How to Become an Instructional Designer in 2023

[Music] Hello and welcome to the Devlin Peck Podcast. I'm Devlin Peck and my mission is to help you improve your instructional design skills and land better opportunities. If you're trying to become an instructional designer, then you can get the free interactive checklist at becomeinide.com and this will guide you through my content step by step so that you know exactly what to do next. Otherwise, take a deep breath, relax and enjoy this episode of the Devlin Peck Podcast. [Music] If you like helping people learn, then instructional design is one of the best careers out there and if there's a greater demand for skilled instructional designers, then there has ever been before. So that's why I'm going to show you exactly how to become an instructional designer for free without having to go back to school and without any sort of formal instructional design experience. I became an instructional designer back in 2017 right after graduating college and to put it simply, this field changed my life in ways that I could not have imagined. As a graduating college student, it basically let me build a six-figure freelance business while working from my laptop at the age of 23 basically which again, I closed me away that was possible and yeah, this field, instructional design kind of made a lot of my dreams come true and it continues to surprise me. So after having that experience, I was like really excited about sharing this field with other people because my friends or teachers, my friends were also graduating college students. They had no idea what they wanted to do with their lives. They weren't really happy teaching. So I was like, check out this field. There's a ton of opportunity in it. They need good people yeah, I could show exactly how to break into this space. So I started helping my friends, my classmate and after seeing them get good jobs or build successful freelance businesses, I was like, I'm repeating myself to a lot of these people I'm helping. So I'm going to start building some content around that. So I built this huge article that's on my website first back in 2019. You could find that linked in the comments if you prefer text for some reason. And then I also recorded the first version of this video back in 2020 and that has helped over 100,000 people since it was published which blows me away and yeah, it's a few years later. I think it's time for an update and while some things are still quite similar to what they were before, some things have changed. So you know, I've learned a lot about how you can land these these good instructional design jobs in less time and more effectively. So let's dive into it. First up, instructional designers are in high demand and the industry is only growing. So there is a lot of work out there if you take in the if you take the time to upscale and prepare yourself for this industry. The latest number I saw is that the e-learning industry is over 300 billion dollars and it's growing 20% every year which is kind of insane when you think about it. But as you can imagine, the pandemic has helped spur a lot of this growth in e-learning. Also from one of the recent surveys we did, 94% of instructional designers are satisfied with their work life balance. So if you're coming from a profession like teaching or from a university setting, you probably work more than 40 hours a week. That's pretty rare in the instructional design space especially as a corporate instructional designer. The average salary is usually quite impressive to people as well. So the average is around 80 to 85 grand a year in the USA based on which surveys you're looking at. But yeah, it's definitely not unheard of to break into this field landing six figure roles. It's not the norm, but it is also not impossible. So you can definitely earn six figures in this field if you are in the US and it's decent earning potential in other countries as well from what I can tell. Also, this is a really big appealing thing to a lot of people. You don't need any new degrees. If there's any degree that you need, it's a bachelor's degree because most instructional designers do have bachelor's degrees. But there are some people too who broke into the space without that. You definitely don't need to go back to school and get a master's degree. If you want to work in the corporate ID setting, which is where you have the highest earning potential and the most flexibility generally. Also, there are plenty of remote opportunities, especially since the pandemic, it is so easy to get a remote full-time job in this space. Now if you put in the work to upscale and build your portfolio and do all the things you're going to talk about in this video, but it is definitely possible to land a good full-time remote opportunity in this space and there are always opportunities to freelance as well and that is remote by default. So this is one of the best learning careers out there. I'd say it's the best learning career out there just because I've seen how many people's lives has changed and how happy people are after they've made this transition. So it's not about opportunity. I want to get this disclaimer out of the way though. Yes, you can do it. You can become an instructional designer. There is maybe an anxiety since the pandemic because there has been a large influx of new instructional designers. For example, there have been many, many teachers who are trying to get into this field after they learn about the work-life balance and the pay and just all the things that make it so appealing, especially if you're coming from an education setting. So there has been a big influx of new people, but there is a greater demand than ever for skilled instructional designers. So there are hundreds of people applying with their teaching resume and hoping that they'll get an ID job. That is not going to find you much success, but if you take the steps we have on, you will be in demand, so to speak, and there will be companies who are very eager to work with you. So here's the disclaimer. If you have a decent work ethic and you can stay motivated, then you can break into the field within three to 12 months. So it's not a magic ticket to getting a job once you find out about the field, but if you can work on this for several hours per week, you will get where you're trying to go. I guess the suggestion here is to embrace the student mindset. It may be a little messy. It may have been decades since you've been a student yourself. You may be used to being the teacher, but to make this transition, you really do need to adopt that student mindset. You're going to need to learn some new skills. You're going to need to learn some new software. You're going to need to learn some new language and some new lingo. So it will probably be uncomfortable at times, but if you just pretend you're doing a master's program