Why SMEs And IDs Need Each Other
I've been seeing a concerning hiring practice in the Instructional Design space lately. If you've been watching hiring trends, you've probably noticed this, too. Hiring managers of Learning and Development (L&D) teams are increasingly prioritizing industry knowledge over Instructional Design skills–or at least, equalizing the two.
Perhaps the most concerning part is that this trend is emerging from within L&D itself, a field that understands the value of learning expertise. Industry experience isn't the problem–but I fear we're asking too much of our Instructional Designers (IDs). If you're reading this as a hiring manager who has emphasized industry knowledge as a plus or even a requirement on an ID job posting, don't feel bad! This trend has been increasing everywhere.
That said, let's discuss why hiring strong Instructional Designers matters more than industry experience and what you should do instead. Let's dive in!
SMEs Can't Write Training–Usually
First, let's define what a Subject Matter Expert (SME) is and why they matter in the training world. SMEs are employees with experience and knowledge in a specific area of the business. You can have operational SMEs–people who know the inner workings of the business and how its employees provide value. But you can also have finance SMEs, legal SMEs, HR SMEs, marketing SMEs, and any other experts in any business subject you can think of. To become an SME, one must have extensive knowledge, usually through experience in a particular job and/or industry.
When a training request comes to the L&D team, it doesn't always come from an SME. Oftentimes, it comes from an executive leader or a team leader, or arises from finding a gap in skills or knowledge. But an SME should always become part of the project team when training is developed, as Instructional Designers rely on SME expertise for building training. We'll discuss this more in a bit.
Right now, you might be thinking: Why not just cut out the middleman and delegate an SME to develop training? This is a sensible argument. Companies nowadays try to maximize work output per employee and minimize costs. Teams run lean, and most roles perform more than one job, if not several.
That said, consider the cost, not to budget but to effectiveness and efficiency. According to the American Psychological Association, even brief mental blocks caused by shifting between tasks can cost as much as 40% of someone's productivity. SMEs are your company experts, the best at what they do. Where they provide the most value to the organization is by doing their job, not someone else's.
More importantly, most people who know their subject very deeply and have years and years of experience have a shortcoming when it comes to writing training: they've been in the weeds of the job for so long that they've forgotten what it's like to be a beginner. They don't think in terms of breaking down complex information into digestible pieces. They don't consider that their audience doesn't have the same level of knowledge as them. They write training as they currently understand it rather than how their audience needs to receive it. In essence, knowing a topic and designing effective training on it are two completely different skillsets.
This, of course, isn't true in every single case. There are times when an SME is also a good teacher. But I can confidently say from my 12 years of corporate ID work that receiving content from an SME is usually a chaotic info-dump of an experience. We Instructional Designers spend much of the beginning of the project sifting through stacks of notes, papers, SOPs, and other existing documentation and presentations. In cases of actual finalized, developed training from SMEs, it's almost always too far in the weeds and lacks any kind of engagement or retention techniques that IDs use—that is, SMEs don't know how to keep learners interested, how to reinforce learnings, or how to make learning accessible. They simply don't understand the art of Instructional Design. And quite frankly, they aren't supposed to. That isn't their role.
So then, what's wrong with hiring an ID with industry experience? It sounds like that would solve the problem, right? Well, the goal shouldn't be to remove SMEs. It should be to stop asking them to do two specialized jobs at once. And likewise for IDs.
Instructional Designers Are Learning Experts First
I think we all like to believe that we can do anything we put our minds to. Certainly, most of us have been taught that from a young age. And that's not to say one can't do anything. But one thing is true: no one can do everything. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. All of us have areas of expertise. And because expertise takes time and experience, we can only have expertise in so many areas.
Most IDs have worked across several industries and built all different kinds of training. That's not a drawback—it's one of our greatest strengths. It teaches valuable skills we otherwise wouldn't learn if we'd only worked in one industry or with one kind of training. In my own experience, moving out of my very first industry, pharmaceuticals, into specialty food services forced me to think very intentionally about what I designed. The audience was different—that meant different constraints to consider. The technology was different—that meant deploying training differently. The industry needs and company goals were different—that meant deliberately ensuring needs and goals were being met with each project.
Essentially, moving into new industries and working with different audiences forces us to think differently. Each time we think differently, we learn something new about our space. This is the very core of how we gain expertise as IDs and become SMEs in our own skillset. When you ask for an ID with industry experience, you severely narrow your available talent pool. You're seeking the unicorn that can do it all: someone who is both a learning expert and an industry expert. You're looking for people who rarely exist.
Rather than industry or functional experts, IDs are SMEs in adult learning. We understand how to find gaps in skills or knowledge and what will work best to fill those gaps. We understand how to decide if training will even help meet a company goal at all. We're skilled in using the tools to design training. We are writers, storytellers, graphic designers, project managers, and change managers. A good ID can utilize these same skills across any industry and type of training.
Instructional Design is a specialized field of study. Think of it this way: Would you hire an attorney to do your taxes? They may be capable of handling it, but would it be as good as if you'd hired a tax professional? Probably not. So, if not an industry expert, who should you hire for your ID role instead?
How SMEs And IDs Should Work Together For Ideal Outcomes
The best thing you can do for your team is to hire the best learning expert you can regardless of their industry experience. You want someone who demonstrates that they know how to teach adults, how to learn about the new business they're in, how to understand company goals and learner constraints to produce effective training. But this isn't to say that IDs are any better than your business SMEs!
The idea is that IDs and SMEs shouldn't be trying to replace each other. Our work complements each other. In fact, we couldn't exist one without the other. We IDs rely on SMEs for their expertise. Then, we take that expertise and distill it into usable training that really works for the industry and audience, guided by feedback and input from the SMEs. IDs bring the learning expertise, SMEs bring the business and role expertise, and IDs combine the two to bring training to life. In fact, research on Instructional Design has long emphasized the importance of collaboration between SMEs and IDs, noting that each role brings different but crucial expertise to the learning development process.
The Outcome
At the end of the day, if you're committed to bringing the best quality training to your organization, stop trying to hire for both roles in one. Instructional Designers possess a specialized skillset. Let them be learning experts first and foremost, and let them do what they do best: partner with industry SMEs to produce training that actually works for their audience.
