Key Instructional Design Interview Questions to Ask

YOUR CORPORATE TRAINING COMPANY

Finding the right Instructional Designer for your organization means finding someone that can think big picture but also see the granular details, work independently but also communicate effectively with SMEs and developers, has the skills to read through in-depth content that can be jargon-heavy but translate it into simpler verbiage that resonates with your larger employee base.

Hiring someone that can do all of this plus has the knowledge of your specific industry or subject matter can be quite the task!What are some key ways to help find the right person for the job?

One of the major issues for many organizations is ensuring that the person that is vetting resumes clearly understands the roles and requirements involved.  In many cases Learning Leaders are only going to see the resumes that come through this person and have been shortlisted.

Taking the time to create a thorough profile of the role can save tons of time and money down the road.  The hiring manager should also meet with the recruiter or human resources contact to walk through this profile, explain additional nuances to consider (cultural fit) and answer and questions. 

If you’re working with an external provider like TrainingFolks on scaling up your team quickly or filling a short-term position, this profile is what will determine the success of matching the right person to your organization as well.  We speak with many clients that have not clearly thought through the position requirements and spend more time tweaking when they could already have someone on board.

Once this is set, the hiring manager should provide a full job description that can be used when posting the position or approaching potential candidates.  Again, it does take some time to do this but without a clear explanation of what is required, how can anyone, internally or externally be tasked with finding the right person for the job?!  Surprisingly many organizations continue to start with a generic overview of an Instructional Designer position and try to hire accordingly.  They find very quickly however, that they’ve poorly scoped the role meaning in some cases that the compensation is wrong, the responsibilities are not complete and the job itself is misleading.

Other easy ways to help the process go smoothly especially if the role is remote, is opening up the hiring process to include virtual interviews.  Providing this option can increase the pool of qualified candidates and make the overall interview process smoother. Additional benefits include:

• Providing a more flexible interview schedule for those that may not be able to travel to the office or are currently in other positions.
• Enable the interviewer to share the video file with hiring managers as well as other team members for review before moving the candidate to the next stage in the process.
• Bring multiple people in on the interview that may have otherwise been unable to all physically meet at the same time.
• A great way to review answers post interview.
• Open up the ability for the interviewee to share some eLearning samples online as well as see how they navigate through the technology required for the call.

If you’re looking for some additional tips on assessing your next Instructional Design candidate download our free interview guide entitled Finding the Right Hire-Assessing Your Next ID.

You can also save tons of time and money by having the corporate training experts at TrainingFolks tap into its global network of over 30,000 professionals to find the right-fit from Instructional Designer I-III quickly.

For Instructional Design Consultants that have the professional experience and desire to work on large projects both in house and remotely, TrainingFolks is a great team to join.  Find out more here.