or something and you embrace that student mindset, it's okay to fail. It's okay to be messy in the beginning. You will get where you're trying to go. And yeah, think about it like that. A lot of people have said, once they land a job after going through this YouTube content that they graduated from Devlin you or from Devlin University. So maybe think about it that way, just a free university program here on YouTube, but because yeah, you're going to have a lot of a lot of support to get where you're trying to go. Okay, so getting closer to the to the meat of the content here, but this is your guide. So this would be a great place for you to start and return to because I've also created a full playlist to help you become an instructional designer. So pretty much anything that I'm mentioning, there's going to be another video that dives even deeper into that concept. So you can think of this as like your hub or your starting point and there's so many different areas you can kind of dive deeper to really round out your instructional design education and make sure that you are well prepared for the job and appealing on the job market also because there is a lot of a lot of content to explore. I do have a checklist in the description below. You can download that. You can check things off as you learn them and that should help you stay on track. So that's an option as well. And then I just want to reiterate every single thing is free. Yeah, so you can make this transition for free, maybe paying up a little bit of money here and there for your website getting that online, but all this content will help you get where you're trying to go. All right. So here's the overview of how to actually become an instructional designer. And we're going to dive into all of this deeper. So first, learn the technology, then learn the theory, principles and research and all that good stuff. After that, it's time to build your portfolio to show off what you can do, craft your resume so that you will look more appealing to these open instructional design rules, optimize your LinkedIn profile so that recruiters and hiring managers are coming to you network because you never know what kind of opportunities will come from that and then ace the interview to finally land the offer and get the job. You don't have to do it in this exact order. Some people bounce around, but this is a pretty good suggested order and there is a reason for this. So first up, learn the tech. We used to recommend learning the theory first, but this has actually proven much more effective in the years, in the years since I published that first video. So this is the best place to start because this is usually the biggest skill gap. Most of the people who are transitioning into instructional design right now have some sort of education background, whether it's as a trainer, as a teacher, or a university professor, or a tutor, or a coach. A lot of the people in those audiences are drawn to this field, and because of that, you probably already have some of the theory down. What you probably don't have is experience with this specific instructional design technology. So if you focus on the tech first, you're probably going to make yourself more qualified candidate sooner, especially because most jobs are now are e-learning focused. Some instructional design jobs are more focused on the design and the upfront work and like working with people by talking to them and taking notes and writing, but most of the ID jobs involve that. Plus actually developing the self-paced e-learning experiences in the tools that we're going to explore right now. So a lot of the jobs are now are e-learning focus. So if you don't know the tech, you're going to be qualified for way, way fewer of the available jobs. Okay, so the first and most important piece of technology is articulate storyline 360. This is hands down the most in demand software. When we surveyed hiring managers, 86% of them said that articulate storyline is one of the three tools that instructional designers should be familiar with upon hire. 86% that blew the other options out of the water. I'll link to that survey in the description if you want to check out that data for yourself. But storyline is hands down the best tool for you to learn if you want to get a job as soon as possible. So again, this is probably the single, this will have the single biggest impact on your job search. If you can build this skill and then show off this skill on your portfolio, which we will get to later in this video. So to get started, how it's just starting your free trial for storyline, it's a 30 day free trial now and they are quite generous with offering extensions for people who are transitioning into the field and still learning the tool and start building e-learning interactions. Like this is a really fun tool. It's kind of like PowerPoint, but better because instead of someone needing to kind of click the next button, go over the next slide, you can make the experience interactive so that the user can answer quiz, questions where they can like click on something to make something else appear. When people start using this tool, it's generally a lot of fun. So that's another reason why this is such a good place to start with your transition because you're going to start building these very real deliverables that you can send people and they can experience for themselves. I mean, it's very, very motivating building these these e-learning interactions because that's essentially what you'll be doing on the job with more steps involved. Of course. So story lines the best place to start and you're going to need articulate 360 to access storyline and that's where you'll have the trial to. And when you do that, you will also have access to articulate rise. This tool is different. It's simpler, but it is very easy to use and a lot of instructional design teams do use this tool, especially when it comes to mobile friendly or very like information heavy e-learning. So it's included in articulate 360 so you can try it out while you're doing your trial for storyline. I would suggest knowing when to use storyline versus rise because even though these are both included in the same suite of programs, they do have very different use cases. So check out my video on storyline versus rise. We could dive kind of deep into the difference between those two tools and you should definitely feel comfortable speaking to that difference. And then if you want to get some experience and rise, I would suggest building a quick course and hit you could probably just spend one day practicing with this tool. The course doesn't need to be portfolio worthy, but you will learn your way around. You learn how to use some of their like built in interaction types and you'll see how it's like easier than storyline, but also much more limited than storyline. And you'll also and then