132: Navigating Instructional Design Careers: Decoding Job Descriptions and Landing Your Dream Role

Holly Owens (00:04):

Here. I hope everybody has had a great week. Today I want to talk about what to look for in job description. So today, if you're noticing I have a little eye situation going on, I have a little Ty, so I have some medicine on that haven't had a side in years. But today what I want to talk about with you is what you're looking for in a job description. And when you're thinking about applying for different roles in instructional design or in the l and d field, things that you should look for in figuring out where you want to be, what you want to do, the pros and cons of the different situations. If you want to write down a list of the job descriptions. So one of the things that I talk about when I talk about transitioning into a role into a instructional design or something in the l and d field is thinking about where you want to be. And this is something that Nadia and I talked about last week. So one of the things you have to do is you have to pick a sector. So you have to figure out what sector you want to be in. Is it corporate? Is it education? Is it government?

(01:27):

Is it ed tech? Is it nonprofit? So you have to definitely figure out where you want to be when it comes to researching different roles. And I think that's the place where you start. Like I said last week, I often get the question about where do I start? Well, we have to know where we want to be first. So doing a little bit of research in the roles and thinking about your current skills and how they can translate into a role in the corporate space or the education space. You have to really think about and look and research and look at the job descriptions and see what's there. I will say this, I think a common misconception is that you can't apply for a role unless you have a hundred percent of the qualifications. I don't feel that way. I feel like if you have 60 to 70% you check the list, you should definitely apply to the position. Most of the time these companies are looking for the unicorn and they want the person to be everything all at once, which is not going to happen. Any good company or organization or institution will allow you the opportunity to upskill and settle into the new role, especially if you're transitioning from a different area. So just keep that in mind as you are thinking about you're finding

(02:58):

A new role or you're transitioning out of one sector into the other. They're looking for the unicorn. And we all know, even though I want this to be true, the unicorns don't exist. So they're not existing. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up my screen here for LinkedIn and you're going to see some instructional design roles that I have. Let's go to share screen. And I use a dark background on mine. So I just like the dark background better, my eyes with the white light and I have astigmatism. So if that bothers you, I apologize. I just like the darker background on things. So if we're looking at these roles, one of the first things I do when I go into LinkedIn to search, I'll give you a little bit, LinkedIn is a, LinkedIn is a pretty good, LinkedIn is a pretty good job site.

(04:04):

Sorry, my phone just rang. LinkedIn is a pretty good job site to search for different things and I really, when I first start searching, I'm looking to make sure that there are salaries listed. So that's one of the first things that I do when I'm looking to find if I'm going to share a role, if I'm going to share that with today, when I do my postings, everything has to have a salary and let me make sure that, so that's one of the first things. So if you see here, I did a search in the United States. I want to go to, I do usually the past 24 hours, and I use other job sites too to curate my postings. It's not just LinkedIn. And since I do postings every Monday and Friday, I'll either change this to a week or I'll change it to the past 24 hours and I'm looking for remote and hybrid roles.

(05:13):

And so then it starts to come up with, it filters those out. You can also set an alert to get an alert from LinkedIn. So one of the first roles I see here is an instructional design role at IDR Inc. And it's in Memphis, Tennessee and it's up to $27 an hour. So this looks like an entry level role. So it also looks like this company is looking for somebody, they, they're either searching or recruiting somebody to help with a particular client and the role, so there's not a lot of information here. So required scale is a minimum of five years experience that doesn't match what these are the things you have to look out for that doesn't match. It says associate, that means entry level to me and up to $27 an hour. If we're talking about a minimum of five years experience, that is something that is going to be mid-level to me, that's going to be starting at the mid-level. And you really have to think about, so in this job description, they're not posting it appropriately. This should say mid to senior and $27 an hour for somebody up to five years experience is not a good salary in the grand scheme of things.

