E-learning is mounting like a bubble (that will not burst soon) and thus Instructional Designers (IDs) are becoming the most sought-after professionals in the market. And, why not? Instructional Designing is not merely a task or an acquired skills but a knowledge and competence level that is desired by many but attained by a few.
This is why, every e-learning company is investing big in recruiting, training and utilising the best available IDs. And every company needs to justify this investment by making profits. So basically, you cannot afford to go wrong when making choices while picking best IDs from the lot (if 'Fired' is not your pet word).
Though I haven't attended many interviews but from whatever I've gathered from my gang is that almost every interviewer talks about Gagne and Blooms. And if you can sell them all this, you are ‘IN’ (to) your dream company baby! Congratulations on your new job!
But, I'm not sure whether to greet the company as well.
Let's stop getting impressed by the use of heavy ID terminologies like 'approach', 'strategy', 'application', 'cognitive' and the list is long!
In addition to the history of e-learning and on-the-job experience, what will make a good instructional designer is the thirst to explore and the urge to remain updated.
How many of your IDs know about e-learning 2.0, web 2.0, on-the-demand learning, rapid instructional design, how to incorporate wikis and create interactive e-case studies...
You can ask your managers to create and maintain a checklist that IDs in their team need to update for recent industry developments (check my blog post: Expectations from an Instructional Designer - Checklist) and then once in a month, organise a discussion session on the same. You can also encourage employees to contribute by awarding the best entry.
With cost becoming an important factor for both you and your client, it's extremely essential that your IDs deliver the most apt product collaborated with the latest tools and technology. To attain this knowledge, it’s more essential for them to know what's happening around than what happened a century ago.
Quickly listing the key questions that I think are important to ask your IDs while interviewing them:
1. Which ID strategies have you used to deliver ROI to the client?
2. List the three most common instructional designing flaws you saw in a developed course(s).
2a. At what stages did you observe them?
2b. What measures did you took to bring forward the flaws?
2c. Does anything changed - any learning took place - for you and others?
3. As an ID, how do you keep your skills updated? What is your latest discovery?
4. Which 3 books would you recommend to IDs?
5. You are in a situation where your manager proposes an ID approach/standard that you don't agree to. What will you do?
6. Your client is well aware of Instructional Designing. He proposed a strategy and has a pre-defined approach on how he wants you to progress on his course? What will be your next step?
7. Which were the 3 projects in which you think your contribution was instrumental and why?
I'm sure you will have more points to add on.
To all the guys who are recruiting, try these questions out and please let me know if these work or even if they don't work for you.
You can also take this as a questionnaire among your current ID team. I'm sure you'll realise how much is there for you to discover in your employees and unveil their potential or how much is there for you to fill the gap. In either case, you'll be on the winning side. Because here, ignorance is not bliss!
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