if you if you spend some time with it, you'll be able to speak to that experience when you are in your instructional design interviews. Next up, we have Adobe Illustrator. The Adobe suite is very popular among instructional designers, especially those who are doing e-learning work, but illustrator is the tool that I use the most as a freelancer and you use this to modify vector images, which are basically the images that look like illustrations. And there are so many different websites we can kind of download these vector images and then you use a tool like illustrator to customize them. So to change the color to change the shape to kind of take one vector image and put it in with a different vector image, you can do all sorts of cool things with these vector files. And then you can export them and use them in your e-learning projects. If you're confused by the vector image terminology, I have a full video on Adobe Illustrator and what a vector image is. So check that out when you get to this point in your process. You really just need to learn the basics and we cover all of the basics in that video. So again, just changing colors, changing sizes, taking things from one scene to another, if you can do all of that, you're going to be able to do 99% of the tasks that most IDs are doing with a tool like this. So get some practice with that. Definitely another like honorable mention is if you imagine yourself working in an industry or you're more drawn to like photo realistic art style and not the illustrated art style, you could learn Photoshop instead of illustrator. I mean, you can get more skill modifying those photo realistic images instead of the vector images. So a little caveat there, but illustrator, very popular tool in this space. Next up, we have Adobe XD and or Figma. Now Adobe just purchased Figma. These were competing tools. The future of whether these will be merged or what is kind of unclear, but they both accomplished the same kind of goal. And you're going to use this to practice your visual design skills and mock up your e-learning layouts. So the idea here is that you use Adobe XD or Figma to prototype your visual assets. That's how I've used it with my clients. That's how I've helped a lot of other instructional designers use this tool. You essentially, before going into a tool like articulate storyline where you develop it and make it interactive, you would use a tool like Adobe XD or Figma to lay out your slides. And you would iterate on that. So you would have draft one of a slide and then you would, you'd maybe get some feedback or maybe work on a draft two of that slide with only attention to the visuals of where things are laid out, what colors you're using, so on and so forth. And you might do five to 10 different versions of that slide in a tool like this before even going into a tool like storyline where you then need to worry about the programming and making things function well. So a lot of ideas might not use a tool like this, but it does really help your workflow. And the idea again is that it helps you focus solely on the visuals before having to worry about programming or development. Next up, we have learning management systems. So learning at least one learning management system is very, very important because any company you'd be working for as an instructional designer uses a learning management system. I think that's a pretty safe statement to make. And you might be familiar with some of these already, especially if you were a teacher like Canvas, Blackboard, those are both learning management systems popular in the education space in the corporate space. There are ones like talent LMS, so Che Bo, Adobe captivate prime LMS. I have a full video on how to use an LMS, but essentially this is where all these e-learning experiences will be uploaded and hosted. And then you're able to track like who's accessing them and what scores they're getting on quizzes and tests and all that sort of stuff. So very important for tracking and for determining who gets access to a given e-learning project. So I have a video that shows you how to start a free trial and to all the tasks you might be expected to do on the job. So I would definitely suggest starting one of those free trials, uploading a course to the learning management system and assigning users, even if you're just assigning one of your email addresses, just to kind of go through the motions and make sure you know what happens as a corporate ID when you are using an LMS. This will also give you experience with SCORM because that's how you upload an e-learning package to an LMS. So you export and then upload a SCORM file. And I mentioned that because you've probably seen SCORM on job listings. If you have been looking at ID job listings and I can seem like really confusing when you first see it, but don't be intimidated by SCORM is actually very, very easy. And just check out that LMS video and and you'll kind of learn everything you need to know in regards to that for 99% of ID jobs. Okay. The next piece of tech is at Camtasia and or Premiere Pro. You basically just want to learn how to use at least one video editor because odds are you will need to edit videos at some point, even if it's for very simple tasks. So I would suggest getting one of these tools from your pro is in the Adobe Creative Cloud. If you have that's even easier to access it. Camtasia is I think a couple hundred bucks or so. Both very capable, powerful video editors. I would suggest getting one and then a practice creating a video by pulling together different media. So this can be media you have from your phone. You could try to pull together like a bring in a song or some kind of audio background and just get comfortable like cutting clips, piecing them together, layering audio and video files. It doesn't need to be anything too complex. And you you may already have experience editing videos like this. If so, I don't think you need to go out of your way to do anything additional or special just because you want to become an instructional designer. Okay. Another tool that is becoming very, very popular in the instructional design space is especially since 2020 is called Vyond. So this is a popular easy to use tool for creating animated videos with a built in asset library. And that's the biggest value ad here because if you're making videos from scratch, you need to get your assets from somewhere. So you need to get those those illustrations. We need to get videos of real people like you need source material. Vyond makes this really easy because they have three different art styles. At least at the time of this recording with huge asset library. So you can get any kind of like backgrounds you want. You can build your own characters and make them look however you want. And then there are all sorts of different props and I'm supporting kind of, yeah, the supporting