What To Look For When Hiring eLearning Employees
A successful corporate eLearning strategy may bring many benefits to your organization. Depending on your specific objectives, the benefits of a successful corporate eLearning strategy may range from staying compliant with regulations to increasing customer retention or increasing the productivity of your employees. This is why it is important that any new members hired into your team are passionate about eLearning. When hiring eLearning employees, here are 6 skills to look for along with some suggested ways to evaluate or test for each during the interview process:
1. An Interest In Technology
At its core, eLearning is based on technology. Typically, a myriad of tools and devices will be used to deliver eLearning, from authoring tools to Learning Management Systems and from desktops to mobile devices. Any eLearning employee should demonstrate an updated knowledge of this ever-changing space.
A good way to evaluate this is to ask about recent eLearning projects and listen for their knowledge of the various options available and their reasons for selecting various technologies.
2. See The Learner's Perspective
Online learning will only be successful if the learner’s perspective is considered from the outset. How advanced are your learners? What is their starting level of knowledge? What are their daily routines? The ability to know your learner means that the duration, timing and frequency of training may be optimized to seamlessly integrate into a learner’s day.
A good method to evaluate this skill is to give a potential eLearning employee a description of your typical learner and ask how these facts would influence their choice of eLearning approach. For example, if they are training sales reps who are constantly on the road, then selecting a mobile responsive Learning Management System that integrates with Salesforce would be a good answer here.
3. Curiosity
The ability to listen, absorb, and continually learn new topics will be critical to success. Curious people naturally want to learn how to do things better, which improves the company.
Ask questions such as “Tell me something you taught yourself in the past year and how you approached this” or “What new skills have you acquired in the last six months?”. Just as important as the questions you ask is listening to the questions an eLearning interviewee asks you. How do these questions demonstrate their curiosity in you, your company and your learners?
4. Keep It Simple
Why use ten words when one word will do? All content should be clear and concise. Complex topics should be broken down into digestible parts and linked to the real world as much as possible. The whole point of eLearning is to make learning convenient and simple. Not only is keeping it simple better for the learner, but it also helps to keep projects on time and within costs.
Having potential employees perform tasks that closely resemble their future daily tasks is a great way to evaluate suitable skills as part of an interview process. Before and interview, ask an interviewee to prepare a very simple eLearning course based on a topic and material you provide. This will give you a good sense of their ability to include all information while keeping it simple.
5. An Eye For Good Design
Looks matter! Crisp, clean and clearly designed courses are a minimum requirement to engage learners. A good design will consider the pacing of content so that a learner is changing between video, quizzes and animation.
Ask for examples of prior eLearning courses developed and finding out why they have selected certain options will give you an understanding of their approach to design.
6. Passion With Resilience
Many eLearning veterans know that a good eLearning program will have a real impact across the company. In many cases, Learning and Development employees are working with Subject Matter Experts and learners that also have a day job. Therefore, it is important to find people that are passionate in the benefits of eLearning but are not discouraged when met with less enthusiasm. Look for previous examples where an eLearning interviewee met opposition and overcame roadblocks to achieve eLearning success.
At LearnUpon we have worked with thousands of eLearning professionals and these are a few of the skills that we have seen lead to eLearning success. What others would you add to this list?
