if you&#39;re coming from education or another design field or maybe from
a project management role or even a training role, no matter which
field you&#39;re coming from, there are some transferable skills. You have that you&#39;ll be able to
leverage as an instructional designer. It is a really interdisciplinary field. So, again, you have some experience
that&#39;s valuable in this field and if there&#39;s something particular that you
like doing, if you really like working with the technology or if you really
like working with people or project management, like you will be able to
find your place in this field because it is such a big field with so many
different skills that are valuable in it. And then also, you&#39;ll build new skills
that you can use to impact the world. So it is just a good investment in
your professional development, like as a human, or as a professional, it&#39;s
not just going to be valuable only in a little instructional design bubble. So there are a lot of people who
eventually move on from instructional design into like user experience design,
or user interface design, or computer coding, like frontend development. There are some people
who move into that space. And then even outside of, like, your
working life, it’s still really valuable. Like for example, over the past few
months, I’ve been getting more involved in, like, some community leadership
initiatives, like here locally to me. And the instructional design skills are
valuable, with like getting to know your audience and designing effectiveLearning
solutions to help serve them. it&#39;s really powerful in a
lot of different contexts. It&#39;s not just in a corporate
setting where you might be working. So, great field. Now let&#39;s take a look at the overview
to becoming an instructional designer. the first step is I would make sure that
instructional design is right for you. And we&#39;re gonna dive
into all of these deeper. This is just like in a nutshell,
the steps to become an ID. So once you know whether or not it&#39;s right
for you, if it is right for you, you&#39;ll want to learn the knowledge and skills. Then you&#39;ll want to create your
portfolio, which is where you show off that knowledge and those skills
and show off who you are as a person and what you can bring to the table. Then you&#39;ll optimize your resume and
your LinkedIn profile so that you can start driving traffic to your portfolio. So now you&#39;ll have a lot of people
who are finding you, finding your portfolio website, and seeing what
great knowledge and skills you have. You&#39;re building your case
for being a great ID. So you&#39;ll be applying to roles and
preparing for the interview that once you are doing those interviews, you&#39;ll
be negotiating and accepting that offer and enjoying your new career. So here&#39;s the overview. We&#39;re gonna get much more specific in
the slides to come This is the general approach though that I would say to
becoming an ID now I do want to reassure you like you can do this like you&#39;ve
got this it is a bit intimidating at first it can feel overwhelming when you
realize like how much there is to learn. Everyone feels this way and then also I
will mention like there have always been fears about the market being too crowded. Like I remember when I first learned
about the field back in 2017 and was like, you know learning this information
like I&#39;m sharing with you now. I was like, &quot;This sounds
too good to be true. Like why don&#39;t more
people know about this? Like, I&#39;m probably not gonna
be able to get work here. Like why would people want to hire me?&quot; And like I&#39;ve heard the same
thing like hundreds of times from instructional designers over the years. You know, every year people are saying,
&quot;Oh, the field is getting more crowded. It&#39;s getting you know,
over oversaturated.&quot; These things aren&#39;t true, if you put
in the work to learn the skills, you are going to have jobs waiting for you. Now, there are caveats to that,
it&#39;s obviously going to take work, it can be an emotional process, it
can feel overwhelming, but the world needs good instructional designers,
and the field is always growing. No matter which reports you look at,
about the future of our field, it&#39;s either the field is growing at the
same rate as average, or more often, it&#39;s growing more quickly than average. You can think about all the stuff
people need to learn out there. instructional designers whole job is
like helping people learn more quickly and efficiently and effectively. So, you can imagine, the demand that
there will be for instructional designers. So again, I just want to reiterate, if you
put in the work, you will be successful. Even if there are times where it feels
like, &quot;why is someone going to hire me?&quot; Or you&#39;re feeling that imposter
syndrome or that doubt in yourself. Everyone who&#39;s made this
transition has felt the same way. If you&#39;re putting in these steps, if
you&#39;reLearning these skills, like these skills are valuable and in demand. Again, I felt the same way in 2017,
people felt the same way in 2020, people will for sure be feeling
that way going into 2024 and beyond. Now, like I mentioned, we want to figure
out if instructional design is right for you before you go investing like dozens
