Discover Your Teacher Superpowers: Leaning In To Your L&D Strengths with Kayleen Holt

Are you feeling overwhelmed about getting started in L&D? Worried about everything you’ll need to learn, and your chances in the job market? Maybe Imposter Syndrome has crept up, and you’re wondering if you’d even be any good at the job.

In this presentation, you’ll discover how the traits and skills you probably already have as a teacher are valued in L&D. You’ll learn how to leverage those strengths and showcase your superpowers to hiring managers when transitioning to an L&D career.

Link to Slides

Luis Malbas  
Okay, welcome back, everybody. Thanks again for joining us at the transitioning to Learning and Development Conference. We've got the second session of the event for this first day. I hope you enjoyed that. That first one. Not sure if any of you jumped into any of the virtual tables like with Ricky Fischer earlier, it looked like that that particular table was maxed out. So I'm sure there were some great conversations happening in their next session, Haley and holds a great supporter of TL DC. And a fantastic speaker Kaylene is a 25 plus year l&d vet, and currently operating Scissortail creative services. You have a particular interest in accessibility and inclusion. And thank you so much for strongly supporting TLD C's efforts in the last two years doing those. I know that I'm probably going to be hitting you up because I hope I want to do another dei event in the next couple of months. So So that's coming up. And today Kaley is going to be doing discover your tear superpowers learning in or is it learning or leaning into your should be leaning?

Kayleen Holt  
I just noticed that type of this morning. Yeah.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, I better fix that. I'll fix that. But thanks again, Caitlin. I'm gonna go ahead and hide myself and let you take it away.

Kayleen Holt  
Awesome. Thank you, Louise. All right. Well, hi, everyone. I am Kailyn Holt, and I'm the owner of Scissortail Creative Services. I'm an instructional design consultant. I do want to specify Yes, I've been in. I've been designing learning experiences. For more than 25 years, I have been in instructional design specifically for about 17 years. Before that I was a high school teacher. And I'll talk more about that in just a moment. Thank you for the little applause emojis. Appreciate that. quick visual description for anyone who needs it. I am a middle aged white woman with long brown hair wearing teal glasses that serendipitously match my teal dress. Behind me are some comfy armchairs and some bookshelves. And you might see at some point my little dog is in here. She's a little poodle mix. Her name is Bailey. So if you see her to say hi, Bailey, she's currently behind that yellow chair. All right, before I share my slides, I want to find out who's with me. So first off of a poll question, if you go up to the polls on the right, which statement best describes your background? Are you a teacher? Are you a former teacher? Never been a teacher and just want to know where folks are coming from? All right, so most of you, former teachers, few current teachers, few who have never been okay. Leave that up for just another second. And I'm going to open another poll. What about your career goals? What are you interested in doing? Do you want a job in instructional design? A different learning and development job that's not instructional design. Not sure yet just kind of exploring your options or you're already working in learning and development. And if there's some other option, like for instance, if you aren't currently teaching, but you're also doing some l&d on the side, just put that in the chat. Go ahead and close the first poll. And we see there 75% former teachers in the group, about 12% Never have been a teacher and about 12% currently teaching. So that's cool. And we have about almost 50% saying that they want a job in instructional design. I will tell you that. I think it's Kim Scott gonna be talking later this week about other l&d roles besides instructional design, because it may be that, you know, you might think, oh, I want instructional design, because that's the one that you hear about the most. That's the one that you see people talking about. And for me personally, it's a great fit. I love it. My favorite part of teaching was always designing the lessons coming up with really cool ways to teach things. So that's what I love. I also love writing. I was an English teacher in addition to Spanish. And I love stories and so if I can write scripts and scenarios that just makes my heart happy, so So those are things I love about instructional design, but there's more to l&d. So, um, be sure and check that out. I'm going to close that poll. So we have almost is 48% instructional design 8%? Want a job in l&d? That's not ID 27% exploring your options and 17% already working in l&d. So awesome. Okay, and I see some lovely comments in the chat. Cool, cool. Thank you for sharing those things. I'm going to go ahead and share my presentation. Unfortunately, our meeting platform can't decide if they're going to offer closed captions or not. So I'll have some in my presentation.

