You need the experience to get the job, but you need the job to get the experience... Right? I'll share with you my best tip on gaining ID experience right away.
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Transcript:
Luke Hobson 00:00
Hey folks before we begin today's episode, we have a new book announcement. My friend Dr. Robin Sargent, the founder of IDOL courses Academy is writing a new instructional design book called the Do IT messy approach, a step by step guide for instructional designers and online learning developers. I was fortunate enough to be one of the early readers of Roberts new book and I have to say it's awesome. Robin writes in a clear, concise way, but simple to follow, and enjoyable to read. Now, you might be asking who should read this book, it's obviously tailored for newbies. However, I will say that experienced instructional designers should also check this out. As a senior instructional designer myself, I love to hear about other perspectives, and seeing what I can pick up to add to my toolkits. And I'm sure you can do the exact same join the waitlist today to read 15 pages of the book right now and get a 20% discount when the book officially launches. While there isn't a hard date yet for the book release. Robin told me around June is when it's coming out, so you can expect it in just a couple of weeks, potentially, potentially in a couple of weeks. So sign up for the waitlist today by going to idle courses.com forward slash book that's idle courses.com forward slash book, and I'll be sure to put the link in the show description for today's episode. And now let's start the show.
Hey, folks, and welcome on in to another episode of the podcast. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I'm a senior instructional designer and the author of the book what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer, I love talking about instructional design and sharing what I know with folks like yourself, and you can find all of my content over at Dr. Luke hobson.com. So I have an idea. I think I think I can make my normal podcast episodes on YouTube and vice versa. I've noticed that many of you like having both versions of me on camera, and of course having your usual podcast episode. So I'm going to try this out a bit more and see how this all plays out. With that being said, I released a new YouTube video this morning called Getting instructional design experience without the job My best tip. This is what you'll be listening to this morning on the podcast episode. So tell me what you think of his by the way, it's different, I can tell that it is different, the audio isn't different or anything like that. But it is certainly unique to be able to try to record this in a way of doing it both on camera and then taking the audio and mixing and mastering putting in and GarageBand and all that kind of good stuff. So let me know what you think. Do you like having both options? I definitely really want to hear your opinion. By the way. I'm I'm not just saying that because as you probably know, it is only a one person show right now I do everything every editing, the writing, the scripting, the you name it, I'm literally the only person doing all of this stuff for content. So I'm trying to be smarter about how I spend my time in the future. And I should really get an editor or someone else to be able to help me out instead of working 80 hours a week but you know what, not right now I am still doing everything as of this moment. So please tell me what you think. And if this is still the same type of enjoyable experience then fantastic and on the flip side to if you'd rather go and actually watch the YouTube video I will put a link down below inside of the description for the podcast notes. So you can pop over into there and you can find the YouTube channel is just my name as well if you just search Dr. Luke Hobson, it will pop right up. But All right folks, let's dive on into this episode, shall we? I'm not going to waste any more time here we go.