of hours into pursuing this as a career. So do your research before
making the commitment. This video is a good place to
start to get an overview of what this process looks like. But you&#39;ll also probably want to learn
more about what it looks like on the job. So I have, we have a video out called,
Is Instructional Design Right For You? We&#39;ll link all these
videos in the description. So check those out. You can also look at
Instructional Design job listings. And seeing what the tasks entail
and if that&#39;s something that would be interesting to you. So you could just go on
Indeed, for example, and look up &quot;Instructional Designer.&quot; And look at some of the roles there. Talk to instructional
designers in the field. So we have a community space
for that at devlinpeck.com ID. Or devlinpeck.com/ID, I should say. We have like thousands of
instructional designers in there. You might know some instructional
designers in real life. Or again you might start networking
with some instructional designers as you follow the steps in this video. Feel free to ask them if they want
to hop on an informational interview, if you can ask them about their work. Really try to get a good picture of what
this job looks like, keeping in mind that one instructional designer&#39;s day to
day can look very different from another instructional designer&#39;s day to day. So again, these roles, no two
instructional design rules are exactly the same, but again, it will just be
a good idea to see what&#39;s out there and, try to find at least one person
doing something where you&#39;re like, &quot;that&#39;s exactly what I want to be doing. That sounds right for me.&quot; Of course, you won&#39;t know a 100 percent
if instructional design is right for you until you actually get in there and start
doing some instructional design work, but I&#39;m sure you can have a pretty good idea
based off of what you know you like about. your, past experience. A lot of times people are drawn
to ID because they really like that, like designing, learning,
experience idea and yeah, designing engaging ways to help people learn. If that speaks to you, odds
are, this is probably going to be a good career for you. So again, there are a lot of ways
that you can take your ID career. Like I mentioned earlier, if you&#39;re
really into the technology and the development, you can specialize solely
in that and not really have to work with the subject matter experts and,
some of the more front end stuff. Or if you want nothing to do with the
technology, you could work, directly with the subject matter experts, you
could write theLearning experience. And then you could hand those things
off to a developer so that you don&#39;t have to use the technology as much. Now, the way to like really thrive and
really stand out and be eligible for the biggest number of opportunities
is if you can do both of those things, like the design and the development. But, again, there&#39;s so many different
ways to specialize within this space that you don&#39;t like have to
do something you don&#39;t wanna do. and again, we have some &quot;day in the life&quot;
videos coming out where we interview a lot of instructional designers who
are working in the field and we share those interviews here on the channel. So if you&#39;re interested in those and if
you&#39;re enjoying the video so far, then make sure you subscribe and you&#39;ll be
the first to know when they go live. Okay, so next up, you&#39;ll
want to learn the theory. Hiring managers have showed us, they&#39;ve
spoken out pretty heavily this year that they want people who can apply
instructional design theory and science. Now, a couple years ago, this
survey was all about people who could develop eLearning. &quot;We need people who know the
tools and can develop eLearning.&quot; Now they want people who know
the ID theory and science, so this is more important than ever. So here are some of the questions. We asked these hiring managers, What are
the top three skills that you look for when hiring an instructional designer? And number one was the ability to
apply ID theory and science, then communication skills, and then
eLearning development skills, which we&#39;ll get into a little bit later. But those are like the top three skills. If you have those three down,
you are going to be very well set up to be successful in the
instructional design space. So, applying the theory and
science and development. And of course, if you can communicate
well, you are going to be amazing as an instructional designer. I would suggest learning these
top theories and models and taking notes on them as a first step. Get your knowledge bases covered. Make sure you know what these theories
are, what the main point of them is, and like, how to follow them and apply them. So get comfortable talking about them. So again, when I was getting into the
field, I was like constantly talking to my girlfriend about this stuff,
like basically trying to teach it to my friends, talking to my classmates
about this stuff, like basically rehearsing it as much as possible so
it became like second nature to us. So between the notes and talking about
them, you&#39;ll be pretty well set up for talking about it in interviews
and for actually like recognizing the language of the field when you see
