So many of my colleagues in L&D that I talk to would say that they basically “fell into the role.” And it makes sense. People in all kinds of careers don’t actually start out on their final career path. Perhaps a talent was identified that was compatible with a company’s need. Or maybe someone setting off down one career path was exposed to another and thought “You know what? I didn’t even know that career existed, but now that I see it, it just might be for me!”
More often than not, when someone switches careers, there is a formal onboard into their new role. But that wasn’t the case for me or most of the people in L&D I’ve worked with. Instead, I could say my onboarding took nearly seven years and was anything but formal.
My degree is in music education. I spent many years teaching saxophone, but struggled to make enough of a living to not have to face the music (see what I did there) and get a corporate job. Less than a year after this, our L&D team, which was comprised almost entirely of SMEs who’d been identified as having an aptitude for training others took part in an Articulate “boot camp” for three days. But we had a new hire class going so I was chosen to fill in for the facilitator because I’d had prior teaching experience. At the end of the three days, the facilitator came back and quizzed the class. Impressed with his findings, I was asked to finish the class and then did the class after that. Then, it was “Hey, can you create a job aid on ‘xyz’?” and later on, “Hey, this is Articulate Storyline. Can you figure out how to use it and make a short e-learning on ‘zyx’?” Before too long, most of my time was spent working with the L&D team in one capacity or another. I’d become one of the “almost entirely SME” L&D resources I’d mentioned earlier.
And I say “L&D resources” because that what we were. We weren’t officially on the L&D team in a role like “facilitator” or “instructional designer.” We officially were in entry level roles as a resource L&D would borrow for extended periods of time. And I loved it! I loved it much more than my core role, which was basically the stable corporate job I could get when I went to school for something entirely different. But L&D allowed me to teach and do what I’d loved doing in the past, just with an entirely different subject matter and entirely different audience. And course design and creation allowed me to be creative, the way I could be with music.
Luckily, I’m very good with computer software, having grown up a computer nerd who’d programmed little games in BASIC when I was in middle school. I was able to pick up things like the Articulate Suite and video editing faster than others. I learned through whatever the need of the company was rather than anything formal and comprehensive. I had mentors but never a true L&D professional until after several years, when a life-long L&D professional was hired as the L&D team’s new manager. By then I had been moved onto the L&D team officially and through showing the evolution of my work and the overwhelming and loud support of the team members that brought me on as an L&D resource years before, was named an Instructional Designer. It was at this point, with a fully trained and experienced L&D professional at the helm of my team, that I finally learned about needs analysis, design documents, and all the ADDIE and iterative development processes. Intentional instructional design rather than flying by the seat of my pants.
You might ask, why did this onboarding last year? I feel like it’s pretty simple. It comes down to corporate resources: time and money. Plenty of L&D teams are short on both when compared to deliverable expectations. I’ve known people that were the entire L&D team by themselves. I was lucky during all that time to have a partner to work with on my particular product. But it doesn’t replace a team that can share expertise, QC each other’s work and maintain processes that are proven successful. Often when time and money are short, to get the job done, the company looks at what they have and goes with the best they’ve got, even if it’s someone without L&D experience. This works to varying degrees but is difficult to exceed what a team of professionals can do. That’s why companies often opt to partner with a company like Lumious whose whole business is L&D – be it our Cisco training, professional development, or custom L&D content. In fact, my time with the company I got my L&D start with came to a close when they went the direction of working with an L&D specialist company much like Lumious instead of keeping full time instructional designers on staff.
In the end, I find myself a part of Lumious’ team with others who were the very best that resulted from the corporate “who can we find that might have a talent for L&D” roulette wheel all working together to produce content I couldn’t have dreamt of in my early L&D years and I couldn’t be happier for it, or for my journey.