Hello, my learning erds and welcome on in to the nerdiest video you are going to see today. Let's talk about the age old conundrum of the fact that you need a job to get the experience however you need experience to get the job. So what is a new instructional designer to do? If you look online, there are plenty of different types of helpful hints and tips from different blogs and videos and podcasts talking about how to get over this and the main area that those are focusing on is volunteering. Now, that makes plenty of sense to me to be able to volunteer your time your services as an instructional designer, and in return, you're going to be gaining experience but also you're going to be able to use what you have done for your portfolio. So for applying to other jobs. Not only do you have experience but now Of course, you're able to highlight what you have actually done. But I am seeing something that I would not advise people to do. And it's basically that when somebody sees this type of guidance and advice, they just go online and basically say that, Hey, everyone, I'm volunteering my time and services. If you know a project, you let me know, and I'll go from there. I don't doubt that people can get jobs and opportunities that way that doesn't surprise me. However, if you've been listening to my content, you know that I don't like taking things with like a chance, I want you to feel like you have power, I want you to feel like you have control of this situation. And just by throwing it out into the universe, that, hey, I'm here, and I'm willing to work for free, most likely, you're not going to get something. And I would actually argue that that kind of sets a type of a negative mindset, in that you need someone to take a chance on you in order for you to grow, which I definitely don't believe in, I want you to be able to develop your skill set and to become such a rockstar that people are literally fighting over you to be able to hire you. That is certainly the goal of mine and my hope of being able to make this kind of content on YouTube. So with that being said, what should you do? Well, let's take a step back for a second. What's important for an instructional designer? Yes, learning theories, learning techniques, instructional design models, the latest of research and knowing how to do research technology. Absolutely. All things are important. However, I would argue the most number one significant skill and instructional designer can have is working with other people. How do you build relationships with subject matter experts? How do you collaborate with them? What do you do when somebody tells you the word? No? And you have to get around that? How do you remove barriers? And how do you maintain your relationship with a subject matter expert, when you're going through a really difficult time? If you can answer those types of questions during an interview, that is certainly going to be able to impress the person who is doing the hiring. So with all that being said, what does this mean? It means that you need to find a rockstar subject matter expert or a Smee, as I call them, you need to be able to find someone who is deeply passionate about what it is that they do. You want someone who knows the content, like the back of their hand, they have done trainings and teachings they have written about it before they've done their research, they've given TED Talks and conferences, and they make content and everything of a sort. Who are these people then that you should be contacting? And I would say, without a doubt, the number one target audience that you should be reaching out to is, wait for it. Wait for it. Entrepreneurs. Without a doubt, absolutely, positively, you should be reaching out to entrepreneurs. Why? Think about what I just said, who are subject matter experts, people who deeply care about the content, they know everything about it, they know it like the back of their hand, that is a very, very similar skill set to an entrepreneur. This is a person that for a living, they create content, they teach others, they share what it is that they know. And they can do this from a variety of ways. And that is actually the beauty of it. There most likely already is a whole bunch of content that you can start with and currently look through. And perhaps this is going to be YouTube videos or blogs, or podcasts or a book or ebooks or workshops or whatever it is they may even post a ton of content on their social media channels. And that is how they reach their target audience. Maybe it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever else it'd be more using nowadays. The point is, there is content because they have made it they have put their blood sweat and tears into this. They deeply care about it. And at some point in time, and a lot of this has actually already taken place is that people have realized that one way for entrepreneurs to be able to generate a different type of revenue stream is by making courses. Hey, guess who actually can help them with that? It's you. That's kind of the whole point of this many entrepreneurs during the pandemic and also even right now I still constantly see it is that they're thinking about new ways. What is it they can do, how can they reach a broader target audience and certainly by doing things online with a course or training program or workshop, whatever it is, that is definitely going to be sweet spot for them, but they need help. They need someone who knows how to design that experience and to partner with them. In order to make that a reality, working with an entrepreneur as your Smee is also fantastic too, because of the fact that you as a new upcoming designer, you're going to be challenged, they're going to push back, not in a mean way, but they're going to push back because obviously, they know their content pretty well. They've been doing this for years, they know from sharing about what it is they do has helped other people. So when you bring up an