assets that you can use and it all has a cohesive art style. So really good way to quickly and easily make professional polish videos as like a one man team basically. So a really cool part about this for report folio is that you can incorporate Vyond videos into storyline to make interactive videos. So that's a really good portfolio project to aspire to if you're open to using Vyond. The reason you might not want to use it is because the free trial isn't great. It's quite limited. It leaves your videos with water marks. So if you do want to seriously use this for your portfolio, you may want to join one of the paid plans. So I'll leave that up to you if you decide to do that. But regardless, it is worth getting the free trial and playing around with it just so you know what this tool is and what it's capable of. Okay, this one is possibly I did not have this in the video from 2020 because this wasn't really a thing yet, but generative artificial intelligence. This is something you may want to be aware of because the tech landscape could be changing quite quickly in regards to this. So more and more teams are starting to use AI enabled tools as AI becomes more powerful. Obviously, you know, this is happening. So the tech landscape may look quite different several years from now. So you shouldn't know what's out there. Probably a good idea to keep an eye on it. I wouldn't prioritize learning any of these AI tools. If you're just trying to become an instructional designer right now, you should learn the traditional ones that are already proven to be very highly in demand. But but I did record a video about the top AI tools that ID teams are already using. So I would suggest watching that just so you know what's out there. And you can speak to it if it does wind up coming up in one of your instructional design interviews. I mean, you'll find a tool that you're like, wow, I love this. I want to start using this today. So that, that's quite possible as well. Okay. Next up, that's that's section one complete. So that's the tech you should learn storyline. It probably holds more weight than all of the others if you're trying to land a role as soon as possible. So if you're wondering like where to focus your time, definitely focus it on articulate storyline 360 first. And then if you want to if you really like the text side of things and you want to learn more about that, I did record a video about all the top technology in the ID space. So you can watch that video as a supplement too. If you want to dive really deep into the tech before moving on to the theory. Well, that's exactly what we're what we're going to do. We are going to move on to the theory. And the theory will help you talk the talk, which is important, but it will also help you walk the walk once you can apply it. So you may need to talk about the theory and interviews, for example, like you may be asked about these theories directly, or you may want to mention these theories to kind of back up some of the examples or stories you're giving from your past experience to show that you are qualified as an instructional designer. But so that's the talk to talk piece. You're going to want to be able to talk about this kind of stuff with people in the field, especially hiring managers, but you'll also need to be able to apply some of these theories to your portfolio projects or to your actual work once you're on the job. So this section should I'm going to I'm going to dive into some of the theories, but I'm really just going to help you decide where to focus your time if you want to become an ID as efficiently as possible. Okay, and also share some suggestions about how to put the theories into practice so that you can start getting experience doing that as well. So the first one, you if you've been researching instructional design at all, you've probably already come across this, but it is Adi. This is the most popular instructional design framework. If you kind of know what Adi is all about, you're going to have a very good understanding of what instructional designers do and you're going to start using the language that instructional designers use to talk about their jobs. So this is really helpful to dive deep into when you're learning about the theory. So Adi is essentially an acronym. Each letter stands for something different. The A stands for analysis and during analysis, this is one you would generally interview stakeholders like people in your intended audience or your clients or the people you're creating the learning experience for. You also would observe people during this phase like you would observe people doing their job and you review any necessary data. So this is kind of like an information gathering stage and some instructional designers, this is all they do is they hang out in this information gathering stage and then pass their findings along to another instructional designer who's going to take it from there, which is that first D that stands for design. And this design doesn't refer to like visual designer graphic design. It refers to instructional design. This is where we're designing the learning experience. So this is where we would review content. Maybe we have like, you know, a ton of content we need to review and see what we're working with so that we can create learning objectives, maybe talk to subject matter experts, abbreviated as smooth to learn more about what's what's the most important? What do we really need people to learn? Then the deliverables from this phase, which generally be storyboards and or animated videos scripts or scripts for other videos. So this is a lot of writing. It's a lot of research, but this is this is what we would then hand off to someone who would develop the project. So this is where we develop the final products using the software, all of that software we mentioned in the previous section, most likely articulate storyline. So we have analysis design development and then implementation. And this is this is where you deliver the learning experience. So in in the case of e-learning, this is when you would then upload it to the learning management system and assign the users to it. It's basically where you're rolling out the learning experience. Or if it's for a face-to-face learning experience, this is when you would actually get a facilitator in front of the audience delivering, you know, delivering the learning experience to the people who need it. And then finally, the e in Adi stands for evaluation. And this is where you evaluate the solutions effectiveness. And there are many different methods to do this. We'll look into at least one of them. So that's Adi. I have a full video on Adi, of course. I would definitely recommend watching that if you're not already familiar with Adi. But some instructional designers, like I mentioned, will only do one or two pieces of this. Some will do the