[00:00:00] Devlin: Okay, cool. Hey, everybody. It seems like most people are getting connected. Thanks for joining us today. Today we are chatting about how to become an instructional designer in 2024 specifically, and we have a great panel here. I'll be sharing my perspective, but I also want to be highlighting the perspectives of my wonderful team here.
[00:00:16] So we have Robbie, who did the bootcamp years ago and has been working as a freelance ID for a while and helping us really shape like the bootcamp into what it is today. You might have seen him on the YouTube channel over the past few months recording some good insights around the hiring manager data.
[00:00:32] So we're happy to have Robbie here. Kristin is about to be one of our newest bootcamp pros starting next month. And she's been working at Amazon. Also completed the bootcamp a while back. So she has some good corporate experience that she'll be able to share her perspective on for those of you who are interested in taking that route.
[00:00:51] We have Sabrina here who, has been making a big impact on things behind the scenes here as well and has been working as a freelancer has a [00:01:00] really impressive portfolio, if you haven't checked that out yet. Sabrina will be here to share the freelance perspective as well. And then Scott, has one of these coveted instructional design roles in the public education sector.
[00:01:12] So it'll be really cool to have that education perspective as well, for someone who's working as an instructional designer. that's a bit about all of us. I'm sure you'll learn a lot more about us over this next hour or so. What questions do you all have for us? Last week, we published that, How to Become an Instructional Designer in 2024 video, so this is more our, conversational, hangout session to elaborate on things, maybe give you some specific suggestions, we could take it wherever you want.
[00:01:42] We could talk about portfolios, about, working on the job, about job market overall, wherever you like. Alright, we have that question. "What is the day to day like in corporate?" I know that can vary [00:02:00] quite a bit, but I think Kristin, that would be a good one for you to tackle.
[00:02:04] Kristin: Sure, absolutely. so like you said, Devlin, it's definitely going to be different, everywhere, but I can give you the perspective on, on my end. I'll start with the day to day, but more I almost want to give you like a, week, just because, a Tuesday might look different from a Wednesday, but specifically, generally we're working, my team works in sprints, so we work in an agile, environment, and so what that means is we're usually developing eLearning scenarios or learning solutions end to end, and what a general day looks like is we're running through some point, some part of the design process, so whether that's an outline or a storyboard or working with SMEs, I would say generally day to day looks like I am, generally developing half of my day, whether that's the storyboard or eLearning, and then the rest of [00:03:00] my day is devoted to either meetings, so meetings with my manager to check in one on one, meeting with subject matter experts to make sure that, the designs are coming along, or meeting with my actual, curriculum development team to make sure that we're, meeting deadlines, checking in on Project Management, things like that.
[00:03:26] Day to day, I'd say half of my day is working on those eLearning scenarios, and the other half of my day is centered around that communication, and just documenting my progress, things like that. Days might look different. Sometimes I develop a little heavier on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but that generally is what most of my day, consists of.
[00:03:47] Devlin: Nice! yeah, if anyone has any follow up questions around that, feel free to drop them in the chat. Or if anyone's curious about the day to day as an ID in education or as a freelancer, again, feel free to add that [00:04:00] question too, and we'll take that, but I see that these questions are coming in, so maybe we'll just keep moving along, looking at this questions tab.
[00:04:11] Let's see, "what's the hardest part about the transition from the classroom to an ID role?" I think a few of us will have some good perspectives on this. Sabrina, did you want to take a go at that?
[00:04:26] Sabrina: Yeah, for sure. I think one of the hardest parts is just realizing that you have support and that you're not on your own. So a lot of the times in the classroom, you are just, it's whatever resources you have with you at the time and whatever you're capable of doing on your own. And so working on one of the eLearning dev projects that I worked on, it was like hard at first to ask for help and support because I was like, "Oh, I probably don't have it.
[00:04:52] It's all, all up to me," but there really is so much support within, the ID community. And you'll find that within your teams as well. So [00:05:00] I think that was like. The biggest thing was like, getting used to asking for help and knowing that it will be there and that yeah, I can reach out to people when I need to.
[00:05:10] Devlin: Nice. What do you think about that one, Scott?
[00:05:16] Scott: For me, it's the fact that I get to control my time and I didn't know how to do that because when you're teaching, I taught for high school for 16 years and, I would, obviously my, time outside of the school day was when I would plan and manage those things.
[00:05:34] But during the school day, it's very prescribed, right? Bell to skip, bell to bell, this class, then this class, And now it's I have the whole day. I have things I need to get done. For me, it was learning how to manage my time to get things done because. I would always just do that stuff outside of my work day, which is one of the big reasons I left, because I didn't want to do that anymore.
[00:05:59] But [00:06:00] yeah, that was really the biggest challenge for me was figuring out how to manage this. All this new situation where I just have these eight hours to do as I see fit to get my work done. So yeah, that was the biggest challenge for me.
[00:06:16] Devlin: What do you think Kristin?
[00:06:19] Kristin: Both of everything that you all shared is, great.
[00:06:23] I struggled with that too. I think for me the biggest struggle was being able to recognize My impact teaching and how that could translate into the corporate world. They tell you "think numbers. What was that impact? What did that learning experience do?" and I had a hard time really one, going back and measuring all of that, right?