these things in job listings or when you hear your coworkers or peers talk
about them, but you&#39;ll really need to show off how you can apply them. So this part is really important and
that&#39;s where your portfolio will come into play because essentially you&#39;ll
build some portfolio projects and in the write-up for that project you&#39;ll explain
&quot;here&#39;s how I applied this theory, here&#39;s how I, here&#39;s the model that I followed.&quot; So you&#39;ll be able to walk hiring
managers and other people through your process for applying these theories. Again, that is the most important thing
you can do this year to stand out, as an instructional designer and break
into the field quickly and effectively. So what are some of these
top theories and models? Here are a few, ADDIE for an ID process
overview, and again, we have content on all of this stuff, we&#39;re gonna link
it all in the description, we have a playlist that guides you through it, and
a checklist that you can download with the link in the comments, so you don&#39;t need to
learn it all right now, but this is just an overview of the most important ones. So learn ADDIE, that&#39;s like the, that&#39;s
usually where people start when they try to learn about ID models and theories, so
that&#39;s a Really good one to begin with. Bloom&quot;s Taxonomy for
Writing Learning objectives. You might even already be familiar with
this if you are coming from education, but that&#39;s an important skill in the ID
space is writing good learning objectives. Kirkpatrick&#39;s model of evaluation. Now this one has... the hiring managers have said
this is more important than ever. So Kirkpatrick&#39;s model,
learn the four levels. people talk about them quite casually
in instructional design, so you should definitely know what each of those
levels are and how to evaluate them. Again, we have a good video on
that has helped a lot of people. Gagne&#39;s Nine Events for
streamlined instructional design. So if, especially if you&#39;re like brand
new to education or you&#39;re brand new to designing learning experiences, I would
say Gagnier&#39;s Nine Events is like the most streamlined way to dive into it. And, in the most, foolproof way, I would
say, it makes sure you have all of your bases covered, it makes sure you&#39;re
giving good practice opportunities, you&#39;re grabbing the learner&#39;s attention. It&#39;s just a really good, model to
say, here are the conditions that are necessary for a good learning
experience, and you can satisfy all of them in, a systematic way to make
sure that all your bases are covered. So check that out if you haven&#39;t
heard of it, if you&#39;re new to it. Mayer&#39;s Multimedia Principles. These are really good for designing, If
you&#39;re interested in designing eLearning or making like educational videos, you
should definitely learn these multimedia principles and get comfortable applying
them because again, that&#39;s a big difference between an amateur eLearning
designer and an actual good like skilled eLearning developer or designer. So check those out. and then again, you could
check out my Introduction to Instructional Design video. It&#39;s like a master class on
the theories and the science. We dive deeper into all of these things. so that would be a really
good next step if you want to learn the theories and models. So again, bookmark that
one too if you&#39;d like. It&#39;s a good one to start with. So here&#39;s what the hiring managers had
to say about the top 3 instructional design models, theories, and concepts that
IDs should be familiar with upon hire. As you can see, no surprise, ADDIE
is first, then we have Writing Strong Learning Objectives, and
then Kirkpatrick&#39;s, again, soared up in the rankings this year. That&#39;s a good one to keep an eye on. My interpretation of this data is, yeah,
hiring managers are getting more and more interested in instructional designers
who do know the theory and science, who can justify it with these evaluation
techniques, and we&#39;re going back to some of these, yeah, foundations of
instructional design, and it&#39;s changing a little bit because it&#39;s, back in COVID
in 2020 the rush was all for eLearning. &quot;We want people who can develop
eLearning who know the tools.&quot; So we&#39;re seeing that maybe a lot
of people know the tools now, but we need more people who know these
models and these theories and the science and the principles. So if you want like a secret
advantage or leg up in the job market, this is definitely the stuff to
be focusing on first, I would say. Next up, once you&#39;re more
comfortable with the theories and the models, and again, it doesn&#39;t
need to be like one than the other. But after that, you&#39;ll probably want
to dive into the tech and start getting comfortable with the technology. Because as we saw, the field is still very
like eLearning dominant, to say the least. And to really have a great shot at
landing roles, you&#39;ll almost definitely want to know the technology unless you
actively don&#39;t to be working with it. So, this is the most common
skill gap, especially for people coming from education. Like, if you&#39;re coming from education,
you mind find that the theories, you might already know them or you might
know them but like in by a different name or by some different terms. So usually if you&#39;re already really
