Devlin Peck: [00:00:00] Right now, we’re doing a special series on How to Become an Instructional Designer. We’ve compiled our most valuable content from interviews and question and answer sessions with top experts on how to become an ID to help you launch your own thriving instructional design career. So let’s get started with Episode 4 in the series, What Are Instructional Design Hiring Managers Looking For with Tara Coulson. 

Devlin Peck: Hello everyone, and welcome to another crowdcast Q&A session. Today we are joined by the wonderful Tara Coulson. Tara has been in this space for over 15 years. She has been at Amazon Web Services for over five years now and she is currently a Curriculum Development Manager. So she has interviewed at Amazon alone like over 120 applicants.

She knows her stuff when it comes to finding the right talent for the job and she leads , some pretty effective teams it sounds. So I am very happy that she is here with us today and let's welcome Tara up and get to answering some of these questions. 

 Tara Coulson: Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for the warm welcome too. I'm glad to be [00:01:00] part of this broadcast today. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, for sure. We have a great turnout. We have some great questions we were just looking over, I know the chat is going to get active.

The first question we have here... Most popular one by a good amount. What are the top three things that you are looking for when hiring an instructional designer? 

Tara Coulson: I think that's a great question. It's a good one to start off with. I speaking for myself and in the role when I'm looking for an instructional designer, I do like to see that work in the background resume, a portfolio perhaps, some kind of evidence of being able to create courses. That is important to me. I do look at work experience these days, and I think we'll talk about this later on in the Q& A, but these days most companies are looking for more than just one thing. It'd be nice if we could just hire instructional designers.

But often we're looking for another skill such as maybe some project management as well. And so when you're looking at [00:02:00] resumes, those are the types of skills that we're really looking for in an instructional designer. Obviously evidence of work, past work, some kind of portfolio is very important because that immediately showcases the talent there.

Devlin Peck: Okay, nice. So we're looking for solid evidence. And is a resume, yeah, you want to see evidence that people can do the instructional design work and your words are someone who can build these courses. So is it, portfolio or experience? Are years on a resume sufficient, I would say, for getting credibility on that front?

Tara Coulson: Yes, it can be. We've definitely had people in for interviews that didn't have a portfolio listed on their resume. Absolutely. I think the key there is really descriptive about the projects you worked on. Because, your hiring manager always knows what they're looking for. And if they can match something with the project that they're needing to have completed with something on your resume, that's always a bonus. So if you don't [00:03:00] immediately have a portfolio to be able to attach to your resume, LinkedIn or whatever, just be very descriptive about the projects you worked on, what process you used, what was the outcome. Those kind of things are very helpful in weeding your resume out from amongst all of the other resumes.

Devlin Peck: Nice, okay, that makes sense. So I spent a few years at this company, but here are the specific projects I worked on, here is my role and responsibilities on that project. And then you can easily see, okay, that can translate pretty well to what I need this person to do here at my company.

Tara Coulson: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I was just gonna say, I wouldn't say the lack of a formal portfolio would immediately weed you out because so many companies these days are pretty security minded, so it's not like you could actually showcase what you did in that company anyway.

But a good description about that project, if there was a needs analysis up front, what the outcome was, definitely is a huge win when I [00:04:00] presented with 25 resumes at a time. So, when I'm looking through all of those, I'm trying to figure out, okay, who really here has the experience that can get the job done that I'm looking for?

Devlin Peck: Wow, okay. So I know we have a lot of people transitioning here from higher education, from teaching, from fields that it's not necessarily formal instructional design, building in a modern eLearning authoring tool. Are you suggesting that these people may be able to position projects they've worked on in these different roles in a way that can make them credible enough to land a role at a company like Amazon, or are you saying you want to see evidence that they're working on the just the types of projects you need. So if they don't have that formal ID experience, maybe then a portfolio could be a way to fill that gap. 

Tara Coulson: Exactly. It depends for us. Sometimes we'll have a job that's very specific and it needs a very specific background or skill set.

And other times it can be very general. We know we have a set of curriculum that needs to be developed, [00:05:00] but we don't necessarily know which of the, in my case, AWS services we'll be focused on at that moment. It can be a lot more general. I think the principles behind developing a course become more important than what you actually develop.

For those of you who are in maybe K-12 or higher ed type roles, if you can translate the whole experience of developing those classes in a way almost if you're looking at one of the methodologies, ADDIE or one of the other ones, if you can translate that in a way, it does easily convert over to many different industries, I would say.

It's really the process behind developing eLearning that we are looking for more than, oh, absolutely has worked with cloud computing before. We're not necessarily looking for that engineering background person. We're more looking for somebody who can take content and massage it into a good experience for the learner.

Devlin Peck: Nice, okay. [00:06:00] Okay, I see. So even if you weren't holding this formal instructional designer, curriculum developer job title, if they can, if with their resume, with their projects they've worked on, if they can make you confident that they can do that, take this lumpy, technical, complex content and turn it into a good learning experience, that's what you're really looking for, that's what you care about, not so much a job title.

