quote:

Originally posted by KaliKo:

quote:

Originally posted by flashfly:
Hi everyone,

My company is looking to hire a new instructional designer. This person may be someone with little to no experience, perhaps someone right out of college.

Why on earth is your company so willing to hire someone to do ID who knows nothing about it????? This is precisely the reason that IDs have a bad reputation in the training industry, and precisely the reason this discussion board is so filled with questions that reflect no reasoning whatsoever from people who want others to do their work for them!

No wonder training departments are the first to be let go in tough times and are not considered valued staff. And it should be this way as long as companies are content to hire people who are bound to be problems once hired since they can produce nothing and take up an inordinate amount of someone else's time to "show them the ropes."

I saw on another forum a post from a woman whose husband thought he could easily do his wife's job - ID. The truth is - he CAN! There are obviously no prerequisite skills or knowledge required.

Writing skills are the least of it. What about critical thinking skills. Again, this is obviously lacking in the "profession."

KaliKo -

We are NOT looking to hire someone who knows nothing about training and ID just to get by on the cheap. Believe me, I hate it when people assume anyone can do my job!

The thing is the rest of our department is made up of experienced IDs, so we are willing to bring in someone out of college who may have a degree in a related field but no experience - someone who wants to learn. We would like to find someone who is trainable and has the base skills we can develop. We ALL had to get our start somewhere... at one time, none of us had ID experience and were fortunate enough for someone to take a chance on us, right? That is the purpose of the writing test (or whatever it ends up being) in the interview - to help us choose the right person to mentor. I hope this makes sense.

Thank you to those who provided suggestions. Traveler - I like the idea of having the interviewee critique some training materials! If anyone else has suggestions, please keep them coming.

quote:

Originally posted by travelerjjm:
LPC, I think you and I agree that the OP needs someone with writing skills -- that's why I proposed a sample. I also think a good IDer needs to be able to review/update/edit/redesign/etc. existing courseware. It has been a big part of my ID work.

Traveler, this sounds like exactly what we need our new person to be able to do. They will primarily be reviewing, updating, and redesigning with the help of a more experienced ID overseeing the project. We need someone who can help us out with some smaller projects right now, but can also grow into a strong ID to take on his or her own large projects down the road.

Excellent written communication is extremely important. If our new person has this, along with a strong desire to learn the field and natural ability, then we are willing to invest in him or her.

I suggest requiring submission of a short instructional piece (perhaps on a topic related to your industry) and have the candidates present not the actual piece (as it should speak for itself), but an explanation of the process they used to develop it. Maybe even have them provide different versions (first draft, second draft, final version?)

It sounds like you want someone who "gets" what ID is, just may not have extensive experience yet.

When hiring an ID, I do a two part interview. In the first part, I use behavioral interview questions targeting core skills I am looking for. The second part of the interview is a timed activity. I give them a document that contains mostly knowledge level content. I load all the MS Office applications on a computer and give them 45 minutes to turn the blob-of-content into a short training module. They can choose to use Word, PP, Excel, Publisher or any combo.

I give all candidates the same amount of time, from first reading the material to "mouse down" is 45 minutes.

While they are doing that, I sit in another room and review the portfolio I have them bring.

You can learn a LOT about someone's MS Office skills and about their ability to organize, synthesize, and present some basic material in a short period of time.

You can also gain insight into any intuitive "ID" stuff-- like only 1 of 4 candidates put some good objectives in their slide, most did only "bullet points" but some did graphics and animation.

Really, this was a very beneficial exercise in selecting the candidates who we ultimately hired.