[00:06:45] Because in teaching it's so fast paced, and you're not, of course you're thinking, metrics, data, but not to the extent that you do when you're an instructional designer. So now that I've been in corporate for a year, I feel like I can go back and, do it [00:07:00] even better and talk about the impacts I made as I think for me it was really hard to be able to identify that, so that would be my, advice of anyone, in the classroom or anywhere else, start thinking about what you're producing, and then what impact does that have on the school or the business, and really think big about it, because the more you start thinking about that, the easier it is to, talk about.
[00:07:25] Devlin: Yeah, and Robbie, I guess you didn't transition exactly from the classroom, but did you want to share your perspective on this? what was, the most difficult part about transitioning from where you were into ID?
[00:07:37] Robbie: I had a very dynamic job in scientific scuba diving at a higher ed institution.
[00:07:42] And, part of that position was teaching classes, in the water, under the water, in the classroom, all over the place, and, I think the hardest part for me transitioning into this role was leaving some of that behind, of that, that student [00:08:00] connection. For me, I got a lot of energy and life from that, and so stepping away from that and just working at a computer, I've, found different ways to engage with people in that way, like through the bootcamp and the community here, but that, for me, was the hardest part is not seeing a group of smiling faces every day.
[00:08:21] Devlin: Yeah, I know that can be hard for people coming from the classroom, too. For me, yeah, I was transitioning in right from undergrad, basically. So I didn't really have a career before this. And the hardest part for me was, like, figuring out, what to actually prioritize to learn. So it was like overwhelming, like all the stuff I saw on job listings and I didn't understand what I was reading.
[00:08:44] "Oh, I need to learn the Adobe suite." So I spent three months learning Illustrator and then realized I only needed like a tenth of what I learned when I actually started doing the job. So that was a bit much for me. It was overwhelming. I'm like, "I need to learn 100 things at once." And I went too far overboard on some of those things.
[00:08:59] And I [00:09:00] wasted a lot of time, I think. But a good question. We have 26 more questions to take a look at so far. I'm just going to start going from the top here. Kristin, Erica is curious what type of projects you work on. Kristin's coming, or Erica's coming from education and has no idea what corporate jobs would look like.
[00:09:22] Kristin: Sure, thank you. I was trying to follow up with the questions and I'm losing them, so thank you for, tracking that one, Devlin. I would say, the main projects are eLearning development, but we also work on things like software simulations, which is eLearning. job aids, flow charts.
[00:09:40] Anything that's going to help people, become better and understand their, job roles better and perform better, is generally what, we do here. the majority of what I do is eLearning or obviously anything digital, but lots of different projects that we work on. again, software simulations, job aids, [00:10:00] flowcharts, infographics, things like that.
[00:10:05] Devlin: And then as far as like the topic or subject matter, I know that can vary a lot depending on the team you're on, the people you serve. So it might be anything from like really complex like engineering material to like soft skills material around how to communicate better. and I know that can vary quite a bit, but
[00:10:21] Kristin: Yes, definitely it's different for each team.
[00:10:24] So like my role specifically focuses a little bit more on like cybersecurity, but it's also important to note that we work on things... so within the team I develop for, there could be like new hire onboarding training that you're working on. You could be working on, continuing your education.
[00:10:45] Skills people need to learn. It could be like promotional trainings. So, there's different categories, but generally I develop for a cybersecurity team, but many teams and roles at Amazon are very different and they specifically are developing materials for a [00:11:00] specific team.
[00:11:02] Devlin: Nice. All right, let's keep moving along here.
[00:11:06] We have a question from Jean. "What degree is needed or advised to have?"
[00:11:15] Do you want to take a go at it, Robby?
[00:11:18] Robbie: I would love to take a go at that. I would love to direct you to YouTube, there's a great video about this. But the direct information is, the direct answer is that you can get a well paying job with just a bachelor's degree. And I'll even go so far as to say you, you don't even need to have that degree be in education.
[00:11:40] And I speak to that from my own personal experience. I have a physics bachelors and a leadership, like a business masters, and neither of which of those are, in education. And yet I've been able to find a successful career for the past few years as an instructional designer. [00:12:00] And, so hiring managers...
[00:12:04] a bachelor's degree, some of them look for a master's degree. And so if you have a master's, or if you get a master's, it will open you up to a few more jobs. But the amount of time that we've seen that it takes to get the master's and the amount of money that you put into that, for some people, if that's what they want to do, and that's the way that they learn the information, that's great for them.
[00:12:28] However, it's not necessarily a requirement, as long as you can learn that information and apply it and show in an interview that you know what you're talking about, that's the most important thing that we've seen from hiring managers.
[00:12:42] Devlin: Yeah, especially on the corporate side, it comes down to like your skills and your portfolio and are you showing off those skills?
[00:12:49] Yeah, we, the hiring manager surveys time and time again show for some, master's is more of a nice to have. In industries like higher education and for like certain government roles, [00:13:00] it becomes a bit more important. Credentials are favored a bit more highly in those areas. But I know coming from teaching, like the credentials almost always lead to a pay raise or, new types of opportunities you can land or move into.
[00:13:16] Yeah, not necessarily the case. And in our recent hiring manager survey, we found that people with bachelor's degrees were actually making a little bit more money in the field than people with master's degrees. So a little ironic. I want to do some deeper analysis into why that might be the case. But, yeah, I did a master's degree.