whole thing. Most instructional designers these days are responsible for doing the entire thing from analysis through evaluation. They may specialize in fewer areas. And I would say 90% of the work in the corporate right space right now is kind of focus on those two D's design and development. So if you're good with working with the content, writing learning objectives, and then developing these interactive e learning experiences, you are going to be in great shape. Okay, next up, we have Blooms Taxonomy. This is going to help you create those strong measurable learning objectives. So you should know what Blooms is, how to use it. You don't need to type like Super Deep or read like massive books on it. Check out my video, though, on how to write strong learning objectives. That's what you need to know for doing this kind of traditional instructional design work. And then once you watch that video, I would definitely recommend writing some learning objectives to support a specific learning goal. So one of the exercises I did in my master's program for instructional design was around helping people drive. So if we have to create a learning experience to teach someone how to drive for the very first time in the United States, what learning objectives would we include to support that overall learning goal? And that can get really, really in depth. That's just an example. If you could think of something much simpler, that someone might need to accomplish around the house, for example. And then think what are these measurable learning objectives that we can create to determine whether or not this person has has achieved this goal? So I'm getting kind of too in depth into this. Check out the video on Blooms Taxonomy, a learning objectives. And that will give you everything you need to write these learning objectives effectively. Next up, we have Sam. So this is another process, kind of like Adi, but this one is more specific. It is iterative and it's very popular in the tech space. So if you know that you want to work in tech as an instructional designer, you should probably be familiar with this. I've spoken to some hiring managers in that space who were like, yeah, we don't really talk about Adi anymore. We focus on Sam. We want to hear people talk about Sam. We want people who are familiar with Sam. So the difference here is that this emphasizes stakeholder involvement and prototyping. It favors prototypes over storyboards and documentation. So instead of a lot of writing, it's a lot of building. And I might just be building it on a piece of paper where we're kind of like drawing a layout or drawing how an interaction might look once it is on the computer. And we just continuously make that prototype closer and closer to the final project while getting a lot of feedback and an input throughout the process. So as an aspiring instructional designer, you should definitely be able to speak to Adi versus Sam. So I have a video on that. As I do with all the others, so check that out. And that should really clear things up for you. Next up Action Mapping. This is one of my favorite instructional design processes. This is what I was using for all of my client work before I stopped taking clients and started focusing on content creation for you all full time. This one is good. It's a favorite among a lot of IDs. So you should definitely learn what Action Mapping is and why it's so different to the traditional approach. Essentially, it focuses on performance improvement instead of dumping information on your audience, which is a very real and big problem in the corporate instructional design space today and beyond. So check it out. I would definitely suggest creating an Action MAP for practice. But on his points, if you work with a subject matter expert, this is a really good activity to do with a subject matter expert, even if it's a friend or a family member or a coworker who knows a lot about something. See if you can work with them to create an Action MAP just for practice. And to learn more about Action Mapping, there is a wonderful book. My favorite ID book called The MAP It. And it's by Kathy Moore. We've also done multiple videos with her here on the channel. And I have actually a whole playlist around Action Mapping if you want to learn more about Action Mapping. So check it out. This one is a lot of fun. Okay, after that, we have Ganye's nine events. This one is very beginner friendly. So these events help you design comprehensive learning experiences. Essentially, it tells you each element that should be present in a learning experience to make sure that you're satisfying all of like the learning science and psychology and all of that. So if you've designed lesson plans in the past as a teacher, for example, then this is probably very familiar to you, even if you haven't thought about it in these terms. And it's really, really good for outlining a learning experience. So at that initial level, when you're like, okay, you need to create a learning experience. But like, what do I even include in it? What do I even, what do I even write about? This is a really good place to start, especially for new instructional designers. So I would definitely recommend applying these events to a sample learning experience, even if it's at the outline level. This would pair really well with that bloom's exercise. Maybe try to write some strong learning objectives and then follow it up with outlining the learning experience using Ganye's nine events. That could be like a very, very early iteration of a portfolio project. That will be received very well by instructional design hiring managers. Next up, we have Kirkpatrix four levels of evaluation. This is a very common language in the field, so you should definitely be familiar with Kirkpatrix. So this will help you speak intelligently about evaluation. A lot of ideas will know what you're talking about when you talk about these four levels. So you should know what the four levels are. So it's a reaction, learning, behavior, and results. I'm not going to dive too deep into what each of these are all about because as you could have guessed, I have a full video about this. All these videos will be linked in the description, but if you're trying to become an instructional designer, then you should try applying levels one and two to a project of your own. And you would essentially do this with a survey, or you ask some questions to learn more about how the, the learning experience was received and you also have some sort of assessment so that you could determine whether or not someone learned something as a result of your project. And then of course, I mean, we'll talk about that more when we get to the portfolio phase. But if you can talk about how you, how and why you did those things. And you can mention that it's because of Kirkpatrix. That's going to make you seem much more qualified