Tara Coulson: Yes, absolutely. For example, if you're a K-12 teacher, you've probably been this whole year doing online experiences for learners, right? That can translate to many different industries, right? I happen to be in high tech at the moment.

I've actually spent the last 15 years in software development and high tech. It can definitely translate. The principles are all still the same. I actually started my career as a technical writer and we always laughed about that and saying, we know a little bit about a lot of things because you're always dabbling into different things, but what you know is the principle behind it.

You know how to take maybe a mishmash of [00:07:00] concepts and turn it into a course, a scaffold, right? For your learner to be able to crawl up and at the end have something to learn. So yeah, I would say that what you are teaching doesn't matter as much as the concept of how to get from point A, the concept, to the end result of changing behavior, learning a skill, learning some knowledge, right?

Devlin Peck: You're not looking for any specific subject matter expertise. You're looking for someone who has a really good handle on the process and they can work with any type of subject matter, any type of experts and turn it into a compelling learning experience. I love it, and I think that's a good thing to clear up because a lot of newer or aspiring instructional designers, they think, how am I going to know about all these different fields? How am I going to learn about all these things? And it's, you learn what you need for the project by working with the existing content or the experts you have available to you. 

Tara Coulson: That's absolutely correct. Yes. Just look at my case.

We work with all of the AWS services. There's over, I think [00:08:00] there's over 200 now, right? There is no way one curriculum developer could know all of those services, even if you happen to be an engineer, you would just never be able to. So you do have to rely upon the content experts and subject matter experts that you're working with to get to the brass tacks details, but what they need from you is your subject matter expertise in training in learning in developing people. 

Devlin Peck: Exactly. Great distinction. So that was one piece. We need to see this evidence that they can create a great learning experience from this content. You also mentioned that, in more and more cases, isn't exactly enough. You're finding, or especially on your team and the people maybe that you hire, is you're looking for something more.

And I think what you can speak about, which we don't hear about super often, but I have been seeing questions pop up about is project management, right? Maybe you want to talk about that for a little bit, but the next question is how can people show off their project management skills without any formal project management experience?[00:09:00] 

Tara Coulson: I love that. And you and I had a discussion about this too. I think you guys, the ones of you in academia, tend to overlook this quite a bit too. And first of all, you're right. Today's modern companies are looking for unicorn employees. They're looking for employees that can wear multiple hats and do multiple things.

Because a lot of the world now is going to these micro projects. Everybody's working on these smaller things to get to the end goal that the organization is trying to reach in the end. So you need to be able to run a project in that respect. But does that mean you have to go out and get your planning and managing certification, or planning and managing project certification?

No, not necessarily. Project management is all about understanding the scope of what you're trying to do, understanding the deadlines, who your stakeholders are, who the resources are, and managing that. And I bet if you looked at your resume, you could probably see lots of [00:10:00] examples where you have managed a project and, just a little few tweaks on that resume can showcase things you worked to a deadline, you worked to a specific budget, you raised a certain amount of money for something.

All of that is encompassed in project management, and I would say that's probably the key skill anymore for curriculum developers and instructional designers is to also have that strong ability to take a group of people and make them work together toward the end result of the project that you're trying to go for.

In our case, training, oftentimes you have to gather more than one content expert to get to the training outcomes that you want and. Being able to corral them while they have a full time job, while you also have a full time job, is the trick of project management. And I think that's the big skill a lot of employers are looking for today, for certain, Amazon looks for is that ability to be able to be a self starter and run with your own mini business [00:11:00] within this giant business, if that makes sense.

Devlin Peck: Love it. Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense and yeah, when we were talking about this, we were on a 30 minute call just talking about this session we were going to do, and you started talking about project management and I was like, oh, I think that's something really important to talk about.

It's missing from my content. I haven't talked about that much with this audience. And then I followed it up and I'm like, I don't have like any real project management experience and you're like, oh wait. You're like, if you've been working backwards from a deadline and managing multiple stakeholders along the way, you have project management experience.

And then you talk, you mentioned, yeah, a lot of people downplay or don't recognize the fact that they are using all the same skills that a project manager would use to bring these projects into fruition. Maybe just to reiterate on that, because I think that's important.

These core skills you mentioned is... Scoping a project, right? What is the scope we're working with here? Deadlines, right? How are we setting up these milestones to get to the end? Stakeholder management, how are you getting all these people to work together?[00:12:00] Are those, am I missing...?

Tara Coulson: Yes, those are the key things. Obviously we could turn this into a whole PM. That's actually one of my background roles as well. So it's passion project for me, but I always look at people's resumes. And I was like, wow, if they had just added that one more bullet of, and I met my deadline or, and I stayed under budget or, any of the key things that companies may look for in terms of, can I trust this person to run this project? And if you turn that into a learning example let's say a new product is rolling out at the company that you're coming to work with. Okay, they have a deadline that they're going to release that to the public. So your deadline needs to back up a little bit from that, because it's going to have to go through stakeholder review. So you work from that deadline and make your key milestones of, however many courses you're developing. Each course would be a deadline. Building in stakeholder review and QA cycles and things like that that you might [00:13:00] have to go for.