[00:13:33] Again, I had, no work experience, so I was like, I need something here. So while I was in the master's, I leaned on that a lot because I didn't have any, experience to lean on. So I was like, "oh, I'm in a master's program." And I used a lot of that, what I was learning in there as like material for my YouTube videos.
[00:13:49] So it's been nice sharing those findings with the field. So like it's helpful. Like again, it will be a nice to have. I don't think a master's degree is going to hurt you. It just might, yeah, slow you down a little bit if [00:14:00] your goal is to land a corporate role ASAP that pays well and is remote.
[00:14:05] Yeah, but good questions. Happy to answer any other questions around that. And I don't know if anyone else on the panel had any final thoughts around that, or want to talk about your experience either getting or not getting a master's?
[00:14:17] All right, we'll keep it moving. We have enough, we definitely have enough questions to do let's see, we have a question from Chloe. "What recommendations do you have for gathering information when you as the ID are expected to be your own subject matter expert?" That's a tricky one. Has anyone here found themselves in that?
[00:14:41] Kristin: I haven't found myself in that direct position, but I've definitely worked with a ton of ambiguity before. Can't solve that problem completely because a lot of the times that's the nature of our work, right? Like we want our subject matter experts, to be able to help us with developing the eLearning.
[00:14:59] But [00:15:00] I think for the most part, one of my biggest, things that I do when I have a ton of ambiguity is i, try to research as much as I can and try to put myself in a learner's perspective, like, "how will they be experiencing this? What questions might they have?" If it's a really difficult concept, sometimes I try to tell their story in my head, think about storytelling, "what, how are they going to experience this on the job?" What problems are they going to have?" And that might help me ask better questions to my subject matter expert, or at the very least, somebody that is positioned in the job.
[00:15:35] I think it's important to be able to ask questions, but sometimes really thinking about it as learner's perspective and thinking about, getting those questions out will help you find like more direct questions that you need to answer to develop that content.
[00:15:52] Devlin: Yeah. yeah, I would say it's not a great position to find yourself in.
[00:15:57] Like, when I was freelancing, there are some [00:16:00] clients where they want me to work on a project and that was one of the questions I would always ask to like field if I want to be involved or not, I'm like, "what is the subject matter expert availability look like? What subject matter experts are available to help with this project?"
[00:16:11] And if they're like, "Oh, we don't have any, is that something you need?" I guess I would try educating them. And if they're like, "Oh no, you'd be like on your own here." That's yeah, not a great position to be in. You want to be able to review the content and run things by your subject matter expert who has some sort of experience doing what you're helping train people on.
[00:16:30] But yeah, good question. let's see. Gabriella is asking, "How do you know what topic to make things for in a portfolio when starting out?" So I'm sure we can all help answer this one because in the bootcamp we have some specific recommendations. But, what are hiring managers looking for? that might be a good way to frame it.
[00:16:53] The number one thing hiring managers are looking for in your portfolio is, your ability to solve real-world problems with [00:17:00] instructional design. If you're just putting up something on there that's, an information dump, and you're not really making the case for how this is actually solving a problem for, real humans.
[00:17:10] It's probably not going to be as compelling as if you were like, I noticed this problem. I determined that it was a learning issue. People were lacking some knowledge or skills. And then I went out and developed this learning solution to help people either do their jobs better or, become better citizens or whatever it is.
[00:17:26] That's going to go a lot farther on your portfolio because it's showing you're actually solving problems with learning solutions. whereLearning actually is part of the solution. So it takes some..., I guess you want some level of understanding around instructional design to tackle a project like that,
[00:17:43] and then we recommend this like flagship project approach where it starts off like that. Let's find a good problem that we can solve with eLearning. Let's actually build out all the elements to make that come to life. So like action maps, storyboard, then develop this like engaging [00:18:00] story based eLearning project so that when a hiring manager or potential client is on our portfolio, they'll not only get hooked into the project and be engaged as they're completing it, but they'll also see our write up and see the real world problem that we're solving with this solution.
[00:18:14] And then it also shows off those nice eLearning and visual design skills that are quite in demand in the market these days. Good question, happy to answer any follow ups on that, or if anyone else on the panel wants to share, yeah, maybe share a perspective on how you came up with a topic for your portfolio when you were starting out.
[00:18:31] That might be helpful for people.
[00:18:33] Robbie: Yeah, I was gonna pop in for a moment and, reiterate, it can't be reiterated enough that the thing that people are looking for is solving real world problems with ID theory and science.
[00:18:46] That's it. That's what they want, and that's what hiring managers are not finding enough of, so that can't be stated enough. And then in terms of, Gabriella, your question about the topics. How do you know what topic to [00:19:00] make things for? like the content, I'm interpreting that as like what content to put up there.
[00:19:05] And The nice thing that I have a great message to tell you that the content really doesn't matter a ton. As long as you're following the framework that Devlin just talked about and putting things on your portfolio that excite you. Do you want to do storyboarding? Then put up a whole bunch of examples of storyboarding.
[00:19:23] If you want to do visuals, put up a whole bunch of visuals examples. Do what's true to yourself, but when it comes down to the content and the topics that you're putting up, It really doesn't matter. Most of my content that I had in making my portfolio all came from scientific scuba diving. So I was able to pull some of those from my previous job, put those up and populate my portfolio with those examples.