skilled at helping people learn and designing learning experiences in a
different context, the theory isn&#39;t a huge gap, but the technology usually is I
would say start with Articulate Storyline. It&#39;s the most popular
tool in the field by far. And showing off these skills alone will
probably be landing you interviews just because of the demand for people who
can design this self paced eLearning. And it&#39;s quite fun. So start with that. You probably haven&#39;t used that in other
fields because it is pretty specific to the instructional design world. And I would say once you&#39;ve, gotten hands
on with Storyline 360, upload an eLearning project to a learning management system. Now I have a video that shows
you exactly how to do that. It might sound advanced, I put
&quot;SCORM package&quot; in there, like that&#39;s technically what it is. You publish the eLearning project
as a SCORM package, and then you can upload it to a learning management
system, and that&#39;s where like your learners will go to take that course. I&#39;m suggesting this here because that
is an intimidating thing that you&#39;ll see on job listings like experience
with learning management systems like be comfortable with SCORM and when
you&#39;re new to the field it&#39;s like what in the world is that but it&#39;s actually
way easier than it sounds so I have a video about like I think how to use a
learning management system and it shows you exactly how to do that so Again,
bookmark this, but when you&#39;re a little bit further on in your journey and when
you are diving into the eLearning tools make sure you do that because it&#39;s gonna,
it&#39;s gonna be very reassuring to hiring managers to hear that you have done
that, and it will just be really good at helping you build your confidence
on like how the whole process works for getting an eLearning project live. Some other good tools to learn
are Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma, Vyond, and Camtasia. Some of these are from the Adobe suite. Figma is for doing like
wireframes and visual mockups. Vyond is a really good tool for
making animated videos pretty quickly and cost effectively. And then Camtasia is like
a basic video editing tool. So those are all good ones to know. And then I&#39;ll also mention that AI
tools are becoming increasingly popular. That is something pretty new
in the last, six months or so. It&#39;s having a big impact on our
field and some of these AI tools like Chat GPT do have the potential
to become some of the most important tools for instructional design. So keep an eye on that. Things are of course, still
developing with the AI tools. We&#39;re gonna see what happens with that. I do have a video on the top AI
tools for instructional designers. So if you wanna like future proof
yourself and see what&#39;s out there and maybe contribute in a way that. Instructionals who are, instructional
designers who are already in the field aren&#39;t really like keeping up with. Then the AI tools, again, check out
the video on the top AI tools for instructional designers and see if any of
those speak to you because they can give you a really nice advantage in the field. So when we ask the hiring managers, What
are the top three tools and technologies that ID should be familiar with upon hire? No surprise, three quarters of
them said Articulate Storyline. Again, that tool has, it&#39;s really
established in the industry and it&#39;s the best one to learn. After that, Learning Management Systems. So again, that&#39;s why I suggested
building that eLearning project in Storyline, publishing it, and uploading
it to a Learning Management System. Just by doing that, you&#39;re gonna
be a good candidate for, three quarters of these ID roles out here. That&#39;s what I would suggest. You can look at these other ones. I would also note that a quarter of all
of these hiring managers put Chat GPT or other AI tools as one of these, one of
these top three tools that ID should know. So that is of course different than
anything we&#39;ve ever seen before. Times are obviously
changing with the AI stuff. And I&#39;ll show you this question too
from that hiring manager survey. Almost half of all these hiring managers
are currently using AI tools for ID tasks. And 35% of the ones who aren&#39;t say
that they plan to within the next year. So if you&#39;re someone who&#39;s trying
to break into the field, I know there&#39;s enough to learn already. You don&#39;t need to feel overwhelmed by
this, but just know this is changing. This is something you might wanna
keep an eye on and at least know which AI tools are out there. which hopefully watching that,
that other video I recommended will help you out there. From there, it&#39;s time to
create your portfolio. So again, at this point, you&#39;ve learned
the theories and science, you know how to apply it to some projects, and
Articulate Storyline so you can actually bring those eLearning projects to life. Now it&#39;s time to start building
some projects and putting them on your portfolio website because
this is the real money maker. This is what&#39;s going to get you hired. So it shows off who you
are and what you can do. It honestly helps at every single
stage of the application process. It helps people find