as an instructional designer. Okay, this is one of my favorites to mayors principles. So actionable, so good. I would highly recommend learning what these are and how to apply them because it will help you create high end user-friendly learning experiences. So these are 12 principles and they are they're so, so practical. They are very actionable. So it's not like you're reading some kind of research and like not sure why it has anything to do with like your life. These are things that you can apply to your project to make your project way better. So that's what I would suggest. Practice consciously applying them to your project and consider how you're going to how you're going to explain that process to a hiring manager, maybe in your portfolio right up on your website when we get to that point. But I guess that's something to keep in mind when you're learning about all these theories. It's not just applying them. It's being able to explain how and why you applied them to a hiring manager or to your peers. You essentially want to justify your design process. So the earlier you start thinking about that, be better. Next up, we have visual design. So this is kind of theory. I mean, this is kind of theory. This is kind of practice. But the summary here is that if your work doesn't look polished and professional, it's going to make a bad first impression and it's going to leave you with a harder time getting hired because if the hiring manager see that the projects that you have don't look good, they're probably not going to want that kind of work in front of their employees or in front of their audience because they don't want to come across as unpolished or unprofessional. So practice and feedback are a very important part of the visual design piece. So this isn't something where you can just read about visual design and you're going to magically improve. You're going to need to practice. So prepare yourself for that. But you should learn the four core principles for new designers. And that's contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity. This comes from a book called the non-designers design book by Robin Williams. But we also have multiple videos here on the channel about how to apply those principles. And we even have videos where we show how they're applied to real projects. So check it out. There's a full visual design playlist. When you're ready to dive into the visual design piece, that playlist will be there for you. And I would definitely not suggest skipping this piece. It is very important for lending good opportunities. Okay. So there we have it. So that's all the theory. We have even more videos diving into more theories on the channel. If you want to learn more about that, drop a comment letting me know we can dive a steep into the theory as you all would like. But if you have a good grasp on the ones we just covered, you're going to have no problem landing any corporate instructional design role, especially because practice is emphasized in the corporate space, like what you can actually do. And the theory can help inform that, but the tech is it is very important for that as well. Okay. So I've been alluding to the portfolio several times now. We're finally at that point. This is the most important part of your transition. So your resume doesn't matter in relation to your portfolio. I mean, it matters. Of course, it matters in the sense that it needs to get people to your portfolio. But if you're applying to instructional design roles without a portfolio, it's kind of like playing the lottery because maybe you'll get lucky. But odds are you're going to be losing out every time to people who do have strong portfolios. So this is your ticket to getting a job. And all the other stuff we just covered will help you create a strong portfolio that stands out and helps you land your top choice opportunities. So your portfolio is essentially where people go to learn more about who you are and what you're capable of as an instructional designer. So this is where you'll highlight your best projects. You only need one project. A lot of the effect of portfolios. We've been seeing highlight one very strong project. But you know, you can have up to three, three small projects might work just as well. And this, and you also have some sort of about page. Some people decide to like share some photos of themselves doing hobbies and also in professional settings. You're essentially using this this portfolio website to build relationships with people at scale and to show off your skill set. So when recruiters or hiring managers come across it, they're going to see your work and see and see who you are. And they're going to say, we want this person on our team. We want this person creating projects like this for our organization. That's the effect you want to have with your portfolio. And it will be a website that you can easily share the URL with people so they can access it quite easily. So this can be something simple to start. It can just be like a one page website highlighting a single product. People, a portfolio is better than no portfolio. But of course, the better you can make it, the more that I will help you on the job market. Essentially, the more effort you put in, the better results you'll see. But I experienced this firsthand when I was trying to build my business and lend opportunities in this space. Every single time I did a big re-haul on my portfolio website, or added a new project that was better than the ones on there previously, it had a direct impact on the amount of people that were reaching out to the quality of clients that were reaching out to me. I eventually worked my way up to getting the direct clients and working on 25K+ projects. And the earning potential that I had and the rates I was able to demand. So the same holster for people looking for full-time roles, the better portfolios attract attention from household name companies. So this is something you're going to want to put effort into. All the other stuff, the skill building is all in the name of creating a strong portfolio. And of course, it will help you do the good work once you get the job. But your portfolio needs to be in great shape. And I would suggest trying to get your name.com. That's what we're going for. My website, for example, is devlinpec.com. That isn't always possible. I have a video on how to build your portfolio website where we dive into some other option. You can use some abbreviations in there to make sure you get your name. But even if you're not ready to build your portfolio website, try to get your name.com right now from a site like Google domains, GoDaddy is another one. Just try to register that domain. It's the first year is anywhere between like a dollar and like $12 for the entire year. So that is something that's worth while too secure because you want to wait a few months and then