[00:19:49] And do you think I landed any scientific scuba diving instructional design roles? No, it was banking and HR and IT security and all sorts of [00:20:00] healthcare, all sorts of other things that weren't necessarily related to the content. It's really nice if you can get topics and content that are aligned with what you're trying to get into because it makes the hiring managers have an easier job imagining their content in your, in your course, having you do theirs, but it really doesn't make that big of a difference.
[00:20:22] As long as you can demonstrate that you are solving real world problems with ID theory and science, that's the most important thing.
[00:20:31] Devlin: Yeah, and showing off those in demand skills, like the tech skills and stuff are nice too. if you can do both of those pieces, like you have a good handle on the ID theory and science, and a good handle on like the tech and visual design side of things, you're gonna succeed in this ID market, and it's been that way since I got into the field as well.
[00:20:47] And then, yeah, I guess we didn't really state this yet. If any of y'all are like new to instructional design content and stuff, like the portfolio is going to do the majority of the heavy lifting for you in this whole job search process. So it's what's going to help you land [00:21:00] interviews, it's what's going to help you turn interviews into job offers, and it's what's going to help you land roles that people with 5, 10, 20 years of experience aren't able to land, because they, the portfolios weren't as important
[00:21:12] in years past and now they are extremely important. So showing off the right skills in the portfolio. You want it working for you, but good question. Yeah, I'm sure we'll have some more portfolio questions in here, but I realized how to sort the questions by oldest. Thank you, Nathan. So we're going to make sure that we get the ones, that have been up here for a while and that y'all have been patiently waiting for to get answered.
[00:21:35] So Kevin has been trying to find a role, but the past work was in government contracts. Not able to share that because it's so proprietary. So what do we suggest? Yeah, this is a tough position to be in, right? You have 20 years of experience, you've been doing great work in the field, probably producing some sort of results, and then you hear this talk about, oh, you need a portfolio, but you're not able to show off anything [00:22:00] you've done on the portfolio.
[00:22:01] Really frustrating. A lot of people who have been in the field for a while find themselves in this position. And even people who are newer in the field, it can be really exciting when you're subcontracting and you land. And you're working on projects for like household brand name companies, but you like can't really tell anyone about it or put it on your portfolio because you're a subcontractor.
[00:22:18] So yeah, a lot of people find themselves in that position. I don't think there's like a real easy answer. I think there are some options around it. It's... you can try to either get some permission or share some non proprietary aspect of the project you worked on, maybe anonymize it, maybe change the industry and use similar details and then just acknowledge.
[00:22:37] This, this write up or this project is based on a project I completed during my time in this role or something like that. You could try to anonymize it, but still show off the process you followed. I think the most compelling solution from Getting hired front is creating a new project to show off your skills and show off your [00:23:00] process that isn't proprietary and might not be reliant on that.
[00:23:03] Maybe it's based on skills you learned and stuff you learned in that role. But yeah, I know that's not the greatest to hear sometimes because you're like, "I already did all this work. I don't want to spend dozens or more hours building a new project just for my portfolio". So that's tricky. I think you have a lot more leeway to talk about that kind of stuff though in interviews.
[00:23:20] So maybe just leave some breadcrumbs or, little tastes of it on your portfolio enough to start a conversation with a hiring manager. But I will say you'll probably want to show off something, some kind of real deliverables on your portfolio to help you land those interviews. Good question, Kevin.
[00:23:37] Sure, some other people here in a similar boat. Lauren is confused about how to make a portfolio without purchasing the software. "How do we learn the software like Articulate without buying it, or is that not possible?" Anyone else want to take a go at this one? I've been talking a lot, I think.
[00:23:58] Sabrina: Sure, I'll go ahead and [00:24:00] start. So yeah, there's the 30 day free trial with Articulate, so you can use that. A lot of things that I see people do is start with, identifying their problem, storyboarding, and getting all of that first, beginning prep work done before they even sign up for their trial so that they can use that full 30 days just in development.
[00:24:18] if you've used your trial and there's no way to get, an extension anymore, but you still want to be able to demonstrate things on your portfolio, like prototypes and things, you can use tools like Figma and Adobe XD. Which, soon, my prototyping video in Figma will be coming out. So if you've been following that series, you'll see some of that stuff.
[00:24:35] But yeah, the prototyping you can do in Figma to add, some interactivity, and Figma is free. So there are other alternatives, even using things like you're familiar with, like Google Slides and PowerPoint, where you can add in some interactivity for things like that. So you can still demonstrate some of those interactivity and development skills.
[00:24:54] Devlin: Yeah, and if, but if you are, and if you are able to, delay your trial until you, are ready to build that [00:25:00] deliverable, like actually ready to develop it, and you've done all the prep work, that can be a much more efficient use of your Storyline trial, like Sabrina said. And yeah, the trial, is quite, forgiving.
[00:25:11] Anything you create during that trial, it doesn't have a watermark, you can publish it, and then anything, your source file that you have during that trial. once you have a license or like anyone else with a trial version, they can still open that source file, like no restrictions.
[00:25:25] So yeah, it's a quite, quite a generous free trial there. So I would say if you can show off some kind of Articulate Storyline project in your portfolio, it's probably worth it just because it is the most in demand piece of software that people are hiring for in the field. But if you can, if you're creating a compelling sample or prototype in a tool like Figma, like Sabrina said, and hiring managers can still go through it and it reads like a Storyline experience.