Also if you have to involve other people, videographers or maybe a graphics artist or something like that. Yeah, it's very interesting. I think today's day and age, that's what companies are looking for is, not only can you build the course, but you can also help corral the group of people together that would make that course over the top and even more exceptional, right?

Devlin Peck: I love it. Yeah, that's really good. So it seems like a big takeaway for people who are going to be on the market soon and who are looking for new opportunities, really reflect on the project management experience you do have and then try to highlight or showcase some of that on your resume. Don't overlook that, because it is a very valuable skill in the modern [it's true.] ID, L&D environment it sounds like. [Yeah, absolutely.] I'm sure that is very helpful to some people here. So thank you for sharing that. So let's see, the next most upvoted question we have here is about teachers specifically. So Natalia is asking, how can teachers transitioning to the instructional design field highlight their strengths during the hiring process?

I [00:14:00] feel like this is very connected to what we've just been discussing about maybe that project management piece. But is there, do you have anything to add about this transition specifically? 

Tara Coulson: I think that's a good question. We actually have a couple of people on both my team and larger team that have made a transition from classroom teaching to more of a corporate eLearning development, or even classroom training development environment.

It does translate. I think it's actually in some ways a little bit easier because these are adults you're working with, and I think the biggest thing you have to compete with is their own schedule, right? They understand they have to take the training. There's not a lot of prodding you have to do the way you have to do with a student, maybe in a K-12 classroom, right?

But I would just say that your skills are already there. You just have to translate your vocabulary a little bit from that classroom experience. Take it back to the essentials of [00:15:00] learning. It's the same, right? No matter what you're teaching and who you're teaching to, the principles are the same.

You're taking a complex concept, you're breaking it down into smaller bits and you're creating a scaffold for the learner to crawl up and actually come out the other end with that knowledge acquisition. If you keep that in mind, it's much easier to make the leap from what you consider academia to corporate.

The other thing is... Know a little bit about the organization that you're applying for. Do your homework, go online, find out what they do, and then watch a bunch of videos on that industry, because I think having that terminology already gives you that leg up of, it's not so hard for you to transition either.

You're already starting to get familiar with some of those practices. Also, it's a plus when you're with a hiring manager. I, for one, am always impressed when a person comes in to interview with me and they actually use our tools to host their course. [00:16:00] I'm like, okay, that didn't take them very long to do, but they went above and beyond.

We don't require that. You can host your course anywhere and we'll watch it and look at your portfolio anywhere, right? But it always is a little bit of a 'above the bar' kind of thing when you come in. And not only did you host your course somewhere, but you hosted it on AWS product. That's pretty cool.

So same thing. If you're applying at Google, you would want to put it on Google Drive or whatever, those kinds of things. I think if you can make that differentiator for yourself with the hiring manager wherever you're going, it does make you stand out and above, and it also gives you a leg up when you start, right?

You're not so far behind. Honestly, when I started in this job, and I think I was telling you this too, Devlin, I came from a position where I was the subject matter expert. I thought I had a background in software development and I understood all of those things. I get to AWS and it was a whole new ball of wax, I'll tell you.

I felt for a minute, [00:17:00] what am I doing here? I am absolutely out of my depth and out of my element, and I wish I had somebody tell me that ahead of time. Look, there's a ton of YouTube videos and there's a ton of training online that I could have jumped into ahead of time. So I was a little bit behind the eight ball and also had a little bit of self confidence issue when I joined, just in my own thought process. And it took me about six months to catch up and go, oh, wait a minute. I am a subject matter expert in learning. And I just, I think if you do your homework a little bit into the industry that you're trying to get into, wherever it may be or whatever, you've given yourself that boost of confidence, something coming here. It's not like you're going to a total immersion language course or something where you don't know anything.

Yeah, that would be my biggest tip. Don't undersell yourself, K-12 teachers. You know how to teach people stuff. Maybe you've only been teaching children to date, but the principles are still the same. Does that make sense? Yes, imposter syndrome. I [00:18:00] totally see somebody pop that up.

Devlin Peck: Yep, exactly. I think that's what I'm thinking too. I feel like a lot of teachers are dealing with that too, coming into this space. I've been teaching, I don't know what's going on the corporate side of things. I don't know if I'm qualified for that, and all of that. But what I'm hearing here, what I've heard from many, many sources, is a lot of the skills that teachers are using on a daily basis translate very well to the corporate world.

But the challenge there is like, communicating them and making the person or the company who you're interviewing with confident that you can apply those skills to their environment. So if you can immerse yourself in their world, learn the language that they're using, learn the language of the learning industry, and maybe bridge that gap, that language gap, then it becomes much easier to build your credibility for the roles you're applying to. Okay, love it. [Completely, yeah.] Alright, thanks Natalia for that question. Okay, so here we are. I've seen quite a few questions about the portfolio. I think it's one of the most common recommendations for [00:19:00] people coming into the field is to work on that portfolio.

But let's hear from you. What role does an applicant's portfolio play in the hiring process? 

Tara Coulson: Like I said, we've had applicants whose resumes have gotten them in without a portfolio, so I can't say that 100% you have to have a portfolio to get in. It's certainly a leg up. I always look at the candidate's portfolio if it's listed on the resume.