(06:34):

So thinking about what's in it for you, there's not a lot here like I said. So this is one job description. I would definitely encourage the job poster to be more detailed in, and it's something in the corporate industry and its contract, so it could be like freelance work for you, but again, this red flag to me associate, but it says up to five years experience here. That's not an associate role. So I wouldn't post that one. And then I move on to the next ones. So we have another instructional design role here, and you'll notice that again, this is a contract hybrid role that the mid to senior level, it's in NYC. This one has a little bit more context of what the expectations are. I like it that it talks about subject matter experts, testing theories and all the models that we do as instructional designers skills needed.

(07:29):

It tells you what you need to have for this particular role. They are looking for a bachelor's or master's degree. So one of the questions that I get most frequently is, do I need a bachelor's or master's degree? And sometimes yes you do, but in this particular role also experience can be substituted here. So you're seeing also, and this is how my brain works, I'm just talking through the process I go that I go through when I pick jobs. You'll see a lot of articulate pop up in here, Camtasia development software, LMSs, those are frequent skills that people are looking for in the instructional design field. And I'm not saying that you need to know those as an expert, but you need to have an awareness of those tools because those are industry standard across different, especially in the corporate sector. So this is not a bad role.

(08:25):

I feel like maybe 45 to $50 is a little bit low for a mid to senior level world that is in the New York City area, but this might be one I post. So I'll click save and put that on there and I continue down the page. I see some of these crossover. I haven't really explored the crossover, thanks too much. I see those pop up quite a bit, but I haven't explored those. The next one, and I did save this one originally, is the instructional design role at MuckRack. And I like this particular role because it's 79 to 95, which is a great salary for an instructional designer. It's at the entry level. They talk about their company and give you a feel for what they're doing and what they need or their mission in the job description, what you'll do, your success. And again, this one says two years of experience and it has it as entry level, and that's okay.

(09:30):

So I think if you list one or two years of experience, but here it also says two plus years of experience using the course authoring tools. This might be again, something where it's an entry to mid-level role. And again, we're seeing here the repetition and articulate some of the video software. Adobe Illustrator, I really like how they laid out this job description because at the bottom, and this tells me this is a great company, there's probably a great company culture here is because they tell you how to plan for the interview, what is the interview process going to be like? So they're giving you a layout of the land here that will definitely lessen some anxiety when it comes to thinking about how the interview process is going to work, how many rounds they're going to be. Typically companies don't do this because it's like a huge mystery.

(10:28):

I don't know why, but I love it when job descriptions provide you with, there's going to be three rounds of interviews and then you are going to have a final interview or four rounds of interviews and the decision will be made even if they put a proposed date for offer. So this is a good one. I'll save this and probably post this today. They're a remote company and they have a whole lot of different benefits at the bottom here. So really this job description is pretty thorough something for the corporate space. I also encourage you too to go out to the company's LinkedIn page because what I find is I'll get more information here and also if you click on the jobs area, you'll more than likely see other jobs that have been posted with this company. So there could be more than one role and things that are adjacent to what instructional design is. So I'm seeing some product manager roles. I'm seeing marketing roles, some things that people may be interested in that are kind of instructional design adjacent.

(11:35):

Let's see if you're interested in finance and stuff. So one of the things I also do, if I really like the role that's been posted is I'll go out to the company's job site on LinkedIn and see if there's any other roles that are really great that I can also post in my job postings, make sure we're back in the us. Okay, so we've seen a few of the roles that are in the corporate space. And again, if you're looking to transition into a role in instructional design and you're looking into the corporate space, I'm not saying that you can't apply to positions that don't have the salary listed. It's just a red flag to me. I don't know why they wouldn't list salaries. There's a lot of different states like California and Colorado that have laws that you have to list the salary. So if this is something that's not listed, you definitely need to ask that in the first interview because that's livelihood.