[00:25:50] Most times they're going to trust that you can do what you need to do in Storyline.
[00:25:57] Good question. [00:26:00] Tamisha is asking, "how can you be confident when building a project for your first job?" I guess there are a few ways we can take this, but let's get some perspectives on maybe how do you build your confidence when you're building a project for your first job? Or if you want to interpret it more broadly, like how do you build your confidence like landing your first job when, especially when corporate ID or the corporate world at large might feel foreign to you?
[00:26:24] Maybe we can just go around and get perspectives. Do you want to start, Scott?
[00:26:30] Scott: Sure, are we talking about building the project, or are we gonna, you shifted the focus there, I think, to incompetent interviews, or?
[00:26:39] Devlin: If you have a perspective on building the project, let's do that, since that's the question. Yeah.
[00:26:42] Scott: Okay. Actually, I have a pretty good perspective on this, because for my flagship project, I wanted to do something I knew nothing about.
[00:26:52] That was actually an important factor for me, because I, wanted to be able to highlight that. When I did get to the part where [00:27:00] I was trying to find jobs and getting in interviews, I wanted to be able to highlight the fact that, "Hey, I took on a project that I knew nothing about. I had to learn, I had to work with SME to do this."
[00:27:11] And so one thing that I definitely learned when, I was not, when I was feeling not as confident as I felt like I should, I thought, "I don't know enough. I need to find out more until I am more confident with that." So I would say that's probably one of the best, at least when you're building, when you're starting about, when you're talking about your project, I think that's a key thing there.
[00:27:36] It's actually, I know a writer friend of mine who said the same thing. They're like, "when I'm having like writer's block, it's probably because I just don't know enough and I need to learn more about what I'm trying to write about, even if it's fiction." So that would be one thing I would recommend if for people that are working on a project, if you ever do find yourself and feel not feeling quite as confident with it, go find out [00:28:00] more, go learn more about the topic and
[00:28:04] that, that can actually go a long way to building that confidence.
[00:28:10] Devlin: Nice. What do you think, Kristin?
[00:28:12] Kristin: Yeah, this is a good question, and I'm sorry because I accidentally clicked finish answering, or finish answering, so it's not up anymore. But I'm sorry. but yeah, to add to that, and a little bit of a different side too is, I think the biggest thing with confidence is being able to, like when I design, I pretty much am like able to justify my decisions based on either theory... I spent a lot of time before I started developing on learning UX, like just UX design principles, visual design principles, from teaching like learning theory, and just learning objectives.
[00:28:49] I, there's obviously a lot to ID, but being able to know the learning theory, and, what good visual design looks like really helps me with my [00:29:00] confidence when I'm developing because when I'm making decisions, like, "why am I putting this here? Why am I putting this in the center?" I'm able to justify it, whether it's, what learning theory says, whether it's what good visual design says, but being able to know that and have that knowledge.
[00:29:15] You don't have to be an expert, but at least being able to understand those things will really help you build your confidence. Like, if you're able to say, "why am I doing this? What's the reason that I chose to put this on the page or chose to word something like this?" I think it really helps you not only develop confidence, but also be able to talk about it and justify why that's a good decision, why the learning experience will make an impact.
[00:29:40] Devlin: Yeah, great perspective. That's that design part of instructional design. So if you can think like a designer like that and justify your decisions, it's going to go super far on your portfolio in the write up and in the interviews. That's going to help you close some interviews and land some offers for sure if you can justify your choices like that.
[00:29:57] Great suggestion. Hard to start out when you're not really sure how [00:30:00] to justify those decisions, but it's something that with practice and the more you learn, you'll get better at over time. What do you think, Sabrina?
[00:30:11] Sabrina: Yeah, I don't know if there's much more that I would add that hasn't already been said, but yeah, I guess for me, some of the things was just, I guess the transition from coming from a teacher, right? Sometimes as a teacher you get beat up on, just you're just a teacher. I think finding that confidence was more internal for me of just, "No, I'm not just a teacher.
[00:30:30] That's not the only thing I can do. I do have these skills. They wouldn't have offered me these opportunities if I didn't have the skills." So just being really reflective on what I do know, I think has really helped my confidence when I work on a project.
[00:30:44] Devlin: Yeah. Yeah. if you're feeling down about being a teacher, please don't.
[00:30:48] I know society takes a dump on teachers sometimes, but people are sleeping. You could see whole team. I'm like, "if you're coming from education, come on the team. I want to work with teachers." I think, [00:31:00] people are transitioning in from teachers are making some of the best instructional designers in the field right now.
[00:31:05] Yeah, definitely don't feel bad about the skills that you're bringing in. It goes really far in the instructional design space. Robbie, did you have a perspective to share?
[00:31:15] Robbie: I would just absolutely echo everybody else what's already been said. I don't think there's much more that was left out. From my experience, the first job that I took, keep in mind, was all freelance.
[00:31:26] The first one I took, I was in my comfort zone of just doing the eLearning developing. And so my advice would be find something that's a little bit more aligned with what you're familiar with doing. And once you start to do that and start to recognize, "oh yeah, I'm working as an instructional designer now, this is great!"
[00:31:47] Then you can start to build a little bit more of that confidence, you have some work under your belt, and you can grow from there. Again, I'm speaking mostly to the freelancers out there, but, but also for the full [00:32:00] timers, if you can, find something full time that's aligned with your existing skills.