And I guess what I'm looking for and probably what other colleagues I've talked to are looking for is a variety of experience. Honestly, if you're going to a big company a big corporate company and even medium to small companies, they already have the look and feel they're going after, they have templates that you can use.

So it's not that we're looking so much for that kind of thing. It's more that you are showcasing different types of learning. From the simplistic, very easy knowledge [00:20:00] transfer type learning to maybe more of a in-depth, interactive type course. I think it sparks something in a hiring manager for me.

 I'm looking at my whole team and seeing gaps and deficiencies where we might be missing something and I might just be sparked to say, oh wow that kind of thing is something we're looking for. So I can't give you 100% this is what your portfolio should look like. [Yeah.] I just think the biggest thing would be different examples, not just all the same type of course with a different color scheme. Does that make sense?

Devlin Peck: Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense. You're saying for your team, when you're hiring people, portfolio isn't a must, if you can build that credibility with the resume, with those specific projects they've worked on, but you do look at a portfolio if they have one available.

And particularly if you see a piece that stands out to you, because it's a gap that, maybe a gap on your team, at your company, that's bonus points. It's, okay, they can do that. They can work with this [00:21:00] technology or do this type of experience. [Yeah.] I haven't seen anyone we know do that, so that's a big leg up. 

Tara Coulson: It is. It really is. And I think a lot of hiring managers do that too. They know the projects that are coming to their team over the course of the year. They know who they have in the stable, right? Or on deck to use baseball terminology, right? And then so when they're hiring and looking for new resources, I think we all as hiring managers are looking for, what are the gaps that we're missing that we could actually work from?

I think I saw somebody put a note about graphic designers making the transition to instructional design. That's often something that people overlook, too is, for our part at AWS, we get a lot of crazy architectural diagrams that come to us. Maybe a copy of a copy, a screenshot of a screenshot. And so by the time they get to you, it's totally unusable in the course.

So graphic design can come [00:22:00] in very handy in those situations where you need to take an unusable image and reproduce pieces of it for your course. Those kinds of things are helpful. It's not absolutely necessary because it just takes some legwork to go track down the original somewhere in the company.

It's somewhere. It's just, you got to track it down. So I think that it is helpful to have some of those skills. Not strictly necessary, but yeah. It's helpful. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, I think that was a great example. I'm sure Rich appreciates you answering that. I saw that go by too. Yeah. And then there are a handful of, yeah, graphic designers trying to transition to this space.

And you're just saying that's an example. That's one of those things that if that's a gap missing on your ID team, you might want that person because they can help out other instructional designers with that, [right] to fill that gap. I love it. Okay. Good stuff.

So maybe while we're on the topic of portfolios, I think this is a question a lot of people would want to see answered. Does the content, does the topic of the portfolio piece, matter a ton to you? You're [00:23:00] working in this very technical environment. Would a technical portfolio... would you rather see pieces related to cloud computing? Or could someone do, here's how I taught people how to make a sandwich? Or is it somewhere in between?

Tara Coulson: I think that's a good question. I think it boils down to, at the end of that course, were you able to take whatever the subject matter was and make it something that I actually came out the other end and learned something from?

I don't think it much matters if it's technical or not, because content can change so much. Honestly, we do some soft skills training development too. Totally different than technical training, and in fact, almost a little bit more care has to be put into those courses so you're not sounding condescending or, I think the subject doesn't matter as much as at the end of the day.

I tell you, I've been in this industry a long time and I'm still really impressed when I get to the end of the course and I was like, wow, I stuck with that the whole way. That was pretty awesome. Because [00:24:00] you guys know this, 85% of courses you touch are just knowledge transfer and just click, click, click. And at the end of it, did you retain anything? Not. I'm so impressed when I get to the end of that small amount of courses, and I'm like, I really like this course. And at the end of it, and really the subject doesn't matter, right? It could be some soft skills training I'm required to do as an employee, right? Or it could be some technical in depth training that I need to acquire. Because I'm starting to support a new service, right? I don't know. 

Devlin Peck: No, I love it. Yeah, perfect answer. I see a lot of people, a lot of teachers even, they're like, I don't want to do anything related to teaching. I don't want to do anything related to the classroom.

I don't want people to view me as a teacher, basically. [Yeah.] And not just for that, just other people are always very concerned about the content. And I guess my advice is, always focus on the process you're using, which skill or knowledge gap you're closing, and of course, make sure it's an engaging experience you're saying, so I'm glad you're reiterating that point is, content not so important.

It's more the skills you're using, the outcomes [00:25:00] you're helping produce, and how engaging or memorable it is. 

Tara Coulson: And I'm not going to lie. If you're applying to a high tech company, is it helpful to have a little bit of knowledge about that technology? Absolutely. It's helpful. I cannot lie about that. [Laughs]

Otherwise, every course you go to create, you're going to have to Google a million terms, right? To figure out what it is. But is it necessary? No, because the principles of teaching something are the same, no matter what your topic is. 

Devlin Peck: Great. Okay, good. So I think we answered that portfolio question pretty well.