you in the first place. Once people land on your site, it
builds their confidence in you and gets them wanting to interview you. And then people can use your portfolio
to evaluate and with the interview to determine if they should hire you and
what kind of offer they should make you. So again, this makes
all of the difference. From our survey, we found that new
instructional designers with zero to three years of experience with a
portfolio earn around $5, 000 more per year on average than instructional
designers without a portfolio. So it does have an immediate
and long term impact on your earning potential in the field. And then also it impacts your ability
to even land a role in the first place. So over a quarter of hiring
managers say that they won&#39;t even consider your application if you
don&#39;t have a portfolio website. And only 7 percent of all of these
hiring managers don&#39;t consider your portfolio as part of the process. 93 percent of these hiring managers
are looking at your portfolio and for some of them it plays a
massive role in the hiring decision. So yeah, this is not
something you want to skip. Again, as something, there are some
people who will be complaining about not being able to find work in this field. Odds are, if they&#39;re complaining
about that, they don&#39;t have a solid portfolio website, or they don&#39;t
have a portfolio website at all. So when people come to me and
they talk about that, I&#39;m like, how does your portfolio look? Because if you don&#39;t have a portfolio,
trying to land a role in this field is like playing the lottery. And that&#39;s obviously probably
not where you want to invest your energy when applying to roles
does take so much time and energy. So the portfolio is the
ticket to landing these roles. Can&#39;t emphasize that enough, and
the number one thing you&#39;ll want to show off in your portfolio is
your ability to solve real world problems with instructional design. We have a ton of content here on
the channel on how to do that. When you get to that point, you can
look at our flagship project videos. It&#39;s helped a lot of people and roles with
just a single project on their website, We have content to help you out with that
when the time comes, but that, these are the things that hiring managers say they
want when they&#39;re looking at a portfolio. So the ability to solve real world
problems, and they evaluate the, user experience of the website and the project. So you want to make sure that people
aren&#39;t, getting confused trying to navigate the site or find your projects,
because that&#39;s going to be a fast way for hiring managers to disqualify you. And you obviously want your portfolio
working for you and not against you. That would be quite counterintuitive
if it was just confusing people. So feedback helps a lot, especially
when it comes to like your portfolio projects, these are going to be the
public facing things that people see. These are going to be how people are
forming their like first impression of your workability, really. So the more people you can get feedback
from the better, especially if it&#39;s feedback from people who are in the
field or who have some design experience. I just want to show you this data. So in the ID Bootcamp, that&#39;s like
what our, that&#39;s like our flagship offer where like my team and I work
with you like one on one and give you a ton of feedback, like on all of your
instructional design deliverables. Our, we survey all of our graduates
from that program and the average salary is $95, 000 for people in the US. The industry average salary for
people in the US is $83, 000. Overall, like people, even people with
10 years of experience, the conglomerate. So it&#39;s pretty amazing that with some
feedback and extra support by showing off these things that hiring managers
are looking at, these people who are transitioning into the field with very
little experience, in most cases, no formal ID experience or earning $12k
more on average than the entire industry. And then. for new IDs, the average is $78k. So quite a big difference. Again, I attribute that to feedback. So and then again, when I was
getting into the field, there were no bootcamps or stuff like that. But when I was asking my
girlfriend at the time, I was like, &quot;how does this look to you? what&#39;s your impression looking at this?&quot; Like when I was going
to my master&#39;s classes. like before class would start, I&#39;d be
asking, my classmates, &quot;Oh, what do you think about these visuals I had here?&quot; Again, it doesn&#39;t need to be in a formal
bootcamp program, but if you can get feedback from people who have any idea
what they&#39;re talking about, it will help a lot, because, again, you want
to, give off a really good impression. So if you want to see some of these
portfolios that come from the bootcamp and that help people land these kind of roles,
you can go to devlinpeck.com/showcase that might give you an idea of like what you&#39;re
aiming for, or like where the bar is at for breaking into the field, like quite
effectively with a portfolio website. From there, once your portfolio is in
good shape, you&#39;ve gotten feedback, you&#39;ve applied that feedback, and you&#39;re
proud of it, and it presents you in a good light, it&#39;s time to create your