[00:32:05] It's an easier transition to get into.
[00:32:08] Devlin: Yeah, that makes sense. For me, I was not feeling confident about my early projects at all. I was like, "this looks terrible. This is not going to get me hired. I'm not feeling good about it." Like, when I was starting my master's program at first trying to build my portfolio.
[00:32:22] So a way I built my confidence was just trying to get as much feedback as humanly possible. I was asking, my girlfriend, who's my wife now, I was like, "How does this look to you? does anything seem off?" And then she would give me feedback. And I would, go to my classes early in my master's program, and I'm asking my peers, asking my professors for feedback on things.
[00:32:41] I'm asking online instructional design communities for feedback so I was like incessantly seeking out perspectives from people who like had a better eye for these things than I did initially and that helped me that helped me like immensely build my confidence as the feedback started shifting from like here are some glaring issues to like "this is looking pretty good," but [00:33:00] yeah, so feedback helps a lot as well.
[00:33:04] All right, we have our first AI question of the, day. Brian is curious about our thoughts on AI and ID work and working to prevent the hostile takeover. AI is coming for our jobs, everybody! But I've done a lot of thinking about this because, I'm trying to keep up with the AI stuff and I, and there are times where it's you feel that fear.
[00:33:27] It's this technology is so strong, is the field in trouble? But I think times like that, it's you're getting in like survival mode or like catastrophizing. It's we're all going to lose our work, but, realistically, at least in the foreseeable future, like the next five years or so, I think it's pretty safe to say that AI is going to be helping IDs do their work.
[00:33:48] I think there is the potential for AI to help IDs do their work, five or ten times faster than they're doing now. And, I think, I can imagine there are some teams where it's we [00:34:00] have five IDs now and we might only need three IDs. I also know that there's a ton of ID work out there that needs to be done.
[00:34:07] And it might be, "okay, we have five IDs. that are doing this much work. Now we have five ideas, that are doing like this much work and we're like, helping people do a lot better because we can work so much more productively." We see the layoffs. I see some layoffs getting cited, it's like AI is causing this layoff...
[00:34:24] I think the best thing we can do is keep up with the developments in AI. We've been interviewing hiring managers about this, since October and the consensus among the hiring managers seems to be like, "our teams are not going to be getting smaller, but we are going to be using AI to try to be more productive."
[00:34:43] That's the hiring manager perspective on this. And then again, if you've been using some of these tools, it's not like they're, like, there yet. It's not like you can just, completely replace an ID with, ChatGPT. By the nature of how these programs work, they hallucinate, it's like a [00:35:00] random number generator and it can get really close to what humans say, but still it will say things that are like completely false or just not follow your directions because it's oh, if you get unlucky on that next token generation, it's going to be something completely irrelevant and you need a human to catch those things.
[00:35:13] So I'm getting technical here, but yeah, I think we're good for the next five or so years. Yeah, we have a pretty complex role that, yeah, involves that like human element, that technical element. Maybe there are some aspects of our job that AI is gonna replace. But I think that just gives us time to focus more on other aspects of ID where we can provide more value.
[00:35:37] That's my perspective. I rambled a bit. Anyone else have a perspective on the AI piece?
[00:35:43] Robbie: I just want to add one thing to what Devlin said, and I've heard it from a panel discussion already. I've seen it on LinkedIn, but this is so I don't know where the quote came from, but "AI is not going to steal your job.
[00:35:55] Somebody who knows how to use AI effectively is going to steal your job." [00:36:00]
[00:36:00] That's what I've heard.
[00:36:01] And I, absolutely agree a hundred percent with that. That it's this notion that if we're not on board and starting to understand what these tools are capable of, we're going to be left in the dust.
[00:36:16] But if we can be on that front edge of and integrate it into our workflow, then we're going to be able to increase our productivity tremendously.
[00:36:27] Devlin: Yeah, I think that's definitely like the boat we're in for the foreseeable future is as these AI tools get more popular, the people who are doing well with them. imagine if someone's fully kitted out with the AI tools and they're, 10 times more productive than someone who has a more traditional tool set.
[00:36:42] Yeah, I think it's pretty clear who we're probably going to want to bring on the team. Yeah, we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes to evaluate these tools, try them out for different common, for common ID tasks, and then creating YouTube videos around them, the parts that we think look promising.
[00:36:56] So if you're keeping up with the channel, [00:37:00] I think you're, I think you're doing okay. There's nothing that you, need to know right now to, like I think Chat GPT could potentially be one of the most important instructional design tools in the years to come, but there's a lot of fear and like resistance to that right now, for good reasons to like, the copyright situation, the ethical concerns, the data privacy concerns, companies don't want their data being just pumped into the base Chat GPT.
[00:37:24] So. yeah, there's a lot of stuff that, society at large is still figuring around, out around the AI stuff, as I'm sure you've, seen and can imagine, but good question. all right, here's a good question from Karen. "What is the opportunity for job growth in your current job?" Maybe this will be good for the full time people, since as the freelancers, it's like really up to, us.
[00:37:50] You want to start, Kristin?
[00:37:53] Kristin: Yes, I can start and, it'll definitely be different at, different companies. I work for a bigger [00:38:00] corporation and we have levels. in terms of I'm an instructional designer, so there's different levels there, but there's also a lot of areas to grow in terms of the corporation.