Okay, great. We have a question about Joe Stubenrauch, the academic turned curriculum developer that you hired, who we previously did a question and answer with. [Sure, sure] I think we loved that session. And I don't think I mentioned that at the beginning, but yeah, Tara is the woman who literally hired Joe. So it's just a great follow up.

And, yeah, I don't know if you can even talk about this, I know Joe is curious, but I don't know if - is that something you can talk about or answer? 

Tara Coulson: You know what I would say, and I would say this about [00:26:00] every employee I hire, what is so good about Joe and the other people on my team is they're really passionate about joining my team and what they can bring to it, and I love that.

Devlin Peck: You guys saw, if you saw Joe's interview, you could see that. He was very interested in getting into a technical space and really doing this kind of training development, and it showed. He did a lot of homework beforehand. And in his interview, it's shown in like every answer to every question. He knew, and it was just well thought out and he was well prepared, but more than just the knowledge and the ability to answer, his actual passion for that role.

And I would say most of the people that we end up hiring on our team end up having that little bit of spark of, I'm curious about your company and I want to be part of it. And I want to, showcase the skills that I have in this team, and that just always makes a huge difference for me.[00:27:00] A lot of times we get people coming to apply for a job that I would say are not sure about the job, or I can't even say it in a nice way, but the idea of them doing the job hasn't hit their passions yet.

And you can see that totally comes through as not as interested, maybe. 

Or not excited about it, maybe. 

Tara Coulson: And that definitely does make a difference. So I would say any company, I said before, do a little bit of research and get excited about some of the projects they're doing. Bring up something that you saw on their website and be like, yeah, that was a cool project.

And I would, I'd really like to hear more. And I think that... everybody wants that, right? Even in your personal life, right? You want to feel like people you're engaging with are excited about what you do. I think that's just a big plus. 

Devlin Peck: Nice. I don't think, I don't think that's the answer where we were expecting. It's, oh, his portfolio was really good. Or this one project or, oh, his resume. And it's maybe those pieces. You need that evidence that they can actually perform in the role, but you're saying, what made Joe stand out, what [00:28:00] makes all these people stand out, is that spark, that, excitement, that passion for the role, what you do, and they're like, ready to get involved and get going. Nice. 

Tara Coulson: The curiosity about it, right? 

Devlin Peck: Love it. Good response. So, I think we've probably already answered this next question pretty well, but it's about what role an applicant's formal instructional design experience plays in the hiring process. And it sounds like you want to see that experience either highlighted on a portfolio or a resume.

We want the specifics of what the person did in that role. And that's a key piece. You need to see some evidence of them performing. [Yeah] Okay. 

Tara Coulson: And I would just follow that up with saying if you're talking about formal experience, I am not going down your resume saying, do you have a degree in instructional design? If not, this job is not for you. I don't think that's the case. Really, what you said Devlin is exactly right. Show me evidence in jobs that you've done before where you have used these instructional design practices to create training that weighs more than a formal instructional [00:29:00] design degree in a lot of cases. I won't say every case.

Devlin Peck: Sometimes, I said, we have a particular job that absolutely needs a particular skill set, and we will be focused in on that. But I would say 50 or more percent of our jobs are more general. As long as you have the ability to do training development, learning experience development, it doesn't really matter what your formal degree is. And I'll stand up and tell you right now I have a degree in history. So, yeah. [Laughs] 

Nice, yeah. So that plays into the next question. It's about what role the applicants education plays. And it sounds like you're saying as long as you can do the job, that's what's important here. And I think that's probably relieving to a lot of people because we see so much aspiring instructional designers getting so frustrated. Every single job is asking for five years of experience, three plus years of experience.

[Yeah.] I'm sure the AWS job postings say that too, but it's more, do you have three to five years of experience? Maybe not necessarily as instructional designer, but [00:30:00] developing this skill set that will be useful in this curriculum development or ID role. 

Tara Coulson: Yeah, and I said before, don't discount the project management experience that you have that you may not be thinking about in those terms too, because that also plays into your entire work experience, right?

So oftentimes, you guys are all having a little side conversation about how to get past the actual recruiter's tracking system. That's a whole another, you should do something on that Devlin, because there's a whole science behind that as well, I think. But they are looking for keywords in that to get your resume past that.

So I would say, just those little tweaks to your resume to get those PM hot words in there, deadlines, stakeholders those budgets, and things that. I think that would do a lot. And then of course, instructional design keywords as well. Just tweak that resume just a little bit and you should be able to get past those.

Networking obviously is a huge thing too. If you happen to know [00:31:00] somebody at the company where you're applying, or they're in your wider network, huge. That's a huge plus as well. 

Devlin Peck: And is that because they can basically refer you to the right person and it bumps your resume in front of their eyes essentially?

Tara Coulson: It can do that, but more, it's your coworker or colleague or whatever would know, okay, I know your history. You would do great in this job. [Yeah] I think they can help you pinpoint, especially in a large company where there's so many jobs open if you know somebody there, they can help pinpoint the ones that they know your skill set would be a benefit for.

