So What Does a Good Instructional Designer Do?
Tips from Top Instructional Design Company
The question of whether to hire a contract instructional designer or go with a full-time resource is one that learning leaders ponder every time a new training need arises.
There are plus points to both sides.When hiring full time specialists, you have a team member who may be able to help with multiple projects and lend assistance whenever needed. You also have great team cohesion with someone that is part of the organization working with the same team day in and out.
But in situations where you have a large upcoming training initiative that needs to be done quickly with a dedicated expert, having a contract instructional design specialist come in may be the better answer.
If you’re part way through the year and can’t get approval for the budget to bring on a new full-time person, going external is a great option as well.
If you’re trying to execute a one-off training program requiring subject matter experience that may be beyond your internal team’s capability, again a consultant may be the way to go.
Milestones change and when you need the flexibility to scale up and down quickly without wasting time and money on idle time, working with a contract learning professional is the better option.
How to find the right contract instructional designer.
Finding the best-fit instructional design specialist for your organization’s culture, size, industry, and unique project needs is not always easy.
When recruiting for the role, your internal team needs to understand the nuances involved with the job. This is not always possible when an HR team is busy finding your resource along with 10 others for the company.
The hiring manager or learning team leaders also need to know what the new instructional designer is going to be doing for the project and what key skills are required. Weeding these out in an interview process is sometimes easier said than done.
Working with an external training company with experience in the staffing world can significantly help you with your search. Not only can they find the right fit for your role profile but typically have a great network that you can leverage with one simple point of contact. Plus, once the new hire is on board, you don’t have to worry about the administrative or onboarding costs involved with a full-time hire-something to think about!
What is the Instructional Designers Job?
Once you have your contract systems designer in place it’s time to ensure that you get exactly what you should expect. While it is correct to state that your instructional designer essential designs the instructional materials required for your learning initiative, they do much more. A good designer helps your employees to further learn and develop their abilities by helping them to make sense of all the materials and resources that are part of the learning initiative.
If you find the right fit when hiring your contract instructional designer, they will become an integral extension of your learning team.
Starting at step one, they will be able to conduct a full training needs assessment of your current training requirements. Where are the gaps in skills of your employees or is the issue with knowledge? Through this important process, you’ll be able to gain critical insight into the real issues that your learning solution will address.
If you’re in need of a new or stronger eLearning presence when it comes to your corporate learning and development, the contact designer has you covered as well. If however, the goal is to have microlearning in place for an upcoming initiative and your learners are all uncomfortable with technology, this is not going to be the best option for you. Your instructional design specialist will be able to quickly assess and recommend another modality better suited to the learners. Identifying target audiences and providing real world experiences through the overall learning experience is key. Effective learning will be based on your designer's ability piece all these things together.
They will also clearly define your learners and their needs. If you’re going to be tackling sales enablement, you’ll want to consider the schedules of the teams that are going to require the training. What happens if you must shut down the sales team to conduct in-class training over an extended period of days? Maybe in this case a shorter in-class training program supported by eLearning may be the right choice. These are all aspects that your designer is going to be able to advise you on.
It then comes down to the actual training program. What are you going to including in your content and how are you going to deploy the training? It is the job of your instructional designer to pinpoint the learners, their learning styles and the overall content that needs to resonate with them. From there, they can design the best program to achieve engagement and optimal results.
Because the right hire is your subject matter expert, learning leaders can take a breather while designers focus on the more effective messaging and the most engaging delivery. Whether its in-class, a hybrid delivery or strictly eLearning, the contract training professional that you hire will ensure that it is the best mode to achieve learning objectives.
Once defined, a clear process is implemented and ensures that all relevant stakeholders are part of the communications process in the design process. This helps a lot of organizations with the fear that bringing in a contract hire will leave them in the dark. A good contract designer will always have relevant parties in the loop.
The last part of the instructional design process will include observing learners with the course material and experience and following up with them on what they thought of it. Evaluating understanding and retention post learning event is also an important part of the job.
Finding your next instructional designer is a click away! Working with TrainingFolks for your upcoming contact hire is easy and hassle-free. With a network of over 30,000 global learning professionals we’re able to find the best suited individuals for your company and learning project. Contact us today and our senior recruitment team can begin your search. Reduce downtime, eliminate poor results and increase employee-centric training that works. We also have the expertise to help not only with design but development as well.
