How to land my first job as an eLearning Designer? All I get as feedback is lack of experience!

Hi Sarah, and congratulations on deciding to make the shift from teaching to e-learning design. I think you're going to enjoy this new career path a lot.

The feedback of "hit the ground running" is subjective, so It's tricky to know what specifically this company meant by it. That said, it's not uncommon for people making this career shift to find employers don't fully see how their teaching experience connects to corporate e-learning. Here are some typical challenges teachers encounter when moving to e-learning development and ideas for how to address them:

The portfolio leans too far toward teaching examples
When designing their first e-learning portfolio, many teachers take content they've taught in the classroom and create e-learning versions. While this can be excellent e-learning development practice, it's not as great for showing a business you're capable of designing and developing corporate e-learning and training. You and I both know the skills transfer, but businesses don't always realize that and can get distracted by seeing content for children.

The best way around this is to remove e-learning for teaching children out of your portfolio and replace it with new business-focused e-learning examples (related to this, taking out classroom teaching seminars and workshops from your resume can also remove distractors). If you're looking for corporate e-learning example ideas, check out the weekly challenges David mentioned.

Side note: if you're applying for corporate e-learning jobs and ones related to designing content for schools, consider creating two versions of your resume and portfolio: each playing up different aspects of your experience.

You need to show what you can do in addition to e-learning development
Being able to use an e-learning development tool is just part of the work. Depending on the role and company, it also involves needs analysis, connecting your e-learning to business goals, project planning, working with subject matter experts, and complete relationships with business partners. An employer may think you've got great e-learning development skills but wonder if they'll need to teach you those other aspects.

One way to solve this is to build in a business view into your portfolio site. For each e-learning example consider sharing more than just the published course. Including what problem or situation needed to be solved (basing your fictional examples around common business challenges can help you here) and how the course addressed it can demonstrate you have those additional skills businesses will be looking for.

It's also good to research the planning processes e-learning teams tend to use for establishing a project plan, working with SMEs, and keeping on top of the project timeline. I've linked to a few here, but there are lots of other articles related to these topics to explore on E-Learning Heroes too. Weaving these techniques and terms into your interview can show you have these business skills employers are looking for.

It's tricky to learn to speak "business"
One of the biggest challenges I had to overcome in my own move from classroom teaching to e-learning design was learning business language. You need to figure out how to explain your experience and ideas in ways that make sense to people who don't come from a teaching background. I also discovered just how different corporate priorities for learning are than those in schools. Rather than the end goal being learning, businesses want learning experiences to support specific business goals and needs.

This different way of speaking about learning can do a lot in an interview to convince employers you're ready to thrive in a corporate environment. It's not easy to pick up, but I found talking with experienced e-learning developers and instructional designers can help. Also, there are a number of books available these days specifically for accidental instructional designers and new e-learning designers. They can also help you think about learning from a business perspective.

I hope this all helps you think about your future interviews in new ways. If it brings up any additional questions, be sure to reach out.