instructional design resume, because now the name of the game is like, driving
traffic to your portfolio website. So you wanna get your resume to the
top of the pile, so that you can get those eyes on your portfolio, because
that&#39;s gonna seal the deal for ya. So on the resume, the main thing
you want to do is brand yourself as an instructional designer. So you want to make sure that when a
hiring manager is looking at this resume, it reads as, &quot;okay, this person knows
the field, this person knows what we&#39;re expecting of them, and they have some
experience doing these instructional design tasks, even if they haven&#39;t held
a formal instructional design job title.&quot; Reframe your responsibilities
in instructional design terms. We have videos to help with that. and then if you wanted, if there are
certain roles that you&#39;re really excited about, you can tailor your resume
for those roles specifically by using the language, not just of the field,
but of that specific job listing. So again, we have videos to give you
better ideas of that, but as a very quick example, if you&#39;re coming from
teaching, you might have on your teaching resume that you &quot;created
lesson plans,&quot; but for an instructional design resume, you would change that
to &quot;Designed Learning Experiences.&quot; So this is just one quick example, there
are hundreds of more examples like this and things that we can do where you&#39;re,
talking about the same thing, but you&#39;re using terms that instructional design
hiring managers won&#39;t understand more. And you&#39;ll be using terms that translate
better to instructional design. So it&#39;s like your job to show,
you have your past experience. You&#39;re going to learn what an
instructional designer does. It&#39;s your job to bridge that gap for
the hiring managers and show &quot;here&#39;s how this past experience actually is very close to what I&#39;d be doing
as an instructional designer.&quot; And, especially if you&#39;re coming
from anything like education or design related, you will be able to
do that, it just takes some practice and internal reframing, I would say. And then, the second thing that
people should see on your resume is the link to your portfolio website. The first thing they should see is your
name, right beneath that, hopefully emphasized in some way, is the link to
your portfolio, because again, that&#39;s the main purpose this resume is serving, is
getting people to your portfolio website. So that they can see what
you&#39;re really capable of. And then you&#39;ll be optimizing your
LinkedIn profile for a similar purpose. So this will help you land
interviews and freelance clients. Like again, this helps
people break into the field. And then once you are in the field, if you
have a well-optimized LinkedIn profile, there will be people reaching out to you
consistently about freelance projects. And around 10 percent or so
of instructional designers also take on freelance projects in
addition to their full time role just for some extra income or to work on
some projects that are exciting to them. So again we have full videos on all this
stuff, we have deeper LinkedIn videos. But the general idea is to use
keywords like &quot;Instructional Designer&quot; and &quot;eLearning Developer&quot;
throughout your portfolio. So all of the keywords that
hiring managers would be searching for when they&#39;re trying to
hire an instructional designer. And then once your, profile is a bit
more optimized, you&#39;ll be growing your network and building your presence. So you&#39;ll want to connect with
as many people in the field as possible so that you show up in more
searches, so that your feed has more instructional design relevant content. And if you want to post about your
journey or comment on people&#39;s posts like thanking them, like those
things will build your presence too. And if you&#39;re like showing up in the
community in that way, Sooner or later, it&#39;s going to pay off for you, especially
if you can be consistent with it. So that part isn&#39;t required, but
again, it can only help if you have the bandwidth for it or if it speaks to you. You can also use LinkedIn to do
informational interviews, if you find someone who&#39;s working as an instructional
designer at a company you want to work for, you can run it by them. You can introduce yourself, you
can ask if they&#39;re up for a quick, 15-30 minute coffee chat so you
can ask them about your role, their role because it&#39;s your dream role. More people, some people will
definitely be open to that and more people than you might expect would
be open to that, especially if you approach it in the right way. You can also use LinkedIn to research
companies, research the people who work at the companies you might want
to work for, and overall, again, drive traffic to your portfolio site. So pretty early on in your LinkedIn
profile, you&#39;re going to say, You can view my work and learn more about me at,
you know, devlinpeck.com, for example. And then, doing, that, that&#39;s how I
built my freelance business very early. I came into this field
right out of undergrad. A week later, I started my master&#39;s
program and, got my, my first freelance client that same semester. And I was able to build a six figure
