How to Get Promoted as an Instructional Designer

Over the years, I’ve created quite a bit of content to help aspiring instructional designers transition into the field and to learn more about the fundamentals of designing learning experiences. However, I have not forgotten about my veteran learning nerds. What about when you’ve been in the role for years and you are ready to take your next steps as a senior instructional designer, design lead, assistant director, or some similar title? Well my friend, I’ve been there and this article is for you.

First thing is first, let me mention the obvious statement, but all of what you are about to read is advice. I cannot guarantee that all of these tips will work for you because I don’t know your work history well enough, your organization, and all the behind the scenes details. At the end of the day, it’s just friendly advice. In my opinion, if you can successfully apply at least one of these tips, it will put you in a better spot for a promotion.

So, now with that out of the way, here are 10 tips to consider for landing your next promotion.

1) Learn the Promotion Process Within Your Organization

This tip is number one for a reason. Every organization operates differently. You very well could have a structure in place for how to get promoted and it is crystal clear. For those of you who have levels within your institution, say becoming an instructional design I, II, or III, usually, it is explicitly clear what each level means. If it’s not as tangible, you need to do a fact finding mission of sorts and search for people who recently were promoted. Ask these questions:

What did they accomplish?
What were they advised to do vs advised not to do?
What seemed to work well?
If they could do this all over again, do they have advice for you?

When I was hoping to becoming a senior instructional designer, and then eventually, an assistant director of instructional design, the first thing I did was find all of the other senior designers and assistant directors within my institution and asked them these questions. I understood that what they were going to share may not apply to my division specifically, but their answers painted a realistic picture about what I was in store for with trying to get this promotion and I’m still so thankful for what they shared.

2) Deeply Think If the Promotion Is Worth It

After you have hopefully found the folks who were promoted within your organization, I want you to really give this some thought. Is it worth it to become promoted? Now I know what you are thinking, it’s obviously worth getting the promotion! Eh, not so fast. Let’s say you are eligible to get promoted, but there is no raise included in the promotion. Is it still worth it? If you double your responsibilities at work and only receive 3K more, should you really do this?

Or, in my case, when I was trying to break into the field, I actually took a pay cut for a promotion. Yes, you read that right. As an academic advisor, I had gone through the proper pathways and managed to hit my ceiling. However, I still wasn’t a manager. Transitioning into my first instructional design role and acquiring the “manager” title meant I had to take a 3K pay cut. For my career’s trajectory, it was worth it and I’d gladly do this again knowing the path it sent me on. Of course, at the time I was, let’s say, not thrilled by any of this, but in the long run, things worked out and now you are reading this blog. With all of that said, please consider if this makes sense for you at this time.

3) Acknowledge That Promotions Take Time

In some companies, people get promoted all the time and it feels lightning fast. Have I ever experienced this myself? No, actually what is the opposite of lightning fast? Darkness slow, perhaps? Anyway, higher education does not move quickly, and since that’s where I’ve always been employed, I knew that any form of promotion was going to take time. How long? Well, it can be months. This once again, all comes down to the organization, what the budget looks like, where you are within the fiscal year, what plans senior level leadership has, etc. Once again, some folks receive promotions at a faster rate, especially if they have been laying the ground work for a promotion for a while. It all depends where you work, but if you are in higher ed like me, expect 3-6 months.

4) Make the Desire Known to Your Manager

Don’t just assume that your manager is fighting for you to get a promotion. I’ve met many instructional designers over the years who were perfectly happy just being instructional designers. They had no desire to get promoted, to lead a team, or anything else. They loved design and only wanted to stay in design. With that said, your manager could be making this assumption that you are perfectly happy within your role and if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.

For every promotion I’ve received, I was vocal and brought up this idea in my one-on-one with my manager or during a performance evaluation. Just by mentioning this idea, you might learn more about the plans for the unit’s direction or what your manager was already envisioning. From here, ask about what it would take to get you to that senior level position. Is there anything that immediately comes to mind for your manager? Can you take something off of their plate? That has been one technique I’ve found that’s incredibly effective. So, have the conversation, listen, and take notes!

5) Map It Out

After this conversation, you will hopefully have some ideas around what you can accomplish to put yourself in this position of a promotion. Start by mapping everything out with the most significant tasks and then down to the minor details. What does success look like on this journey? This process might naturally take you some time to complete because of how long the tasks are. If you want, you can use backward design here. Think of the end goals, the acceptable levels of evidence, and what resources will support you along the way. You can then outline these steps in detail and mark them off one by one as you complete them.

6) Take the Initiative

You were probably thinking that this was going to be the number one tip, right? I feel like this is the obvious answer for getting a promotion is that you need to step up and raise the bar. It’s time to volunteer to own new projects, help with mentoring newer designers, being seen as a leader during meetings, etc. Whatever initiatives you are thinking of, take ownership of them and truly demonstrate to the best of your abilities that you can do this new role. As I mentioned a bit ago, if your manager is drowning in work and if you can now own one of those projects, that can be your ticket to really making a difference.

7) Highlight Your Achievements

One thing that I know all of us are guilty of is not keeping our portfolios and resumes up to date. And then when it’s time to use them, we scramble our brains to think about the projects we worked on over the last year. So, let’s get ahead of this problem.

Go back to your last performance evaluation document and see what your wrote down from the following year. Now, write down all that you have accomplished since then and your plans for what you will be doing. You want to capture these moments. Think about metrics, feedback, testimonies from colleagues, etc. The more data you can have about your performance, the better. Remember, your manager has to make the case that you deserve a promotion. If you give them a document with all that you’ve done, this makes the case quite a bit easier for this promotion.

8) Network Internally

You’ve already done this a bit with finding others who received promotions, but you should continue to do this with folks outside of your immediate team. Imagine this, your boss is wanting to put you up for promotion and mentions your name in a room filled with other senior leaders. Would they know you by name? The hopeful answer is yes and that what you have accomplished transcends your direct team members. Even if they don’t know about your day in and day out responsibilities, having their support will only help your cause. This certainly comes down to how your organization operates, but having other people in your corner doesn’t hurt!

9) Find a Mentor

Is there anyone within your organization who you could turn to for guidance? Some organizations have buddy systems designed to do exactly this where a greener manager is paired up with a veteran. You might be able to sign up for this kind of program and have the guess work done for you. If not, no worries at all. This doesn’t have to be anything formal. Find a person who is one or two steps ahead of you and ask if you could chat every month or so. As a first time manager, this was so helpful for me to bounce ideas off of others and see how they would respond. I was thrown a few curveballs as a first time manager and I did not know how to respond to these questions and comments. Picking the brain of a more seasoned manager provided that insight I was hoping for.

10) Create the Job You Want

It’s entirely possible that you will be the first senior designer on the team or there hasn’t been one in quite some time. If that’s the case, you may have a chance at writing your own job description. Research senior instructional design roles at similar organizations and see what they are asking for under the job descriptions. This can give you a few ideas on where your expertise fits in. You can also use this research as a talking point for making your case for the promotion. I also wouldn’t limit the search to senior instructional designer titles, but look at assistant director, associate director, director, etc. Titles can mean wildly different things at other organizations. You may find that what you currently do is already the equivalent of a senior instructional designer at another institution. So, make sure you find the appropriate responsibilities.

Well folks, those are 10 tips to consider! If you have gone through this process before, what other tips should be included in this list?

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