(12:38):

You want to make sure you're finding a role that is suitable for you and meets your expectations in terms of your financial responsibilities. All right, so we've been looking a lot in the corporate space and I want to also give you some advice on what to look for. So one of the things people get really bogged down by is the technology stuff. And again, I want to reiterate that knowing the technology isn't going to get you, so when I apply to roles, I use LinkedIn, but one of the things I'm finding more and more is that if you have, that's a great question. So Scott asked her a great question. I'm going to show this question. You mentioned this, I haven't mentioned this already. So

(20:26):

You do apply through LinkedIn and typically if it has that apply button, it takes you out to the site anyways. But one of the things I noticed, if you have a dream company or a dream institution or somewhere you want to be, I would recommend going out directly to their site and searching for the roles because not everything's posted on LinkedIn and not everything's posted

(20:46):

On Google. A lot of the times they will only post it on their website because it doesn't cost them anything, especially higher education institutions. So if you say, I want to work at the University of Hawaii as an instructional designer, I recommend going directly out to the site to see the roles they have and apply directly through there. Also, if you want to say you want to work at Google, go out to Google site and see what they have posted there. And I also feel like that those companies, their website has the most UpToDate information. Sometimes we're getting a lag here when it comes to LinkedIn for sure. So your best bet maybe is to do some searching and some researching using LinkedIn. But if you know that you have a particular area you want to be in, then I would go out to their site and see what they have and then apply there. And then also too, use LinkedIn to find people that already work there and ask them about their experiences. I know this is something that a lot of different people share. Great question Scott. Thank you for asking that. Really great question.

(21:56):

Alright, so I'm seeing lots more and more hybrid. I mean more and more, what was I going to say? I'm seeing more and more contract roles pop up recently. I'm not sure if it's because it's the beginning of the year and people are looking to start projects. So I am seeing more contract roles pop up. So if there's something where you are thinking about when we first saw that first job description and they say it's an entry level role, but it really isn't a great place to start is with the contractor freelance work so that you can get that experience on your resume. So that's a wonderful place to start for you and I would recommend that.

(22:43):

Okay. Oh, this is another great question. What about fully remote jobs? How to find them in ed tech? One of the things I shared last week, and I'll share this too, is one of my favorite sites I'm going to share this tab is Chelsea Averitt Skip Remote Jobs And these, she started this website for transitioning teachers or people looking to get out of education and she shares remote jobs that pay $60,000 or more. And that value the education background. And these are in all different spaces, but there's a lot of ed tech roles in here. So you can come up to the top here. This is a wonderful place to start your search if you're looking for things in customer success. She has a divvied out by learning development, again marketing, project management, sales. And I would say this is a great site to start with to start looking for those roles.

(23:39):

You can also do that search on LinkedIn, but I found Chelsea's site and she curates so many weekly, it's a great place to start. Yeah, sure. I can paste the link. Absolutely. Lemme click on the live here in LinkedIn. So I'm going to post that in there. Let's see. Okay, lemme see if it lets me. I'll make sure I post the resources after. Let's see, reply here is the link. For some reason LinkedIn's not letting me reply to the posting. I'll definitely get it to you April. Alright. All right, let's go back. Let's talk a little bit about, let's talk a little bit about higher ed. So that's another, like I said before in previous conversations, education and corporate are the biggest sectors in our industry. So I would say that if you are a former educator and you are looking for to transition out of education and you're thinking about where you want to step next and you want to kind of be in your wheelhouse, in your comfort zone, one of the places that I recommend that you look is going to higher ed jobs. So higher ed jobs is a great site if you want to just step into the education space, kind of step out of K through 12 and still feel comfortable like a little bit about this space and what happens in education because higher education and K to 12 are very much connected. And this is a great job site that's been around for quite a while where you can search online and remote roles and then you can expand it out by different categories.

(25:53):

So let's go. I'm going to just type in for the job search, I'm going to put in the keyword instructional designer. And one of the things that I noticed too is that people that come out of the education space like myself, there are also opportunities for you to teach adjunct part-time. So sharing your experiences with others. So if you are interested in continuing to teach, you can go through and you can look for adjunct opportunities as well. So I typed in instructional designer here. Some different things came up. I do see a senior instructional designer role. I'm going to do full-time. I'm going to do, let's see, I'm going to do by online remote. I want to see what's available there. So these are some of the positions that are currently posted for instructional design or learning technologists. You'll see some of those roles as well pop in because we have a lot of different titles.