business only through LinkedIn. Nobody was finding me through Google. People were finding me from LinkedIn. They&#39;re finding my portfolio
website on my profile. They&#39;re going there and they&#39;re
saying, &quot;Hey, I love your work. can we hop on a call and chat
about a project I need help with?&quot; So every year as a freelancer, once
I finished school, I was making six figures, which blew my mind because
I thought I&#39;d be making like $60k or something as a full time employee. But yeah, there&#39;s a lot of opportunity
in this field and I attribute like almost all of my success to my portfolio website. So using LinkedIn to drive traffic
to that portfolio website is a very, powerful combination, I would say. And then the other thing I would
say about LinkedIn is, don&#39;t get discouraged by the negativity. That&#39;s something I&#39;ve seen happening
more since COVID, especially with the industry getting shaken up a little bit. COVID already took a number on,
like, all communities, I would say, not just the ID space. But with all of the, teachers
coming into the field, it&#39;s been causing some reactions, right? Some people are losing out on
opportunities to teachers with less experience and they&#39;re coming in and
making more money and taking these roles with really impressive portfolios. So there&#39;s been some
negativity around that. There&#39;s, yeah, so I would say, I guess
just know where that is coming from. Don&#39;t let it discourage you, right? I&#39;ve had to give people a lot of
pep talks where they&#39;re like, &quot;on LinkedIn, I see that the field is
oversaturated or I won&#39;t be able to make this like salary I want to make,&quot; or, yeah, just some fear mongering. again, if you&#39;re doing these steps
and if you can create an impressive portfolio and if you, have the motivation
and like time and availability and all of that to get this done, you
are going to be able to become an instructional designer successfully. It won&#39;t be easy, but it
is definitely possible. And, yeah, I would say just
keep in mind there are a lot of different perspectives on LinkedIn. but please don&#39;t ever feel like it&#39;s
impossible to accomplish these goals that we&#39;re going through in this video. And once you&#39;ve got that done, the last
thing you can do to really accelerate this process is apply to roles directly. So you have that resume in hand, you
have that really nice online presence with your LinkedIn and your portfolio. So now it&#39;s just applying
to positions that seem like they&#39;d be a good fit for you. You definitely do not need
to meet every requirement. That&#39;s a very common mistake for people
who are getting new to the field. if you can meet 50 percent of
the requirements, that&#39;s great. The people we work with in the bootcamp,
we encourage you, apply to roles that are asking for 5 to 7 years of experience. And that was something
I had to learn, too. I, when I was getting into the
field, I was like, &quot;I&#39;m not going to be able to get any of these roles. I don&#39;t have 5 to 7 years of experience.&quot; But if you have the portfolio that shows
off the skills that people would be developing over that 5 to 7 years, that
is going to be, again, doing way more heavy lifting than you would expect. Yeah, you don&#39;t need to be going for
like a junior instructional design role, especially if you&#39;re putting in all the
time and effort that it takes to learn these skills and do this portfolio. You&#39;re going to be applying to
roles that ask for experience. You know, people go directly from teaching
to senior instructional design roles. I wouldn&#39;t say that&#39;s the norm, but
it definitely happens, and very few of them, I would say, go to like
junior instructional design roles. So you&#39;re looking for a solid ID role. There&#39;s going to be some years of
experience requirements, but again, if you&#39;re doing the work to internally
reframe your experience and think about how the ways in which you have
been doing instructional design work, even if you haven&#39;t thought of it
that way before, if you can translate that again in an interview, you&#39;re,
going to be just fine applying to roles with experience requirements. I would say research terms or
concepts that are new to you. that&#39;s probably not like a groundbreaking
suggestion, but try to know what&#39;s going on these job listings at
least so that it doesn&#39;t feel like you&#39;re reading a foreign language. And it very well will feel like
that in the beginning, especially like SCORM and LMS and xAPI and like
all these different abbreviations. But, give it a month of looking
at these job listings and it&#39;s going to feel very different. So it&#39;s overwhelming at first, but
over a few months you&#39;re going to be absolutely surprised at how far you&#39;ve
come with this transition process. We&#39;re going to do a deeper video on like
how to look for instructional design roles and how to evaluate these job listings But
here are some search terms you can use. Again, feel free to screenshot this or
just you know You&#39;ll be able to find your way back here if you&#39;ve bookmarked
the video but &quot;instructional designer,&quot; &quot;eLearning developer,&quot; &quot;learning
experience designer,&quot; &quot;Curriculum developer,&quot; &quot;learning specialist,&quot; &quot;course
