Why Instructional Designers Need to Use LinkedIn to Build Their Network
Years ago, I received some puzzling career advice that completely changed the trajectory of my life. Back in 2016, I couldn’t seem to break into the instructional design field. I was knocking on the door, but couldn’t get it. At the time, I was working at a university with a perplexing title called, “Creative Resources Manager.” This meant that I developed the resources and online learning communities for the academic support team for around 60,000 students. While I loved many aspects of my role, I wanted to be an ID. Something about this job title fascinated me with being able to design a student’s education. I spoke with several colleagues about how they became IDs and they all gave me some wonderful advice. However, it was two conversations in particular that I couldn’t get out of my head. These were from two colleagues, who I greatly respected and still do to this day, and they told me about the power of leaving my comfort zone to grow. While I always knew about this from a mental perspective of trying to increase my skill set, they meant it as physically leaving my comfortable bubble at my university to think about my career. Don’t just think about the next job or next year. Think about where you want to be in 5 years and go do that now. Learn from other perspectives and take these with you on your journey.
I honestly sat there dumbfounded for the longest time and then was like, okay, it’s time to take action. What do I do first? Luckily for me, I decided to revise my old LinkedIn profile. I updated my bio, education, skill set, and preferences. I figured that a potential employer would probably try to find me on LinkedIn to learn more about me. What I didn’t realize was just how powerful LinkedIn could be. You see, I decided to apply to jobs with a new button at the time called, “Apply with LinkedIn.”
This button pulled my information and auto-populated the fields on the application, which saved quite a bit of time! What I didn’t expect though was that any of my existing connections on LinkedIn would appear after I submitted the application. While scouring the LinkedIn Jobs page, I found an instructional designer job at Northeastern University. The job seemed to match my skill set and I eagerly applied with this LinkedIn button. To my amazement, a former colleague of mine at SNHU worked there and better yet, the ID role was in her department. I reached out to her to learn everything I possible could about Northeastern and what the switch was like from transitioning from one university to another. With this connection, I gained an edge and I knew I would at least have a shot at an interview. Long story short, I made a good enough impression in my interviews to be offered the job. It was at this moment that I realized the power of LinkedIn and how valuable networking truly was.
So this leads into today’s topic, how instructional designers can use LinkedIn to build their network in 2021. As I progressed in my instructional design career, it became apparent to me that I didn’t know enough instructional designers. I knew my inner circle, but I didn’t have a clue what other IDs were practicing or reading about. I began to crave making more relationships with other like-minded individuals and it reached a point where I told my director that one of my professional goals was to meet more IDs. By building this network I didn’t realize the impact it would have on my growth from both a professional perspective, but also from a job-hunting perspective. I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned along the way and whether it’s to help you land a job, find the right connection, build your network, or just to simply make your LinkedIn newsfeed better, I got you covered.
Changing the Algorithm
For years, I just accepted anyone’s request and would add whoever. This always felt weird to me and I wondered why anyone would use this platform. My newsfeed was filled with things I didn’t care about like politics and cat pictures. LinkedIn finally threw me a bone with recommending that I start to add other instructional designers at my university. After connecting with a few of them, the algorithm slowly introduced more IDs into my recommendations and my ID network finally had a foundation. I was baffled to see my newsfeed change from random things like politics and cat pictures to relevant topics pertaining to online learning. Blog posts, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos, and more populated every day and I found myself entrenched in so much nerdy content. I get asked how I stay up to date with trends in the instructional design field and all I need to do now, I just log into LinkedIn and see what my connections are talking about.
Learning About New Instructional Design Jobs
What if I told you the way to find a new job isn’t just through a job recruiting website, but through people? Yes, as my network grew, I started to notice this recurring trend: instructional designers post instructional design opportunities. I would constantly see posts saying something like, “My team is hiring. I’m going to share the job posting as soon as it comes out. Message me for more details!” While I was surprised at first at the number of these posts, this does make a ton of sense. They are the ones who are well aware of what’s happening internally and it’s fairly common for the manager to spread the word before the general public knows. I’ve had many conversations with hiring managers trying to tap into my network to see if I know of candidates looking for specific ID roles. These conversations usually occur before the job posting is even made or released. If you make the right connections, you’ll have a competitive edge.
Finding Instructional Designers
Maybe you are like me from back in the day where you are just starting to build your ID network. Where do you find these fabulous instructional designers? My tip here is to join several ID groups on LinkedIn. If I click on my groups section, these are some of them that pop up:
Instructional Designers in Higher Education
Higher Education Management
EDUCAUSE
Instructional Design Central (IDC)
The ID Newbies
Data-Informed Learning Design
eLearning Industry
I’m also a part of local groups for IDs who used to meet up in person, back when that was a thing. The IDs in these groups are here to share, learn, and grow, just like you. What you’ll notice with looking at these groups too is that they are diverse. From newbie groups, to veteran IDs, to higher ed in general, to corporate, and more, there is a group for every kind of ID topic and it’s great to hear so many perspectives.