Devlin Peck: Great. And then maybe bypassing the applicant tracking system. Is that not as important or maybe not even necessary when you do have someone there who can refer you to the right place?

Tara Coulson: Honestly, I get a mix of just automatically assigned from the applicant tracking system resumes and internal referral resumes.

I get a good mix of those in mine. It's not all one or the other. So I don't say you're out if you don't know anybody at the company. I said, just [00:32:00] those keywords in your resume will help you get past the rules around that ATS system. 

Devlin Peck: But if you don't know anyone at the company and your resume isn't optimized, then you're out of luck. 

Tara Coulson: Right. 

Devlin Peck: Okay. Thank you for that. Okay, here's a different question from Nirali. How important is it to know tools like Articulate360 or Adobe Captivate when you're trying to break into the space as an ID?

Tara Coulson: Yeah. So there's probably four or five top products on the marketplace now that, you can switch between them very easily. Their feature set is very similar. Very. So if you know Adobe Captivate, but the company you're going to does Storyline, it's easy. You won't have any problem at all making that switch over. I would say it's very important to know one though, because really a lot of hiring managers are looking at their own deadlines. For example, we just released our Q2 roadmap. So we know in Q2 we have things we have to get done and have [00:33:00] deadlines to meet. So if I'm looking at candidates that have zero experience in the top four or five development tools versus candidates that have experience in those tools, it does weigh heavily.

It does,, because you're looking at the ramp up time and can I get this person effective in their job faster so that we can meet the deadlines that we've promised our stakeholders, right? I think that's why people ask for the tools, because they're actually looking at their own promised deliverables and how you will help meet that.

And knowing some of those tools is critical. Do you have to know them all? No. Pick one or two. All of them are easy to learn. They all have 30 day free trials nowadays. Articulate has a great community website. I haven't been on Captivate in a while. They used to have a community of people as well.

We use Storyline in house, [00:34:00] but, other Amazon groups use Lektora. Other ones use Captivate. It just depends on really what they're going for and the outcome of what they're trying to achieve with the content. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, that makes sense. And yeah, I think that's more generally the question, like, how important is it to know an e learning authoring tool?

And it sounds very important, and I think that's what we see across the industry and most, at least in these roles where you will be also touching the development side of things, they want people who have some experience in the tool to minimize that ramp up time. And I think when people are coming from the classroom, that is usually the biggest gap is the technical side of things.

People aren't really using those tools in the classroom. So yeah, worthwhile to learn an authoring tool it sounds like. [It is]. Almost necessary for most roles. [Yeah.] Good stuff. Okay, another question from Natalia. What are some soft skills that instructional designers should cultivate? And I would imagine, to stand out maybe in the hiring process [00:35:00] and to excel in the role.

Tara Coulson: Yeah, this is a good question, Devlin, because even in my own history, it took me a while to get comfortable speaking out in meetings and speaking in public. I said, I came from a technical writing background, which tends to be very solo. Instructional design can be like that too. You can get down in the weeds developing courses, and you're not really reaching out to your coworkers, your colleagues. And I would say a soft skill to have is just the ability to communicate across the company, different levels of people, managers, peers. I think that can't be understated because if you're going to be handed a project, you're expected to go run with it and actually engage the people that know the most about the product.

And that's a hard thing to develop on the fly. So I would say as a soft skill, practice that. Join in with networking groups, user groups, whatever you can do to start [00:36:00] making those inroads if you haven't already. It is a hard thing to learn and it took me a lot of years to get out of that mode of just emailing people and not reaching out for help.

I've been surprised at a number of meetings where I thought I was the only one developing some really cool idea. Turns out like two other people on the larger team I'm part of, were also looking at that. And if I'd just taken a minute to just do a quick poll with my colleagues and peers about that, we could have had a stronger presentation together than diluted apart.

And so a soft skill there is just relationship building and communication. Another soft skill that can be underplayed is having a little bit of backbone. Instructional designers tend to get in this mode of, I'm not the content expert, so this guy can tell me what to do and give me directives.

But in actuality, a lot of hiring managers, myself included, are looking for [00:37:00] you to be a consultative partner with these groups in your company. We are the experts on learning. You should be able to stand up and say, that's not the way that course needs to go. And here's why people don't learn much out of an hour long course. It'd be much better to have 15 micro learning courses instead, or something like that. I mean, I'm just pulling something out of my head now. But you take something that there's research behind, we know, we've all heard, and be able to stand up and offer that as a solution because a lot of times stakeholders are really just looking for the checkmark. Okay, we did this. We have been asked by the state to do this legal type of training, sexual harassment training, whatever, right? And they're just looking at it as a checkmark. And in actuality, we could provide a much better experience for the learner faster, right? And yeah, so I think that's a good skill to have too, is [00:38:00] a little bit of backbone, be able to negotiate around somebody's insistence upon a way that you know is not right for a learner, right? 

Devlin Peck: Love it. So, number one, don't operate in a bubble. Get comfortable with reaching out to people, collaborating, bringing people into the fold, breaking down those silos, essentially.