Sharing. Okay, give me a thumbs up, you see my slides. Okay. So I'm going to be talking to you about discovering your teacher superpowers leaning into your l&d strengths. And this presentation was designed specifically for teachers who are moving into learning and development. However, I think a lot of the skills and traits that I'm going to be talking about are applicable to other folks coming into this position. So I just want you to think about, okay, these are, these are skills that people in l&d need, do I have those skills? And how can I showcase them, I'm going to be talking to you about how you can highlight these skills on your resume. So first a little about me. I, like I said, I came into learning and development. From a background in public school teaching. I taught high school English and Spanish, mostly Spanish, even though I wanted to teach English from 1994 to 2000, for a total of nine years, because I took one year off to be with my baby. These are my lovely, yearbook photos from every year that I taught that 90s bangs and dorky glasses and all. When I transitioned into instructional design, some things I heard from my mentors, and my supervisors were Oh, wow, you really get this? Wow, you're catching on fast. Things like that. And what I discovered was that teaching had given me some learning and development superpowers that there were soft skills that were transferable skills. out just a sec, there we go. That was supposed to show that one. Um, so I had these superpowers that were transferable into the world of learning and development. And we're, that really made the transition a lot easier for me than I really thought it was going to be. And you know what, you probably have these superpowers too. So that is what I want to talk to you about. But before you can land your role in learning and development, you have to get past your nemesis, the hiring manager. The good news is you have skills they need. In a global survey, 91% of employers said that they are struggling to fill positions because of a skills gap. This is according to the future of work report 2022 for Monster intelligence. So this is right now, they're struggling because they need people to have these skills. And they're not finding candidates who do. 70% of employers in the US said that they are willing to hire someone with transferable skills and train them in this job specific skills. Across the globe. This number was 63% 50% of hiring managers say that candidates need to be able to articulate their skills better. Because even if you have those transferable skills that employers are looking for, if they can't find them on your resume, if you don't convey them in the cover letter, they don't know and they pass you on to for some other candidate who does a better job of articulating those skills. So that is what I want to help you with. I hope I'm articulating the skills that you have now. The top three skills they said they need are teamwork and collaboration, communication, and problem solving and critical thinking. Those are all skills I think most teachers have in spades. But that is what I want to talk to you about is the specific learning and development skills you probably have and the ones that learning and development hiring managers are looking for. And I'm not going to be talking about things like you need to be able to develop in Articulate Storyline or, you know, upload courses to Brightspace LMS. Those are skills that are honestly fairly easy to learn, that doesn't mean it's a really quick thing to become a master at those things. It just means if you have these other soft skills, you can probably learn those things that you don't have and fill those gaps pretty easily. For me, when I hire someone, I would much rather hire someone that has the soft skills that are harder to train, and then teach them the things they don't know. And like we saw on the global survey 70% of employers in the US feel the same way.

So I compiled Oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you, Danielle. I meant to post a link to this presentation at the very beginning, and I jumped in and forgot. So there's the link in the chat, there's a presentation handout that you can get. It's got the slides as well as the some of the notes. Thank you so much for reminding me about that. Okay, um, so I compiled this list of 10. Top, sorry, rewind, soft skills that learning and development managers need by looking at some articles. I originally wrote this in a blog post about skills that instructional designers need. So the articles I looked at, were talking about instructional design, specifically. However, most of these skills, while probably all of them are very applicable to any learning and development role you get. So skill number one, collaboration, problem solving. We saw that on the global survey, that all employers need people who are good at collaboration and problem solving. And you know what, teachers are really good at this. It's what we do. We're problem solvers. I've heard some people say, well, teachers don't really know how to work with sneeze, and that's going to be a challenge for them. Okay, sure. Teachers are used to being the subject matter experts over the the topic that they teach. That doesn't mean that they can't work together with sneeze, because we're used to working together. I think a lot of people have the misconception, people who have never been a teacher, have the misconception that we work in silos in our own little classrooms. And that's it. And sure, most of our day is spent in our classroom with our students, and we're kind of the king of our domain there. However, we're collaborating all the time with teachers in our same grade level, our department, other teachers in the district, the accessible education specialists we work with otherwise known as special ed teachers, I just don't like that term, special ed. And I hope that education world changes that term soon. It's just education, really special. So based on my personal experience, once I was a master at conducting parent teacher conferences, sometimes with angry parents, and facilitating class discussions with like, 30 plus sophomores, meeting with a group of knees really wasn't all that challenging. It was a pretty smooth transition honestly. So if you can think out, here's I'm sorry, what does this look like on a resume? First of all? Here's one example, as part of a committee developed the school improvement plan, which led to a 50% improvement in student test scores. So what can you think of from your experience, your career that shows that you are good at collaborating to solve problems? Put something in the chat help help these people. The other folks in the in the session, get some ideas for what they can put on their resume to highlight this skill.