idea, they're gonna want to know why. Why is this important? Does this really make a difference? If we do it like this, compared to this? What do you mean, we had to build in practice activities? So what what do you mean, we need assessments like what is this stuff? And certainly, this is where you can come in, and really make everything shine. Now, obviously, if you're going through all of this, and you're getting this experience by having somebody questioning what it is that you do, and trying to figure out ways of how you're able to overcome the word no, because instructional designers, by far we are negotiators, we are influencers. We're Persuaders, because when somebody says, No, but we are going to be able to defend our reasoning, we're going to be able to take a stand and say like, you know what, actually, it really does need to happen. And here's why. Let me tell you about my side of the story. That type of strategy involves working with someone else and trying to be able to either meet them in the middle or take things into a different direction that perhaps this person never thought about before. It takes quite a bit of skill to do. And I guarantee that you're going to have an interview question that's going to be asking you about working with challenging sneeze. And of course, by being able to work with somebody who once again knows their content, like the back of their hand, and they feel like potentially, they know what's going to always be best. Well, this is going to give you the type of experience to be able to explain more about that. And of course, to tell your story with entrepreneurs, by the way, I can think of three different cases that you are going to be potentially facing if you go down this road. The first is that you are going to be literally starting from scratch, they have nothing so far from any form of training program course workshop, literally no product that exists out there. It's all strictly content, and they need your help. So this is actually really fun. Because then you get to experience what it's like from the very beginning about being able to clearly define the problem set the outcomes, what are learners really going to be taking away from this overall experience? What is it that we really want them to do? And how are we going to help them to achieve these results. Then after that, you can of course, think about everything for the rough type of a course description of blueprint, the outline about what it is that you're going to potentially be talking about topics like a week by week breakdown, who is going to be teaching this material are we going to be bringing in any outside guests voices, and everything else of sorts as well, you'll be going through all the very beginnings of essentially creating a project scope, and going through the motions with that one. The second is that they have something already, but it's been in person. And now we need to flip it online. This is also very common, especially to have everything that happened with the pandemic, we talk a lot about remote learning. But also you have all these people who did their own version of learning and face to face settings before with perhaps workshops, or summits, or residencies or conferences, you know, all of those things, you couldn't have them in person before they had to go online. And I saw personally plenty of entrepreneurs that I know who are scrambling, oh my god, what is Adam, I organize this what is it that I do? Like I have no idea what platforms to use, there was many questions that were flying out of entrepreneurs trying to be able to figure this all out. And potentially, this is something that you can do with being able to take an existing type of course training program workshop and being able to flip this into the online version, and to transform it to make it even better to provide even different experiences than perhaps the entrepreneur or our Smee. In this case, never really thought about it from that type of stance before. And the last thing that you might encounter is that they already have an online course, but it could be made better. Now, of course, I'm not just going to tell you to do these things without obviously myself doing them first. And sure enough, I have which is why I'm telling you to do this and why I haven't really seen it online. I'm not sure if other people have actually done this before or if I'm just the weird one who likes talking to entrepreneurs. But this happened to me years ago is that I was an avid podcast listener of one show in particular, I did not get their permission to talk about the show or drop names before making this video. So because of that, I'm just going to cover myself I'm going to make it very general. So with that being said, I was an avid podcast listener of is one show that was talking all about personal developments. I listened to it religiously there was new episodes every single day. So therefore, I listened to this podcast host for every day for literally years. And I noticed that at the end of every single episode, he always said that If you enjoy this content, I have a free course that you can take@xyz.com, whatever, and I never signed up. Finally, whatever reason, after hearing it for 100 million times is like, Hey, I should probably take this course sounds like something I would really enjoy. I should just sign up. So finally, I caved in, I took the course. And what I noticed was that the content was good inside of everything. But I wouldn't call it a course, I would say, but it was much more like a private YouTube playlist, because it was just videos, nothing else said no activities, no assessments, no exercises, no, nothing, just straight up videos. The only thing that it had, though, was that there was a way for you to put in a comments at the bottom. And what I noticed is that other people were commenting down below. And for one of the topics in particular, it was talking about personal development with networking. And a lot