Great. And then the second point I wouldn't have thought of, but yeah, that sounds so important, right? Someone says, upload this PowerPoint to the LMS or whatever it is. It's, let's stop for a second. Let's talk about this. Let's talk about how we can make this into an actual good learning experience. [Exactly.]

And I see people make that mistake a lot with subject matter experts, like newer instructional designers. They're asking the subject matter expert, what should this be exactly? Okay, okay. I'll deliver on that. But it's like, you worded it perfectly, right? You are the expert on learning. You need to lead this charge, essentially, and know when to stand up for yourself and for the project. I love it. 

Tara Coulson: And somebody just put it in there. Always create for the learner, not the SMEs. It's so true. And that's the tagline these days. Customer obsession [00:39:00] is so key. And that's who your customer is. Not this guy over here saying, put my content in the LMS, right?

Devlin Peck: Yeah, thank you, Alyssa, for wording that so succinctly. Alright. Okay, so let's move on to the next question. The next question is from Sharif. I think we answered this one. How do you view educational background versus work experience when considering a new candidate? We just want to see that they have the skills.

They can do the job. [Right.] That's the bottom line here. However they're building that credibility and authority. It sounds like education is not sufficient. If they just have a degree and they're not showing that they've actually done these things on real roles, probably not going to be eligible for the position.

Tara Coulson: It all depends on if you have a junior role versus a senior role. We expect to have people just coming out of a formal education into the workplace. Early career people, right? And we try to get those. We don't always get the ability to have it in our team, but the larger Amazon for sure tries to do that.

Devlin Peck: And the [00:40:00] last company I was with also tried to do that as well. Have jobs that allow you to gain that experience. Experience on the job. Don't be afraid to apply, I guess is my bottom line. Just because you may be early career versus, or you're maybe early in your switch, right, to this career. Yeah, I wouldn't be afraid to apply. 

Okay. Good addition here. Okay, so Kennedy is asking for recent instructional design graduates, is there anything that can substitute a lack of formal work experience in ID? What can we do to demonstrate that we're capable of completing the job when work experience is not extensive?

Tara Coulson: That's a great question too. I would say there, take all the project work you were assigned in your formal education and turn that into, when I worked on Project X, this is how I approached it, kind of thing. Instead of thinking of it as an assignment you were given in school, think of it as a real world [00:41:00] project you were assigned and just speak of it in those terms.

I think that can be key on your resume as well. Of course, all the work you did to turn in for those can be part of your portfolio. And hopefully you're getting a varied experience across different genres and different business types and whatever in your formal education. So that will show your breadth of being able to cover a lot of different types of material.

Devlin Peck: That's what I did in my master's program. Every class assignment I was like, how can I turn this into a portfolio project? I'm not saying, oh, I did this as a class assignment. I'm like, I did this for this audience who had this skill gap, and this is how I'm approaching it.

Great opportunities there. Class projects. How can we just maybe reframe this into something more real world? Love it. [Totally.] Okay, so a question from Amy. What are some of the quickest ways an instructional designer can show that they are right for the job once they've been hired? So key distinction here. We've got the role. What can we [00:42:00] start doing now that we have the role to show? So like basically not make people second guess their decision. Maybe we shouldn't have hired this person. 

Yeah, I think that's an interesting question and I don't 

Tara Coulson: necessarily know how I handle that. We actually have a formal mentoring and onboarding process.

So you're already starting to do things for your job during that process. It's all built in and woven in. And I think probably a lot of larger companies have something similar, a little bit of an onboarding process that you're going through. But once you're out of that, I think ask a lot of questions. Don't just sit and take, okay, these are the assignments I'm given, ask questions about them ask who you can meet. Who are these stakeholders that are asking for us to create training in this team?

I think those are really good inquisitive things. The more you can learn about the business, obviously, the more value you're going to add to it. Just don't wait for the assignments to keep rolling in. I would just get out there and see who you can meet and [00:43:00] how you can begin networking. And yeah, curiosity. How you can have that learn and be curious attitude, right? 

Devlin Peck: Exactly, yeah. And that's where it seems that passion, that excitement comes into it. It's okay, I'm here now. What else can I do on top of just the orders that are coming down to me? What can I do to learn more about the company, learn how I can make a bigger impact. It seems it's all coming down to that initiative, that self direction. It seems that's important at least in companies like Amazon AWS. 

Tara Coulson: Being a self starter, being curious about what the business does, being curious about the end customer, the end learner that the company is going after. Yeah, absolutely. 

Devlin Peck: Great. So here's a question from Kimberly. In addition to higher education, which Joe transitioned from, are there other fields that you've seen ID candidates successfully transition from? So that's good. What is the array of backgrounds that people are coming into these roles with? 

Tara Coulson: Yeah, I'm trying to think of the people I've worked with. Honestly, a lot of people fall into training because they become an expert in the [00:44:00] products that you're working with. And ultimately that's what the customer wants.

Devlin Peck: An expert on site teaching them this product or an expert teaching a flywheel effect, right? Experts creating more experts within the company. I think a lot of times people fall into training from other places because of their knowledge and expertise around products or services or processes that the company is invested in.