developer,&quot; and then any combination of these different terms like These, jobs
are listed with a wide variety of titles, so don&#39;t feel like you have to stick with
just the &quot;instructional design&quot; keyword. That&#39;s gonna, you&#39;re not gonna be doing
yourself a lot of, service by just sticking to that, so keep that in mind. And then for interview prep, you
should have, you should definitely be landing interviews at this point. If you&#39;re not landing interviews, it
means there&#39;s either, either an issue with your resume or your portfolio. and it is a numbers game, so I don&#39;t mean
like you&#39;ve applied to three places, you should be landing an interview, but if
you&#39;ve applied to 10 or 20 places, you should at least, you should definitely
have a few interviews out of that. This may be discouraging, but
this is just the reality, like it may take over 100 applications,
it may take over 10 different interviews to find the perfect offer. it&#39;s really easy to feel discouraged
once you&#39;ve put in all this work, you start applying, and then if after,
a couple or a few weeks, you&#39;re not really getting any traction, it&#39;s easy
to feel really discouraged and be like, &quot;what did I do all of this prep for? Like, I&#39;m doomed.&quot; It&#39;s an emotional part of the process to
be going through the interviews . It&#39;s easy to get discouraged, but the reality
is: it is going to take a bit of time. It is going to take a lot of applications,
but you will find the right fit if you&#39;ve put in the work building these skills. There is a demand and it really
depends on like where we&#39;re at in the year, I would say. Like where we&#39;re at in the hiring cycles,
like some parts of the year, like the end of the year, it&#39;s pretty slow. Some parts of the year, yeah, you
can get a role in three weeks. So I would say it probably takes between
three weeks and on the long end, three months to really land that perfect offer
and get the role that you&#39;re going for. You want to ideally build a human
connection with your interviewer, treat it like a two way conversation. We have some good videos on the channel
that kind of, show some examples of this and dive into it, but, yeah,
don&#39;t sell yourself short, you&#39;re interviewing the interviewer also. And keep in mind that
everything is negotiable. So you can negotiate on salary,
you can negotiate vacation time, remote options, the list goes on. There are especially people coming
from education, like they&#39;re used to like a very structured pay scale. Like, &quot;if you have these requirements and
have this many years of experience, like this is how much you&#39;re going to make.&quot; It&#39;s not like that in the corporate world. There is a lot of room to negotiate
in most cases and at most places. Yeah, if you have someone in your court
who can help you out with the negotiation, it will probably pay off very big in the
long run and then enjoy your new career. So again, if you&#39;ve done all these
steps, you will find a new role. That doesn&#39;t mean it&#39;s immediately
going to be like all like rainbows and butterflies. there is always an adjustment period
after the transition that can be overwhelming in a different way where
you have to get up to speed on the new lingo, especially if you&#39;re going. If you were in education your
whole life and now you&#39;re moving into corporate, like there is a
new kind of culture to adjust to. But, again, the things that most
people mention are like the increased pay, having nights and weekends back. Those pieces have a really big
impact on people&#39;s quality of life. and then also, especially if you&#39;re coming
from education, you may find that some of the, some of the things that felt
normal to you in education and some of the ways that impacted your mental health. It doesn&#39;t just immediately go away
once you leave education, it does take some time to mentally adjust
to the new career and the new work environment and all of that. And it&#39;s in a good way, but it&#39;s
still an adjustment nonetheless. And then, as you can imagine, your
confidence and skills will continue to grow over time, so it just gets better
and better as the months and years go on. So what&#39;s next? Again, ID is a great field. Your success depends on the
strength of your portfolio. I can&#39;t, again, I can&#39;t
emphasize that piece enough. That&#39;s what it all comes down to. And for a step by step guide through
the transition, through building your portfolio, through learning all of these
skills, you can grab the free Become an Instructional Designer checklist. I&#39;ve linked that in the description. People have been using it for years
to find really good success and we&#39;re always updating it so you can grab
that so you have something to refer back to and check off as you go. And then if you want some additional
help and support feel free to subscribe to the channel because we have a lot of
videos coming out in the weeks and months to come that will give you a really
good advantage on making the transition and landing an ID role successfully. So thanks for making it to the end again. Please subscribe if this video helps
you and I will see you in the next video

Transcript for:Becoming an Instructional Designer

Transcript for:
Becoming an Instructional Designer