someone else with your name kind of grab your name, especially if your name is common. So I also want to mention like because it's such a big part of the process. I do have so many videos here on the channel portfolio reviews, portfolio guides. So I'm going to link to some of that in the description. But when you get to this point, just know there's a lot of resources here on the channel to help you with that. Next up, Crafty Resume. This is where you reframe your past experience in instructional design terms. And this bullet point right here, reframing your past experience in instructional design terms is one of the most important things you can do in this whole process. So other than building that strong portfolio, you're going to need to be able to talk about your experience in instructional design terms. Because when you can do this, people aren't going to say, oh yeah, you don't have the experience. We need someone with more experience. If you can talk about what you've been doing for the past two or five or 10 years in instructional design terms, that's going to look a lot more like instructional design experience. And I say this because if you've been teaching, if you've been doing any sort of design or coaching or research, even you can pull out so many things that instructional designers do on a perhaps daily basis, but you're just using different language to talk about those things. So if you can talk the talk up instructional design. And if you can see for yourself how your past experience actually is instructional design experience, even though it's a little bit different, you're going to be able to communicate that much more effectively on your portfolio, on your resume, in your interviews, and once you get on the job. So this is a very important part of the process. Because of that, I of course have a full video on how to do this with some supporting documents. You can download to help you out with that. So when you're ready, when you get to this point, definitely check out that video and that guide because this is going to make a very big impact on your job search. Of course, remove any irrelevant bullet points, certifications, and experience. For example, some people include like teaching certifications on their resume. We don't need that. If you're applying a corporate ID jobs, some people include like real estate, they're like real estate license number. That's not really relevant unless you're applying to jobs in the real estate space. So remove that kind of stuff that isn't going to mean much to a corporate ID hiring manager. And then a suggestion I always gave is to try to keep it to one page. Keep it nice and concise. Hiring managers and recruiters spend very little time on resumes. So if you can make it very punchy and include only the most relevant most essential elements, you're probably going to be landing many more interviews. And then a step that you can take to increase the amount of interviews that you land even further is you can tailor your resume to the job listing of your top choice role. So you can kind of use the language of your top choice roles and use that language on your resume because that's going to help I get to the top of the pile. It's going to help make sure that a human actually sees that resume and takes the time to hopefully then visit your portfolio. That's essential to on your resume. The first thing people should see after your name is the link to your portfolio website because your resume is a great way to drive traffic to your portfolio and your portfolio should essentially seal the deal and get that person really excited about working with you and and extending invite to an interview. So once your resume is in good shape, you can then use that to kind of guide the optimization of your LinkedIn profile. And this is very important because LinkedIn is home to many recruiters, hiring managers and other instructional designers is like the most popular social media. So to say in this space, so you're probably going to want to have a presence there just because it can help you land opportunities. So effectively and you you want a keyword optimize your profile based on your resume. So you want to use words like instructional design, instructional designer, eLearning Developer, Learning Experience Designer. designed learning experiences. You want to use all of this language of the field throughout your profile. And as usual, I have a full video on this because that's going to help recruiters and hiring managers come to you and by extension, draft traffic to your portfolio because of course you do want to send people to your portfolio from your LinkedIn profile as well. Your resume and your LinkedIn are basically a way to draft traffic to your portfolio and your portfolio is ready to seal the deal and land more interviews. So it works together really nicely. When I started my freelance business, I had recruiters and hiring managers reaching out to me on a weekly basis after I optimized my LinkedIn profile and I close multiple six figures of sales just from people finding me on LinkedIn before I had any sort of presence on like YouTube or Google or anything like that. So this is a very powerful platform and the sooner you get started on here and start building your network on here, the better. And feel free to connect with me. If you just mentioned that you saw the video or that you were a fan of the YouTube channel and I will be very happy to connect with you and I post there on at least a weekly basis as well. Next up is network. This might be obvious. You can do this throughout the process but this is where you essentially engage with the community. You get your name out there. You build some goodwill and you build your brand your credibility in the space. So this might look like commenting on posts on LinkedIn. This might look like messaging people who share something that you're interested in. We also have a community. So I lead a community space. It's not as wide as LinkedIn but it is a bit more intimate and people in there are very generous with their time and willing to help. So that is completely free. You can join that. Just go to devlinpec.com/id. And it's a free community space. We love to have you in there. This is a really powerful networking approach. Working out loud, you may have heard of it refer to as that. But this is where you essentially create posts about your progress. So you can do this as early as you want in your become an ID process. You could say, "Hey, I just saw this video. I'm set on becoming an ID. I'm feeling good. I'm motivated. I'll keep you posted on my progress." And someone, someone less far along than you will see that and feel inspired by it. Or someone more far along than you, maybe someone who's very well connected in the industry or someone who is a hiring manager or a recruiter might see that post. And then if you post week