(26:49):

So this one in particular interests me, the online instructional design manager remote with travel, it's Missouri online. So they give you some of their, what they're looking for, your responsibilities talks about your shift. This requires, again, this is new high, higher ed is doing this as well the same as corporate master's degree or two years experience. And this is a manager role, so that's interesting to me. Okay, so here it comes in with the preferred qualification, five years of professional experience and then you definitely want to see the salary listed. Now in this particular part of the United States, the cost of living is a little bit lower. So this is probably a good salary range for that particular area. And remember when they have a range, they could probably go a little bit higher than what they're stating. So you can definitely negotiate if you needed something higher. And it looks like they are open to people in other spaces and not just in Missouri. So definitely something to consider if you want to be a manager in instructional design at an institution. And you'll see that higher education, let's see, they have an intern role. Here's another one, instructional designer, university of the Cumberlands remote.

(28:10):

Let's see, did it it? List the salary, don't see the salary. So that's definitely something I would want to clarify. And you'll notice here too that in the higher education realm, the technologies that they use are different. We're not seeing the articulates, we're not seeing the ice springs and things appear here. We're seeing LMSs like Blackboard, Moodle, canvas, these are the education based stuff, integration type tools that are big on the market. Cengage, Pearson, mc, McGraw Hill, and these might be some things that you've worked on before. So just kind of showing you the differences between the two biggest sectors. And again, you can sign up for alerts on this page, you can share your resume out, you can make yourself public. So if people wanted to reach out to you, they could do that.

(29:10):

Let me go back and see all the questions. Thank you Carolyn for posting that. I appreciate it. LinkedIn one, let me post it. All right, so let's see. Here's another good question. Any tips for folks going from education to L and d or customer success roles? So one of the things I would say if you are planning to go from education to learning and development, so if you're looking into going into training is to start figuring out how your skills as an educator translate. Because you're going to have to do some upskilling, you're definitely going to have to do some things where you are getting more experience. Say in project management, you're going to have to be able to s me, your audience is different, the people that you'll be working with. So seeing you're mostly working with students in the education space. So when we're thinking about transitioning into a role in l and d corporate, you're going to be working with more adult learners and more of the SME stakeholder situation.

(30:07):

You're really more behind the scenes, you're not giving the training, you're more or less developing the training and in those customer success roles. So that really does depend. If you're looking for something salesy, you're going to have to feel comfortable selling stuff to people. And in customer success also, again, you'll have to feel comfortable with the training, training different people and developing presentations and webinars and resources for people, being able to take down the very complex, very complex situations that come with using, let's say an ed tech tool and breaking that down. So thinking about right now, I would say make a list of all the things you do as an educator, all the skills you have as an educator, lesson planning, you, your unit planning you're dealing with, you're creating lessons for students, you're writing learning objectives and start writing down all those skills and then figure out as you're researching these jobs descriptions, how they overlap, like how they could, okay, so I'm lesson planning here and it's asking me to project manage for a project for three months. So how do I do that? Well, instructional design requires you to backward design, so you have to plan backwards. I want to get to this point with learners and I want to get to this point with the project, so how am I going to break down the pieces? So that's a translatable skill.

(31:33):

Another great question, thank you. I'm going to stop share this higher ed screen real quick because I'm about 25 minutes in. So let's definitely go to some questions. I could talk about this stuff all day if y'all haven't noticed. What types of examples do you put on LinkedIn or resume to show quantitative results? I hear over and over again it's about the numbers and instructional design. I can talk about courses and instructors, but struggle to find other data. So in my particular case, I had a situation where I transitioned a particular school to a new LMS. So I just approximated, it's about 2000 instructors and about 1500 students. So I include that data and statistics in there. And yes, we do value the data and the quantitative stuff, but we also value the holistic. We also value the empathy, the interpersonal skills as well. And I will definitely quote my friend Sarah and say that it's not just one thing.