Oh, thank you, Danielle. That's so sweet. So the second skill I want to talk about is communication. And again, this is something we saw on the global survey. Employers need folks who are good at communicating well, teachers, this is what we do all day. This is the heart of our job really is communicating. And it's really essential for learning and development fields as well whether you're going into instructional design, where writing skills are super important, or you're going into training classroom facilitation where that oral communication is super important. Even if you're working behind the scenes, like an instructional design, it's still important to be Good oral communication because you are facilitating meetings with subject matter experts. By the way, when I said sneeze earlier, that's who I mean. It just in case you're brand new. So instructional designers in particular, they need to have at the list I reviewed said they need to have commanded communication skills, excel at writing, they need to be storytellers, and facilitators. And if you're thinking about your strengths as a teacher, you can probably say, Oh, check, check, check, check, I got all of those, most likely. So what does this look like, on a resume? Could be something like facilitated learning activities, wrote scripts for instructional videos, that one looks really good. If you've done that maintained ongoing communication with parents and other stakeholders. You might have some other ideas if you've got some plop those into the chat, I see some for the collaboration. One, that's awesome. I'll be reading through all those later. But, but um, sharing your examples in the chat is really, really helpful for everyone else in the session, because then they can look and go, Oh, yeah, I've done that too. And maybe steal some ideas. So our next skill that I want to talk to you about is project management. Like Doctor Strange, you are able to foresee millions of outcomes and choose the best one maybe. Seriously, though, teachers are bad asses, you are organized. I got a job once. My my first non teaching job was in HR. And the person who hired me said I was looking specifically for teacher because I know how well organized you all are. Seriously. Um, I had fun with a comic book theme. Thanks, Sandra. So even if you don't see yourself as a project manager, you probably have some project management skills. Besides being organized, you've got time management skills, that is a survival skill. For teachers, there's always more things to do in the day than there are hours in the day to do them in so you know how to get stuff done. And you don't have to get stuff done with limited resources, you are definitely skilled at that. And teachers are just some of the most creative problem solvers. I have seen. Like when the when schools started going back to person after the pandemic shutdown. We had companies that were spending 1000s of dollars on these plexiglass dividers for people. Meanwhile, teachers who don't have 1000s of dollars to do that. We're creating dividers out of PVC pipe and clear shower curtains. I'm telling you teachers are just freakin innovative and resourceful. And those are skills we need in l&d. You're also a natural leader. Now I can hear some hiring managers who maybe are skeptics say, Oh, well, leading a classroom full of second graders is different than managing a team of five to 10 direct reports. Okay, sure, it's different. But in my mind, the leadership skills are a lot the same. Now, maybe you can't sing a little song to get your direct reports to pay attention in a meeting. But there are definitely some some natural leadership skills that teachers have. And anyone who says otherwise has never been in that role. You know, in a classroom, you try facilitating facilitating conversations with a group full of high school students, and then get back to me on how hard being a supervisor is. You're also used to working in a fast paced environment. When I first started my first role in corporate instructional design. I was warned about oh, it's a high stress, fast paced environment, you're, you're gonna have trouble adjusting because you're used to having all this time off.

Yeah. And I just at first, it kind of worried me. I thought, oh, boy, what am I getting myself into? But honestly, I ended up working fewer hours every week than I was used to as a teacher. In this job where everyone else was complaining about all the long hours we were doing. Yeah, I didn't get summer break anymore. Sure. But also didn't need that second income that I had from a summer job that I worked. Y'all know what I'm talking about. So don't listen to the naysayers. You got this.