A lot of people on my team do have formal training backgrounds, either instructor led or eLearning development or some kind of instructional design background, but there are people that made that transition, especially on my larger team that, just from varied backgrounds, I can't even pinpoint they came from one place or another.

Anybody can get into the training background if you have a passion for it. You have a passion to see people develop and learn. I don't think it really matters where you were working before, if you can showcase that[00:45:00] ability to help people learn and develop. 

 Yeah, again, it seems a lot of people they're building this expertise, somehow, in whatever role it is, they land in this position where they're creating some kind of learning experience.

And then they're like, oh, I found out that I love that, and now I learned, after research, I realized there's a whole field where that's all I can do. Yeah. Now I'm interested in that. 

And like you said, people are coming from all over the place. It's usually expertise or falling into some kind of role where you're building some kind of training material. 

Exactly. 

Tara Coulson: A couple of people on my team actually saw a need at their previous companies for onboarding. They saw there's no real good onboarding experience for these new hires coming in and ended up creating something because their manager was like, yeah, that's a wonderful idea, right?

And you're right. They suddenly realizedk I really enjoyed that and I saw the outcome, and I think that's what really gets all most of us in this learning space jazzed up, right? Is to see somebody succeed because of something they learned from you, right? [Yep] Really, 

That's cool. [00:46:00] 

Devlin Peck: That's what it's all about. I agree. Kimberly again is asking, how would you describe Amazon's corporate environment and the person that thrives there? I think we've emphasized that. 

Tara Coulson: Yeah, and I don't think Amazon is unique in that. Honestly, I think a lot of companies are looking for that same thing too.

Devlin Peck: Yeah. I agree. Okay, so a question from Nicole. When a candidate doesn't meet the requirements exactly, what do you look for to fill the gap? And I think you may have mentioned that passion piece, but is there anything else you want to add? 

Tara Coulson: Yeah, and honestly, the two things that You must have some kind of background in for the jobs that I fill now are, you have to have instructional design and PM, but I could make a trade off if you're weaker in one but stronger in the other. Obviously there's plenty of training out there that can help develop either of those skill sets, mentoring, internal, things like that.

So oftentimes, that's where we make the trade off is, we see a real strength in this one area, maybe not so [00:47:00] much of a strength in the other area, but we're willing to make that trade off because again, you have in the back of your mind all these projects and deadlines and things that you promised to leadership and stakeholders. You can see where maybe one of those two skills would really come into play in a certain project or program that is going to be trying for a goal this year, for example. 

Devlin Peck: That makes sense. Okay, so there are some must haves. If you have the must haves and you're excited about the role, even better, but yeah, it's okay if someone's a little weaker in one of those must haves and stronger in the other because you'll help bring the weaker side up. [Absolutely.] Okay. 

So let's see here. So a question from Heather. I don't know how much you can get into this, but Heather's question is, what types of questions would you ask an aspiring instructional designer in an interview, same with eLearning developer?

I know like Amazon, the interview is very clearly defined, right? Or the...[00:48:00] 

Tara Coulson: Yeah. Most HR organizations and companies will have things that you must ask, right? [Yeah.] And you must find out. So every company that you interview with is gonna have some must have list that you have to get through.

But honestly, what we're looking for is your process. From idea to implementation, what does your process look like for creating training, for enhancing a learning object, whatever it is, in this case, curriculum development, if we're talking about that, what does it look like to develop a course? You see a need in the company. What does it look like from seeing that need to implementing it? As long as you can talk through that in a way that resonates, I think, and is clear to the hiring manager you're definitely a leg up there. 

Devlin Peck: Yeah, I think that's a great thing to add here. It's like, how are you bringing us from A to Z? And then I can imagine that question would be really, very revealing about someone's understanding [00:49:00] of instructional design and what role they play in the process. 

Tara Coulson: It is, and we tend to do a lot of offshoot questions and answers off of that one type of question, right?

Devlin Peck: Everybody that you interview with is going to ask it in a different way, but at the end of the day, they want to know, tell me about this. Some jobs require you to do a work sample and submit it as part of the interview process, and they'll ask you about that. Hey, what prompted you to do it, to choose that type of course, versus just a linear course, or something. Those kinds of questions, really. We're trying to pick apart your thought process and what you bring to the table. Can you clearly take me from idea to implementation? 

Yeah, that makes so much sense, right? Okay I think that brings us right to time. Thank you, Tara. I think this was super helpful for everyone here. I imagine you're already getting many LinkedIn requests.

I know you don't have a lot of time these days, but is it okay for people to connect with you there? 

Tara Coulson: Oh, sure. Yeah, guys, reach out. I [00:50:00] can't promise you I'll be right on. Absolutely. 

Devlin Peck: That's all we can ask for. Yeah, thank you, Tara.

Tara Coulson: You guys are great. Thank you so much and I hope in some way I've helped. I can't wait to hear about all your successes in your job hunt and finding that perfect position for yourself.

Devlin Peck: Yeah, you've definitely helped. Thanks for taking the time out of your busy day [sure] and I'll see everyone around, and thanks Tara. We'll talk soon. 

Tara Coulson: Alright.

Devlin Peck: Bye bye, everybody. 

Tara Coulson: Great.