[00:38:11] So sometimes our instructional designers will become like Learning program managers. Sometimes they'll move to different teams. Someone might jump from curriculum developer on one team to learning experience designer on a different team. But it is a very, big company from what I've seen with other companies I've interviewed with, a lot of the times it's different levels if you want to stay an instructional designer, but sometimes it could grow into a management position.
[00:38:41] It really just depends on what the company and, is and what's available, but generally there's like levels of instructional designer and then from there just different roles.
[00:38:51] Devlin: Yeah, I think you summed that up pretty nicely. That's been my experience too. Yeah, move up, senior instructional designer at different levels, like they have, Amazon and other big [00:39:00] corporations.
[00:39:00] And then, yeah, like you're mentioning, some people even move into other, higher paying roles where they might find that they like this aspect of the job better. For example, some people move into front end development beyond instructional design. Some people move into like user experience or research.
[00:39:15] So yeah, the skills you build in instructional design are really valuable like in a lot of other careers too if you wanted that flexibility down the road. And then you have project managers too. That's another common path I've seen. But some people stay instructional designers for 25, 30 years and are happy with that.
[00:39:32] So I'm working as a senior ID. Do you want to share your perspective on it, Scott?
[00:39:37] Scott: My situation is very different and anybody that is currently in public education already knows this. There really aren't a lot of opportunities for growth, to be honest, at least because I work in a public school district.
[00:39:51] It's a very large district, very metropolitan area, but just like with teaching, [00:40:00] there's just not a lot of money in public education. There's very limited budgets, so there aren't really a lot of roles to move into. I think I've worked on a team of five, and really the only growth opportunities in terms of advancement in position and title is, I could be, I could potentially move into a supervisor role,
[00:40:22] and then potentially in a director role. The director is about the highest that we have in, my situation. it actually is one of the factors that, is making me starting to think ahead of what I want to do, if, do I want to look at more corporate, because there will be more opportunities for advancement.
[00:40:46] But at the same time, I came from public education, I was a teacher for 16 years because I really liked it. I very, I have very much value the public education system. I fit in with those people. My values [00:41:00] align with it, and everything like that, so that will be hard to leave, because I know the system. I believe in it, and I really like that our focus is, not focused on the bottom line in any way.
[00:41:14] It truly is focused on how do we help the employees in the district do their jobs better. It is so much more of a service mindset, I think. Then more of a, "how is this going to help the bottom line?" but again, the advancement opportunities are few in a public education system.
[00:41:34] Devlin: Nice, yeah, thanks for sharing your perspective on that.
[00:41:37] I know some people here might be interested in the public education side, probably not as many as corporate for the pay reason. And I know some people are like, I'm done with public education for now. But, yeah, good, perspective to have. Great.
[00:41:50] Scott: Actually, can I say one more thing about that Devlin?
[00:41:52] Yeah, because I would say, I came from just from teaching. Yeah. I hadn't worked as an instructional designer and [00:42:00] because of my portfolio and the skills that I was able to demonstrate and the way I was able to articulate things in my interview, I'm at like the second, already at the second highest level on the pay scale.
[00:42:13] Nice. And they, specifically said, told me, my director just flat out told me, "yeah, you had a very strong portfolio. Basically we can tell what you know how to do and we value that." And so I did I actually found out that I entered at a higher pay scale than some of the people that have been on the team for two or three years already.
[00:42:38] it is possible. That's why that portfolio is such a huge piece.
[00:42:43] Devlin: Nice. I think that leads really nicely into this question from Dan. Dan says that, "they've seen on the forum some people getting jobs without a portfolio. The portfolio is important, but what is the most important for getting the majority of jobs?"[00:43:00]
[00:43:00] It is possible. people do land roles without portfolios. that does happen. There are working instructional designers who don't have portfolios. I'd say that it's a bit like playing a lottery. It's if you're applying without having a portfolio, maybe you'll get lucky and someone will see something on your resume that really resonates with them or they'll connect with you in some way and you'll get a, shot at an interview when you're applying to roles where there's, 400 other applicants and 390 of them don't have portfolios, most likely you're going to be in that camp of people who don't have portfolios, and it's going to be much more of a gamble than the few people who might have impressive portfolios who actually get interviews and might eventually land the role.
[00:43:41] From our hiring manager survey, though, we asked this question, in the hiring manager's perspective, "what is the most important part of the application process?" And the number one thing, quite overwhelmingly, was the interview. Which was interesting. And that was in contrast to last year's, or a few years ago, the [00:44:00] professional experience.
[00:44:01] So it's interesting that the interview has a lot more emphasis. This year. but again, the portfolio is going to help you land those interviews. So even if it's yeah, the interview is where I make my decision, you're, gonna, your success rate at landing that interview is going to be much higher if you have a strong portfolio.
[00:44:20] And there are countless stories we hear like this, especially from people coming out of the bootcamp where it's like, "hiring manager specifically mentioned my portfolio being the difference between me getting the role, me, landing, coming in at this level," so on and so forth. I don't know if anyone else on the panel has anything, any anecdotes to share about whether or not your portfolio made a difference in your job search process, but..
[00:44:46] Robbie: I was just gonna say what we see in the the hiring manager report is what I have seen in real life. I think it's in that order. Some [00:45:00] hiring managers, some employers are looking for slightly different things, but generally speaking, it's what on this list. Interview, portfolio, professional experience, make up those top three.