(32:44):

It's not just one thing you can do and the quantitative stuff, just do the best that you can and approximate who you've touched or how many students you've trained over the years trained over the years or how many teachers you've had. Maybe you've trained them on an ed tech tool or you've done some things at your board of ed where you've done some workshops or you've done some professional development days, it's going to be difficult for you to find that data. And also a lot of the times the data in the K to 12 spaces proprietary. So you really can't share out the exact numbers of maybe some of your testing results and things like that. But think about who you've helped get to from A to B, was it adult learners? Was it your students? And try to use some of those statistics in your resume. I will say that that's not the end all be all if that doesn't exist. Being on different hiring committees and working at Amazon, people really do value what kinds of technologies, you know, what kind of skills you bring to the table and then also during the interview, what kind of person you are and if you're going to fit in with the company culture. So I wouldn't get too bogged down by finding that qualitative or that quantitative data if you don't have it. That's just my opinion.

(34:11):

Alright, we got about three minutes left. I'm going to go through and see if there's any other, thank you Carolyn for being my chat moderator and putting all the websites in. I love it. See if I've missed any questions. So I definitely reiterate this, loving the idea of 60 to 70%. I mean I, I've applied for roles that I wasn't completely qualified for the role I have at Amazon. I knew I was going to have to do some upskilling, so please don't be afraid to do that. Please find your value, know your worth and know that you have lots of skills. It's another great question. I'm coming from higher ed adult learning and student affairs side and trying to land a role in corporate.

(35:02):

So this is something, how do you suggest I talk about a career change in my resume or cover letter? That's a good question. I might have to think on that one a little bit more. Maybe you're coming at it from the standpoint that you want to bring in your skills and experience through working with adult learners and people through a campus community to bring that information and what you've learned from higher ed into the corporate space and apply that to learning. So you've seen a lot of different things when it comes to student affairs. You deal with a lot of particular situations there and figure out how some of those scenarios can relate to something in the corporate space and what people are doing. So for example, when you're supporting students, you're kind of onboarding them into the institution. So you have to think about how are you going to get them settled, how are you going to support them throughout the process?

(36:03):

And in corporate that's a big thing is getting new employees onboarded and comfortable in their role. So that could be something that where you're like, this is a translatable skill to me. I'd have to think a little bit more about that. Lee, in terms of specifically taking a look at your resume and seeing how you could fit some of the skills and the experiences you have, I'm just speaking in a general sense right now, very top level if it's a dream job, would you suggest reaching out to connect with someone who works in the department you're applying to as well as the usual application process? I definitely would recommend reaching out to somebody that works there and being very cognizant of that. People are very busy and you can ask for a coffee chat or you can have a little conversation maybe via LinkedIn messaging.

(36:57):

But I would definitely, if this is your dream job, you're going to dot all your i's and cross your T's to make sure that you are getting all the information you need, making sure you're reaching out to those people that currently work in the role to make sure that in fact it is a good culture for you. Yeah, and I would also say too, utilize your LinkedIn network that you already have because somebody might know somebody that works there, go to Glassdoor, see the reviews and stuff like that. But you might already have a connection that knows somebody that works there. So going through and making sure that you are using that networking piece that LinkedIn does so well. Alright everyone, we're at 30 minutes so I could definitely talk about this stuff all day. Nadia unfortunately wasn't able to join us. She's not feeling well this morning. I have this situation going on. I really just want to cover this up, but we are going to coming soon talking about optimization on LinkedIn. So that is going to be one of our upcoming Friday chats. We hope that you can join us. Thanks for joining us today and I hope you have a wonderful and safe weekend. And if you're off on Monday, enjoy that long weekend and we'll talk soon.