I'm new to training, having only officially worked in it three years. I love being a presenter but I have been told maaaany times by people that presenting is such a small part of training- and not the most lucrative. I believe my strength lies in technical skills curriculum design- i.e. Microsoft Office training- but when I tried to develop a workbook based on Steven Covey's 8th habit, I blanked out. My title is a training administrator and the aspect of my current job that I don't enjoy as much anymore is the adminstrative part. I started my career as an administrative assistant, asked and started conducting 1 class, was assigned to teach other classes, and that's basically how I evolved to where I am now. I feel like I'm still an administrative assistant who also trains. Some tasks I don't mind like creating a student tracking database and running reports, but I find the actual clerical part of my job very unfulfilling (filing, data entry, correspondence, etc.) because I've done that so long. Basically, I informally serve as a supervisor, giving tasks to the support staff, but the way my current job description reads, I manage tasks/projects, not people.

Qualifications for trainers vary from organization to organization. Some just want you to take prepared materials and present it and others expect you to be able to design them yourself. Some organizations even need you to be able to produce needs assessments and return on investment reports all at the trainer level, not at a managerial level like Training Coordinator or Director of Training. Is there a such thing a supervisory level under a training director/coordinator who supervises the clerical support and possibly other trainers? The reason I'm asking is because I've been with my current agency so long and the structure has been pretty small (coordinator and support staff to begin with and now coordinator, adminstrator, and 2.5 support staff) that I'm really not clear how other organizations operate. Besides my elementary education degree and ocassional train the trainer classes, I have never taken a course in the field of adult education. How have people staked out a career path when they morphed into training rather than studying in that field from the beginning?

Icy, Ask the question Where do I want to be in
5 years? Then write out your dream job description. Validate by joining your local ASTD
chapter and networking and looking on the employment boards here on ASTD's website.

Nero

Nero is right - I've been trainig for 5 years now and I've gained a lot from this ASTD website, along with my local ASTD chapter. I've used the ASTD job board to research types of training jobs, salaries, and the qualifications & experience hiring managers are looking for. I've also ordered some wonderful training books from ASTD, along with Infolines which are short articles on specific training subjects (dealing with difficult students, planning a training budget, etc.). Next year I'm planning to take one of the ASTD certification programs and attend the conference in Dallas - you might consider taking one of the certification programs in instructional design since that's something you obviously want to learn more about.

Good luck!

Training and Development departments are usually quite small. In order to have a manager of training and then a personnel supervisor you'd either have to have a large company or a T&D company.

From what you're saying (and lord know's I'm probably mis-interpreting) you would like to work where T&D falls under the HR department.

This is a situation where T&D is a part of HR. The heirarchy usually is Director of HR, Training Supervisor, Trainers. But even in that situation, you're going to run into the "it depends" rule.

All HR directors are different. Some micro-manage and you might end up back in the filing routine. Some are entirely hands off and you'll be managing the department. It really does depend on the organization.

Any management position is going to have an admistrative aspect to it, though. If something needs to be done, it usually falls to the manager to take care of it. It seems that you're at a crossroads in the training career - do you want to become a full time trainer, or do you want to manager trainers.

quote:

If something needs to be done, it usually falls to the manager to take care of it.

And good managers know how to delegate. :-)