of people had comments on this one particular section, just saying like, wow, I really wish I could hear from other people about what it is that they did after watching this video, you know, did it work? Do you have any success stories, like I was wanting to know what other people are doing? It was great to hear from you said podcast host. But I'm not like you. I'm at the beginning stages. So it would be awesome, just to hear a little bit more from other people. Now I took the course and I finish it up and I did the things that he was asking me to do at the end of the video, there was always some action item to go and to take. And I would do that. And I noticed that sure enough, when it comes to networking, I actually did get a lot better. So I certainly appreciated that. But as I said, I kept on noticing those comments. And it really started to make me think. And I was like, you know, what? Could I reach out to him? And just say, Hey, I absolutely love this course, I would love to work with you on it a little bit more. And maybe he'd say yes. So that is exactly what I did. I wrote them in an email. And I basically something along the lines of hey, I'm super awesome podcast host, I have been an avid fan. And listener for years, I listen, every single day, I just took your course it was awesome. I learned so much. I noticed though that a couple of other people kept on mentioning comments down below about how they would love to see other examples and different types of things. And this actually got me thinking and why I'm reaching out to you. I'm an instructional designer, which means that I could work with somebody like yourself, to be able to create an online learning experience that people are truly going to enjoy. And I have a couple of ideas based upon what people said, I would love a chance to be able to talk with you a bit more about these and see if you'd like to be able to collaborate together. If you do, please let me know. If not, no worries, thank you so much signed Luke, and the email right there a week went by. And then to my surprise, sure enough, I got an email in my inbox from him and my jaw hit the floor. It was really weird, because I've been listening to him for years. And I never once made contact with them, which is kind of strange. But you know what, that is the way that the internet is nowadays. And then sure enough, I read his email and he said, Hey, Luke, it would actually be great to do this, I noticed the exact same comments. And I'm not entirely too sure what it is that I can do. I would love your expertise to be able to figure out how I can make this better the next time, let's set up a time to talk and we'll go from there. Could not believe that, like, oh my god, let's go I am ready. Let's do this. And sure enough, we started to work together. And it was so interesting, because it actually tested my skill set with how I was going to be explaining things as an instructional designer. So to give you an example, with one of the parts of a networking section of that course, it said in there to be able to go and do a type of cold outreach to a former colleague or friend and basically check in with them, let them know that you're around and that if you can, able to help them out with in any way shape or form, let them know it basically just going out and letting them know that like hey, it'd be great to catch up with you. If there's anything I can help you out within my own personal bubble. Love to be able to see what I can do for you. Now for me, this wasn't awkward because of the fact that I'm an extrovert. I have no problem with getting on the phone calling a person and saying hey, how's it going? It's been years. How you been? What is it that you do nowadays? Oh, you do things within the office. My World, I design online courses, let's chat some time. There you go. So that's kind of how it worked for me years ago, when I did that, obviously, nowadays, I would explain my role a little bit better. But that's what I said years ago. So, for me, this was absolutely no problem. For other people, doing a type of a cold outreach via phone or email is terrifying. A lot of people hate the phone nowadays, or does hate bothering people. So for them, I was thinking about it from the stances of all the learners within the course. And for those kind of interesting extroverts like myself, no problem for other people. I bet that was a barrier. And I am confident in saying that they saw that activity, or they heard about that activity via at the end of the video. And they're like, yeah, no way done. No, I'm definitely not doing this. So my suggestion to him was to actually be able to have some form some way to allow people to be able to practice this before doing it. So this could be something like writing out a script ahead of time about what you're going to say to this person on the phone, and imagining how the conversation was going to go, or potentially drafting up an email. And it doesn't go anywhere. You're just literally making an email. And then once you are imagining yourself sending that email or making that phone call, how did it make you feel? Is there anything that potentially you thought about afterwards that might come up that you can figure out exactly how are you going to tackle this now before actually making that real phone call or sending over that real email? So I sent that over to him as a suggestion about making this type of practice activity and this type of reflection. And what he wrote back to me, was this like, Hey, Luke, so I'm not trying to argue, but doesn't it make a lot more sense to make people just go and do this in the real world? Why do you need to practice this, it seems really simple. And then that was my chance to be able to explain it in a different way. And to also defend my reasoning for why I said what I said, which basically was this, like, Hey, I absolutely understand your point of view, I'm just like you I'm also an extrovert, this is nothing to me. But