So what does this look like on a resume? How can you showcase project management skills on a resume? Think about any sort of project you have worked on? As a teacher we all get those extra duties. So think about how you can use those. For instance, here are the first two are from my own personal experience, designed and implemented a school wide sequential foreign language learning program for K through 12 students, that was a big project, organize the junior senior prom completing all tasks on time. And under budget. That was also a big project, especially since there were supposed to be two Junior sponsors, and the other one left the school mid year. And so it was all on me managed a fundraiser that raised $5,000 for the library, or however much I mean, that went up planned district wide conferences. So think about what you've done in your career, that could showcase some project management skills. Because even if you're not applying for a job as a project manager per se, project management is an important part particularly of instructional design work, and also some other learning and development career fields. Because you have to keep things in scope and all of that stuff. So think about what you can put on your resume. And if you've got some ideas, pop those into the chat. So other people can can get some ideas to. Also, if you have metrics, for instance, that raised $5,000, for the library, if you have metrics that you can associate with what you've done on your resume, those are always really important to quantify your achievements. And I know Kim Scott is talking later in the week. She's not talking specifically about resume stuff, but I know that she does sometimes. So you might catch her in q&a or at a virtual table. And I know there are other folks here too, who are really good at coming up with those bullet points for resumes. Oh, awesome. Schools donors choice can ambassador and recruited 18 Donors Choose sorry, 18 teachers for DC. That's a great statement for your resume, Carla. And, yes, Bella says if you don't know the exact metrics, it's okay to estimate within reason you don't want I mean, you want to be honest, you want to be ethical, but estimates are okay. You can I mean, like raised $5,000 for the library, that would be an estimate, no one is going to think you raised $5,000 on the dot? I don't know. All right. So some more examples coming in. Wonderful. Thank you. And I'm gonna move on to the next skill or trait really, empathy and learner focus, you are the superhero with a heart of gold, you can think from the learners perspective. And that's really important in l&d, and most teachers have really good instructional instincts, because you're face to face with your learners every day, and you see firsthand what works. Now, of course, adult learners will lead, you know, different things than children or teenagers. Honestly, the differences aren't as vast as some people lead you to believe on. I mean, just from my own personal experience, of course, I taught high school. So maybe that's why. But my point is that teachers know the value of learner centered instruction. And that's really, really important. So what does this one look like on a resume? Adapted instructional materials and strategies to meet diverse needs? That's one example. You might think of some others. And thank you for continuing to post things in the chat. Those are awesome. Research and Evaluation is the next skill, you are able to dive into data. And yes, I like puns with my little water superhero here. You are able to research and synthesize information. And if you're looking at instructional design in particular, that's a super important skill, because we have to be able to find out information, learn it ourselves, and then break it down for learners. We are not always given exactly what we need to teach from the subject matter experts. In fact, I would say more often than not, we're doing a lot of research on our own, to try to find things out. And then we come up with something, run it by the subject matter expert, and then they fix whatever needs fixing, and so on. So it's important to be able to do that research and synthesis.