after week after week and say, "Hey, I dove in a storyline this week. Here's a simple project I was able to create." Or, "Hey, I started learning Adobe XD. What do you think about these visuals?" If someone sees you posting that every single week, they're going to start to know you. They may start to like you. Some people will like you. Some people won't like you. That's just how it goes. And if the time comes where they're looking for an instructional designer for their team, they may then reach out to you because they can see, you have the grit. You have that learner mindset and you are building your skills. So working out loud is one of the best ways to build your credibility. And it can lead to some really serendipitous opportunities. Maybe months will go by with nothing coming from it. And then maybe one week you'll land your dream job offer because someone's been watching you for months without you knowing it. So really powerful approach. I've seen that create opportunities out of what seems like thin air for people, time after time after time, but it can also be quite the commitment posting like that every week. And then finally, this is a very valid option that is very fruitful for some people requesting informational interviews. You can do that. You've probably heard of it before. That is a very valid thing. I used to do these informational interviews before I started being swammed in in this type of request. So I'm not going to be available for one-to-one informational interviews like that. But if you reach out to someone, you know, if you see someone working out like your dream company, for example, and you start networking with them on LinkedIn, you could say, hey, are you up for a 15 or 30 minute coffee chat just so I can learn more about your role? So of course, you're not going to say, hey, can you give me a job offer? But if you approach it with that kind of learner mindset and say, hey, I'm really excited about this field, I would love to work at, you know, Apple or whatever company you work at. Can I just ask you about like how you're able to do it? A lot of people will be very happy to take a little bit of time and share their journey with you. And that can be really valuable. It could turn into a referrals down the line to obviously help you move much further along in the application process. Now working can work wonders. It doesn't have the most like one-to-one thing. Like if I spend one hour networking, I'm going to get one opportunity. It can feel a bit random at times. But if you're doing this from the beginning of your journey, you will probably find success much more quickly than someone who isn't doing this at all. So finally, the last step here is to ace the interview. So our suggestions for this are to prepare your interview thesis statement so that you can make the case for why you're made for instructional design. This is kind of like a personal statement. It's where you first need to get really clear for yourself how and why your past experience made you such a good fit for instructional design. You need to be able to tell a compelling story there because you're going to get a question a lot. Like, oh yeah, how do you find your way to instructional designer? Why do you want to become an instructional designer? Or even tell me more about yourself. And if you need to have a pretty solid, cohesive story prepared for why all of your past experiences led you to this moment and why you're such a good fit for ID. So be prepared to answer. We have some mock interviews you can watch as well as how to respond to interviews with the star method, which is the next step here. Prepare your responses to the most common interview questions by using the star method. So we have many lists. You can find so many examples of common ID interview questions. We have a download you can use to you. You can go there from the in depth interview preparation video, which will be linked below. But you want to prepare these responses in advance. Don't prepare just by like, you know, briefly researching the company and looking over your resume. You want to be loaded up with stories using the star method. If you're not familiar with that again, check out the video. But you want to be prepared so that you can really build your credibility and you can make the best impression possible in that interview. You can just like you can tell your resume based on the job you're applying to, you can also prepare your interview responses based on the company that you're applying to. So you might even adjust your thesis statement based on what the role is looking for. You might tell different stories based on what the role is looking for. Again, we dive way deeper into that in the interview videos here on the channel. And then overall, if I'm giving you one overarching piece of advice about the interview, it's to treat it like a conversation. So instead of treating it like you're getting quiz and you're in the hot seat, imagine that you're just having a conversation with this person, take a conversational tone and try to use that relaxed approach. Easier said than done. If something will get better out with practice, but the mock interviews here on this channel should help you a lot with that. So here's a quick overview. If you want to become an instructional designer, learn the tech, learn the theory, build your portfolio, craft your resume, optimize your LinkedIn network network network, and then ace the interview because you will be getting a handful of interviews if you've done all these other steps. So that's all there is to it. I mean, you know, not to minimize it. It will be a lot of work. But like I said, some people do this in one month. Some people take some two years. Six months is the most average timeline I see. But based on, you know, if you have more time to work on this, you could do it sooner. If you're only working on this, you know, an hour or two, a week, it might take you longer. So we're here to help. There are so many resources here on the channel and in the community at large. But if you enjoyed this video, please subscribe. That's the one thing I will ask of you is if you enjoyed this, please subscribe to the channel. There is plenty more content to come. And that is the number one metric that I look at to determine how helpful this is for all of you. So thank you again. And if or when you do land that first instructional design job, please share your one with us so that we can all share that excitement with you. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Devlin Pack podcast. If you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to follow the podcast. This is the best way for me to know this content is helpful on your instructional design journey. You can also check out the description for other helpful links and resources. Thanks again, and I'll see you in the next episode. [MUSIC PLAYING]