Your instructional design interview just ended. It went really well. They all loved you. You send off a thoughtful thank-you note feeling good about your chances.
But by 4pm, they’ve already seen four more candidates. Your name starts to blur with the others.
That’s where leave behinds come in.
A leave behind is something you share during or after your interview that reinforces your value and keeps you top of mind long after you’ve left the room.
Two Types of Leave Behinds
Leave behinds work in two different ways and each serves a different purpose.
- The In-Room Handoff: This one’s something you bring to the interview and share when the moment feels right. It’s usually a printed document but could be a link, QR code, or digital file. These work best for in-person interviews because they feel more natural than virtual calls.
- The Post-Interview Follow-Up: This one’s something you send within 24 hours that builds directly on what you discussed in the interview. This type usually land better because it proves you were listening.
Leave Behind Ideas and Formats
- Tailored PDF: A curated document featuring projects aligned with their industry with brief annotations explaining your role and design choices.
- Microlearning Module: A one-page site or Rise course that expands on answers you gave during the interview.
- Video Screencast: A short Loom or screencast walking through relevant projects that connect you to the role.
- Branching Scenario: A mini interaction that lets your interviewer experience your instructional design process firsthand.
- Competitive Audit: A respectful analysis of one of their existing courses or training materials with 2-3 constructive suggestions.
- Flow-Chart: A visual plan sketching out what your first 30, 60, and 90 days might look like based on what you learned in the interview.
In all cases, production value isn’t the point. The best leave behinds expand on the interview and demonstrate that you were paying attention.
🏆 Challenge of the Week
This week, your challenge is to design or mock up a leave behind example. You can design your example for a real or fictitious interview or create a template that could be customized for an interview.
✨ Share Your E-Learning Work
- Comments: Share your examples directly to the recap page.
- Social media: Please share your examples on LinkedIn and mention both David & Articulate using the #ElearningChallenge tags so we can help promote your work.
- Support your peers: With the new submission format, you can comment directly on each example. Try leaving helpful feedback on at least three projects this week.
- Community forums: Feel free to cross-post in the forums to give your work even more visibility.
🙌 Last Week’s Challenge:
Before you leave last week's challenge behind, check out the creative ways your fellow challengers use blurred backgrounds in e-learning:
Using Blurred Backgrounds in E-Learning #546: Challenge | Recap
👋 New to the E-Learning Challenges?
The weekly e-learning challenges are ongoing opportunities to learn, share, and build your e-learning portfolios. You can jump into any or all of the previous challenges anytime you want. I’ll update the recap posts to include your demos.
Learn more about the challenges in this Q&A post and why and how to participate in this helpful article.