for other different types of learners out here who are coming into this with a brand new set of eyes when it comes to networking. They've never done this before, I am confident in telling you, but someone sees that activity, and they quit your course. Or they just skip it entirely. And they just rush all the way until the end. And they feel like it's not meant for them. So they disconnect, you're not going to resonate with the content. When I said that back to him. He's like, Oh, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, well, let's let's do it your way I can see your point about that one. I know some introvert types of friends. And I yeah, I can actually see where it is you're coming from. So that as an instructional designer, pushed my limits and allowed me to think about things a little bit differently. And then again, a course from here on afterwards, if somebody asked me about a time that I worked with a subject matter expert. And if they were able to push back, what was my response? If that was something like an interview question, well, hey, I had this experience, I could tell this story. And I can let people know a little bit more about my world and how I actually solved this type of problem. And if you're looking for another example about this, all you need to do is listen to the last podcast episode was Site A and Eric and they talked about their relationship of working together to being able to create a new type of series of courses about using LinkedIn effectively, or aside, I reached out to Eric, the entrepreneur, basically saying, Hey, I have been following you for a while I absolutely love what it is that you're doing. I need to be able to develop my skill set a bit more and showcase that in my portfolio, you have plenty of awesome stuff. I have some great ideas for us to be able to work together. What do you say, could we actually do this? Now obviously, I'm shortening their version of the story. And they can tell it a lot more and way better within the entire podcast episode for you to listen to. But it's another case of an aspiring instructional designer, reaching out to someone within the entrepreneur space and making something happen. And I'm sure now the last thing you're thinking about if you're watching this entire video is is cool. Look, I'm on board. I'm going to be doing this oh, by the way, where do I contact entrepreneurs? And honestly, that is a great question. This very much does depend upon what it is you're trying to do, because entrepreneurs do live in different areas. First and foremost, I would absolutely just go onto LinkedIn. First, I guarantee that within your network, you are probably following someone who is an entrepreneur and maybe they don't outright say that they are an entrepreneur, but you can just see from what it is that they post was they do and what they talk about. You're like, there's a lot of entrepreneurship qualities in there. I bet I can work with this person and have them be my subject matter expert. So certainly LinkedIn I would go into there first and Even if you just want to go into the search bar on LinkedIn, and type in the word entrepreneur, and educator or some other combination of those words, I bet something is going to pop up. And a lot of different people are going to pop up within the entrepreneurship field. Now also, one thing I want to mention as well, too, is that if you are going to be, let's say, like shooting for the moon and the stars, and reaching out to a person that has like 5 million followers or subscribers, you're probably not going to hear from them, it's just most likely not going to happen. So definitely reach out for somebody who perhaps you have been following for a while, you can give that type of testimony, like I said, in my email, but how you've been following them for a while you've been listening to them for quite a bit of time you love what it is that they do, but making sure of it, it's not someone who is going to become the world's greatest entrepreneur, who I don't know who it is. But the point is, is that don't shoot for the moon and the stars right away. Reach out for people who are a little bit more at your level, that does make a lot more sense, because therefore, you're going to most likely get a better response back. But also think about this, from your point of view, What content do you consume, like right now, if you were to go on your phone and look up either podcasts or YouTube videos, or you know, whatever it is that you do in your downtime, just figure out who do you actually listen to? Where do you spend that type of free time, I guarantee that you're going to be able to say like, actually, I've been following this account on Instagram for a long time about cooking or about plants, or gardening or maybe about learning a different language or something else along those lines. And whether it's Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, whatever it is, I am sure that you are currently following somebody who is thinking about making online courses and programs and they need help. And all it's going to take is to have the right person, reach out to them, talk about it, and then make it happen. And of course, you can absolutely ask around within your network within your colleagues and with your friends within your inner circle and see if there are any entrepreneurs that perhaps they know or are entrepreneurs themselves and bring up the idea of whatever way works for you just go give it a try. And I bet a can lead to something that's going to be pretty awesome. Well, hey, folks, that is all I have for you today, if you would be so kind of down into the comments section and talk about your favorite tip when it comes to gaining experience for other new instructional designers to read about. Do all the typical YouTube stuff that people always say of like, comment, subscribe and all that good jazz, but hey, you know what, at the end of the day, stay nerdy out there. Talk to you next time.