Even if you're an expert in the topic you teach, you're probably already scouring the internet for lesson plan ideas and teaching strategies and more information, so on. And if you're an elementary teacher, my goodness, I homeschool my kids for a couple of years. And I gained a whole new respect for elementary school teachers because no one can possibly be an expert on all of the different subjects that are taught in elementary school. And if you think oh, well, it's elementary school. Those are easy things. Just watch a couple episodes of Are You Smarter Than a fifth grader and you'll get on that humility horse that Mike beanie was talking about in this morning session, you know It's not easy. So yeah, you're you're researching stuff all the time. And synthesizing that you're also really good at evaluation, and learning and development, we need to evaluate the effectiveness of learning programs. Well, teachers do this all the time, maybe not as formally. But you're conducting little mini pilot tests in your classroom all the time. Whenever you develop a new lesson you're observing, you're collecting feedback, you're looking at assessment results. You're tracking learner performance over time. So even if you've never heard of Kirk, Patrick's four levels of evaluation, and if you haven't jot that down google it later, Kirk Patrick's four levels of evaluation. You're probably getting closer to levels three and four, you know, tracking the progress over time, then a lot of folks in l&d are so what does this one look like on a resume? And I see I've got some, some things in the chat already. Love it. Thank you, Kate. research best practices in education to continually improve instructional methods implemented a learner feedback system to evaluate and improve teaching methods. You might think of something else, I just like Kate did. So plop those into the chat if you have some other thoughts on how to show off your research and evaluation skills. Also, if you've and I'm using research, kind of with a little r, where you're talking about like going on Google and researching things, not the big bar of what you do in a master's program, or a doctorate program, but you may have done those things, too. So highlight those things on your resume. Those are important, especially if you're going into higher ed especially I think, the big our research shows up even more than it does in other corporate l&d jobs. Oh, thank you, Bella for posting about the Kirkpatrick model. All right. The next skill I want to talk to you about is your education and knowledge of learning theory, and models. You know, how people learn and how to structure learning experiences. Now, you might not yet know all about adult learning theory. Maybe you don't know who Malcolm Knowles is yet there's another one to jot down and look up, or Robert Ganya, or some others that other folks might think of blob in the chat. But you can find those things out. The important thing is you have a basic understanding of how people learn. And yes, you have some upskilling to do and some rescaling. But I don't think the gaps are as big as maybe you worry that they are. Here's an example from my own experience. When I interviewed for my first corporate ID position. The interviewer who later admitted to me that he was trying to trip me up and was actually actively trying to trip me up for a while. asked me about gone yeas, nine events of instruction. And I am sure I gave him a deer in the headlights look, because I had no idea. I didn't know who Ganya was. I didn't know about these nine events of instruction. And fortunately, oh, Jason, there's a name I've never heard of, Oh, my goodness. I'll be Googling that later. Alright, so fortunately, the other interviewer in the room was a former classroom teacher. And she leaned over to me and she said, Robert gone. Yeah, it's just like Madeline Hunter. And Madeline hunter. I knew something about I don't know if they'd still teach Madeline Hunter, but they did back in the stone age when I went to college. And that was something I knew from my teacher ed program. And so I thought, okay, he wants me to talk about how I structure my lessons. And so I talked about that the structure of a lesson, how it's organized. And I must have done a decent job of explaining it and showing that I knew something about what I was talking about, because I got the job. So how can you highlight these kinds of skills on a resume?

It might show up in your education, part of the resume. But it might be things like develop lesson plans and instructional materials, shared innovative instructional methods with peers that professional development events. If you can drop in specific learning theories that you like to use, that's always nice to showcase this as their skills their schools still using Hunter. Okay, great. So that one's not extinct yet, huh? From my dinosaur age. Um, I don't know that was a long time ago for me. Alright, so how can you highlight skills on your resume? What are some ways that you could show off your knowledge of learning theory and models? And it may be that this shows up in your portfolio if you're going for an instructional design position, you could talk about how you made your design Line decisions. And that is one thing I will say there's going to be a session later in the week on how to do portfolios. But I will say, when you're putting together a portfolio, putting a little text, you know, a paragraph, or two or three in there about the design decisions that you made is really, really important that's perhaps more important than the product itself is being able to see how you made those decisions and why you chose to do things a certain way, what problem were you trying to solve? And how did you go about it, those are really important for portfolios. And again, that's mostly for people in learning and or in instructional design roles. Because other learning and development roles, a portfolio isn't quite as important. Moving on to skill number seven, creativity and visualization. I already said how much I admire the creativity of teachers, you're just so innovative and resourceful. You also understand that it's important to present ideas and concepts visually. So, by the way, since we just talked about learning theories, and now I'm talking about presenting concepts visually, I do want to let you know, if you're still talking about learning styles, stop it. Go do some Googling about the myth of learning styles and why they're not really a thing. So that said, it is still important to present concepts visually, because this is something that helps most people learn. And you don't have to be an artist to do it. If you're using your presentations, and whiteboards, and smartboards, and screens and bulletin boards, you're conveying visual information. You might even already be creating infographics and posters and things. In fact, some of the best infographics I have seen shared on LinkedIn are from transitioning teachers who are working out loud, sharing their work, sharing what they're learning, as they're reading books, and taking courses to learn about learning and development. So how can you showcase your creativity on a resume? Well, more than likely, if you're going for an instructional design position, your creativity and your visual design skills are going to show up in your portfolio. Don't get too creative with a resume because there are still some companies that are using like assistive or AI to screen those resumes. And so you don't want to get too too creative with your layouts and so on. You just want to present the information. But your portfolio, you can be very creative with that if you're not going for instructional design, you might put some things on your resume that to show what you've done. And these are kind of generic but created and updated visual displays, developed multimedia learning materials, if you've developed instructional videos, things like that, show that off. All right. Got some some love for the calling out of learning styles in the chat. Awesome. All right, if you can think of some other ways to call out your creativity on a resume, just plop those into the chat too. And I'm going to go on to skill number eight. Your passion for learning.