[00:45:12] Devlin: And yeah, that's the question.
[00:45:15] Robbie: I've sent the link to this hiring manager survey in the chat so you can find it there. but if you're watching this and don't have the chat later on, just search for hiring manager survey Devlin Peck. You'll find it.
[00:45:29] Devlin: Nice. and yeah, if you want to see some of the portfolios that have been helping people land the roles, you can go to devlinpeck.com/showcase. We have a lot of the portfolios there, which leads me to the next question. That's actually next on the list. "What are the main things needed in a portfolio?" I think a common misconception is I need to include a lot of different projects. I need to show off all the projects, show that I have all of these skills.
[00:45:58] Most of the [00:46:00] students we work with in the bootcamp land their role with a single project on their portfolio. The flagship project. So they have their portfolio website, which is like a project in and of itself, right? You want that good visual design. You want some good copy. You want to help people connect with you and your story.
[00:46:17] But then we show off that featured project, the flagship project that solves the real world problem, shows off the good visual design skills, shows off your storyboarding skills, your writing skills, your eLearning development skills. It checks all the boxes for what hiring managers are looking for.
[00:46:33] And yeah, I would say half of the people graduating the bootcamp have that single project and land their roles. We also encourage doing supporting projects. So what I try to say is do the flagship project to cover all of those bases and make yourself eligible for the largest number of roles right now.
[00:46:48] But then if you have an area you want to specialize in, like if you really like doing storyboarding, for example, do some supporting projects showing off your storyboarding skills. Or if you know you want to work in like the medical space, do some [00:47:00] supporting projects showing off maybe some technical, medical, education or job aids or, storyboards or things like that.
[00:47:09] So that's what I would say. You need one strong project, but up to three projects, I would say. And then an About page, a Home page, a Contact option. Check out some of the portfolio reviews we've been doing. Some of the recent ones, we're trying to emphasize these quick portfolios that people are using to land good corporate ID roles within two or three months.
[00:47:31] So they're pretty simple, they're like, approachable. It's not like some huge comprehensive thing that is so intimidating you'll never get it done. We're really trying to highlight the ones that, it's this is all you need. If you're, if you have something like this, it's gonna help you get hired.
[00:47:45] Did anyone else want to share any perspectives on that? I know we're coming to, coming up on time here.
[00:47:51] Kristin: I'll just briefly share, to tie in with the last question, too. I, when I was hired for my job, I had one project. I have more now, just [00:48:00] since I've been on the job, I've added some, but, a really big thing for me was my portfolio with that one project I'd created in the bootcamp, but something else that was really surprising to me was I had my Open to Work banner on.
[00:48:13] And, two of, two companies that I ended up interviewing with and getting offers for actually reached out to me because of my portfolio, through the Open to Work banner too. Not only did that help, but also having a strong portfolio at the time it was only one project really helped me, land the offers.
[00:48:34] Devlin: Great. Any other perspectives on that before we wrap things up?
[00:48:42] Scott: I'll say something real quick. I found it when I was looking at portfolios when I was first starting, I always found the ones that I thought were the most interesting that had supporting projects were the ones that had a variety of different types of learning, learning [00:49:00] examples on there.
[00:49:01] And that's what I did for my supporting projects. I made the scenario based. The more fully, it's obviously not a full learning experience, but it's more fully designed than obviously my supporting one. So my first, for my supporting one, I'm like, "I want to do something different.
[00:49:18] Maybe I can make what would normally be like an info dump into a more experience, experiential type of learning activity." And so I, I did that because of what I saw on other portfolios where they had a variety of different types of learning, materials or learning experiences. for thupe sporting projects.
[00:49:42] Devlin: All right. Thanks everyone for the good questions, the good responses. I wish we could have gotten through all of these questions, but we had quite the turnout today. if you do want to work with us, we are officially opening applications for the bootcamp as of this session ending for our January launch.
[00:49:59] [00:50:00] So that's where we help you build your portfolio. We work, you'll work one on one with someone either on the stage here, or we have a couple more bootcamp pros who weren't able to make it today. We will work with you one on one and give you feedback every step of the way. And help you land that, that high paying corporate ID role.
[00:50:14] So applications are open. We have 30 seats open. and you can learn more at devlinpeck.com/bootcamp. We also do workshops like this every week where you can come and share your deliverables for feedback, ask questions like you're asking here. but it's our, yeah, it's our one on one, kind of like hand-holding, VIP offer.
[00:50:32] So if you're interested in working with the team that way and coming to workshops with all of us, I run workshops from time to time as well, but I have a big jaw surgery coming up on Tuesday, so I'll be MIA for a few weeks or so. But again, thank you all for the great questions. Love hanging out like this.
[00:50:48] I think we're gonna start, we're gonna try to commit to a monthly live event like this. Some will be Q& As, some will be interviews with industry experts, some will be, like even tutorials on how to use tools like Vyond or Storyline [00:51:00] or things like that. we've got some exciting stuff in the works.
[00:51:03] Yeah, let's give some thanks and some applause emojis maybe to the wonderful panel who joined us today. Thank you everyone. And yeah, I hope to see some of you in the bootcamp if you decide that it's right for you. We, look forward to working with you. All right, good luck everybody. Keep us posted on your ID journeys and we will talk to you soon.
[00:51:21] The replay will go live later today. Bye everyone.