If you are a learning nerd, I’d welcome you to join our Facebook group. Yes, this is a blog post about LinkedIn, but many of my awesome ID friends were already on Facebook so it made more sense to create a group for us there. Once again, if you are an ID or aspiring ID, here’s your open invitation to nerd out with us.
The other key part that you need to know with joining these groups is how to act in them. I feel like 2021 is going to be the year when human beings need to relearn social skills. Being in an online group doesn’t mean that you have the right to spam blast your products all day every day. Imagine being in a room with 50 people and instead of starting to mingle and slowly introduce yourself to others, you picked up a megaphone and started to yell into it. That’s what it feels like and chances are, you’ll be muted or blocked shortly thereafter. Once again, think about those human skills that have been buried by Zoom and uncover them. Comment on posts. Ask thought provoking questions. Ask for advice. Provide helpful recommendations and tips (if you are speaking about a topic you are well versed in). Overall, be kind and show a genuine interest.
Searching by Job Title
I actually had no idea this was a feature until someone connected with me this way and I asked how she found me in a sea of thousands of people. I received a message one day from someone who wanted to pursue an EdD at Northeastern University. By typing in EdD and Northeastern University in the search bar, my profile popped up. Even though my EdD is not from NU, my profile still appeared since I was an ID there and I had an EdD. We had a great chat about doctorates in general and I personally knew the team that designed NU’s program so I could speak to details of the program. Later on, I actually used this same tip when it came to trying to connect with more IDs at my own institution. There really wasn’t an easy way to find every single ID across all of MIT, so using the search bar and typing in “Instructional Designer MIT,” managed to pop up people I hadn’t met before. I was able to network with a few of them and discuss best practices and talk more about our positions. It sounds silly, but institutions are massive. There is no easy way to meet everyone in your own school, but this tip can help you connect with the right people.
For those of you that are trying to transition from one job to another, I’d recommend using this tip and seeing if someone would have a type of virtual coffee chat with you. I love what I do and where I work, but hypothetically speaking, if I was going to try to work at a different university, I’d want to connect with someone and get a feel for the organization.
How’s the culture?
What’s leadership like?
Do IDs have a valued say in the decision-making process?
Do you work on a team?
Questions like these can get the conversation going and give you a sense of “is this the right place for me?” Don’t just settle on any kind of ID position. Find the right one for you. I understand that trying to find a job is crazy right now, but you need to find an organization that’s going to treat you with respect and will value your skillset.
Reaching Out to Individuals
Let’s say you have decided to use my last tip and you want to connect to a specific person. How do you do this without being weird and awkward? Honestly, it’s a good question! We’ve all received messages from someone on Linked and were like, “nope. That doesn’t look right. Moving on.” It’s just like introducing yourself at a conference and you’re nervous so you accidentally fumble over your words. The key to this is to act like a genuine person. Let’s look at a real message I received before that made me feel like an actual person was trying to connect with me and not a robot:
This message to me said that she was a normal person with a sense of humor. I remembered her name because she commented on a few of my blog posts before in the past. I wrote back to her and we scheduled a time to talk more about higher education and online learning. We continued to chat and talk about her journey to becoming an ID and I was over the moon thrilled for her when she landed her dream job. Funny enough, she ended up becoming the first member of Instructional Design Institute and her feedback was vital to what it is today. Let’s go back to her message though. She wrote to me as a genuine person coming from the stance of wanting to learn more. There was no sales pitch or hidden intention. Now keep in mind that not everyone will respond to you and that’s okay. Not everyone checks LinkedIn and honestly, LinkedIn could be a full-time job if you let it. I still have unread messages in my inbox that I try to clear later on because I am swamped most days. Just remember my example about how one message turned into a new friendship.
Connecting with Recruiters, Consultants, and Hiring Managers
So far, I’ve talked about connecting with other instructional designers. There is however value in connecting with other folks. Think of recruiters, consultants, and hiring managers. These people are purposefully seeking out the help of instructional designers. By connecting with these folks, you are seeing in real-time the latest job postings for entire organizations or sectors. Connecting with them is also helpful as a reminder of who is hiring and for what role. I’ve been using the term “instructional design” throughout this entire post, but there are many, many jobs that can be classified into the ID category. This will let you find the right ID fit whether this means you fall more on the learning science side or perhaps the tech side or maybe you are accustomed to doing it all.
There is one person in this field though who you need to connect with and this is Eric Domke. To try and help other IDs become more aware of the latest opportunities, I’ve been sharing new job postings that pop up on my feed. Eventually, I realized that many of these opportunities relate back to one of my connections commenting on the postings, making them appear in my feed. And that connection is, as you probably guessed, Eric. Since I’ve connected with Eric, I’ve seen ID positions for Netflix, Disney, Spotify, etc. He’s able to, and still not sure how he does this, track down every ID job and bring them to others attention. Give him a follow or connect with him. You can mention that I sent you over to him.
Well folks, those are my tips for how and why instructional designers need to use LinkedIn. I hope these provided some practical tips for building your network with the right people. If you want to hear more details and how to use another powerful tool called, “Glassdoor,” check out my Youtube video. This talks more about finding the right organization, negotiating salary, finding your worth, and similar items.
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