Teachers love learning, right? That's why we go into teaching because we want other people to love learning and we want to help them do it. And that's what learning and development is all about. And hiring managers want l&d professionals to be passionate about learning and willing to learn new skills. Connie Malama. And talking specifically about instructional designer said we need to be obsessed with learning everything. And that's true. By the way, if you're not following Connie Malamud. She has a blog called the E Learning Coach, really great blog. So most teachers are by nature, lifelong learners. That's just what we do. And this one is probably going to show up on your education section of your resume. If you've been taking continuing ed classes, or you know, webinars, can't go into conferences, you can list those on your resume and it shows a potential employer that you are always wanting to learn new things. I'm going to be grabbing that links. Andy thinks that learning styles. Alright, so here are a couple things. Well, one thing you could could say about your passion for learning maintain professional certifications by taking continuing education classes. You might not need that as a bullet on your resume if your education section is showing that you're doing that. But if you can think of other things to put on there, just plop those into the chat while I go on to number nine tech savviness, you can use educational technology. Now here's one thing when I left teaching back in 2004, I didn't have an LMS, I had never taught in zoom zoom wasn't a thing. I didn't even have a computer in my classroom for the first few years that I taught. So, back then, having any sort of educational technology skills wasn't a given in teaching, it was something that was kind of special, I did use educational technology. But educational technology then was a little different than it is now. So you might not know storyline yet, or Captivate or any other authoring tools that you see mentioned on job descriptions. But chances are you've used an LMS, you've probably taught over zoom, you've used other ed tech. So talk about those things on your resume. And you can learn the other things. So what does this look like? Maybe administered courses in the LMS developed an online writing forum for students? That's something I did back in the day, facilitated classes over zoom. There's probably all sorts of other things, what could you put on your resume to show off your skills and technology. And obviously, if you're going into instructional design, it's important to start learning those authoring tools. That doesn't mean you have to shell out 1000 bucks for storyline. You might need to if you're wanting a job specifically for storyline. But there are other authoring tools out there that are less expensive, some that are free, that you can play with to create something in your portfolio. That shows you've got the chops to design elearning. And then when you get hired on your employer will, I hope provide the license for storyline. Now, that doesn't mean you don't need to learn storyline, like I said, if you are wanting to be an elearning developer, a lot of companies are going to want that. So you can do the 30 day free trial. But before you do that, spend a lot of time watching the videos and coming up with what you want to create so that you can really maximize your 30 days with that tool. Um, actually, Don't let me forget to come back to your answer. But I'm going to open that up to people in the chat too, if you want to talk about what free tools you recommend. Because my brain just went blank, but there are like seven tabs has a free version for micro learning. I think evolve has a free version. I can't remember so somebody else correct me. And apps is another micro learning tool I've used. I love that tool. However, I really hope they get better on accessibility soon because that's why I'm not currently using it. Seven tabs is better for accessibility. There's one that's pardon me I have dyscalculia so numbers do not stick in my head and there's one there's one H T five some I don't know you guys tell me there's one that's that's free and open source. Thank you h five p Thank you Bella not come up with that for the life of me. So there are other tools out there.

And Sandra says edgy Flo has a free version but like rise, it's good to know Evolve is a bit like rise to you but I cannot remember if it has a free version adapt Bella says is free twine Of course, why didn't that one come to mind. So if you aren't wanting to do branching scenarios, kind of like the choose your own adventure stories. twine is really good for that. And Christy Tucker has an awesome blog for learning more about how to do that. So Christy Tucker learning.com. Thank you great, great resources being shared in the chat. Awesome. I'm going to move on to the last skill number 10 that I want to talk about. And that is flexibility. Flexibility is really important in any job, including learning and development and teachers are pretty dang stretchy. You are not afraid to stretch your limits. In fact, teachers are being asked to be a lot more stretchy than they should be likely, which may be why you're here. There's only so far you can stretch. Being flexible in a job doesn't always mean you're expected to be superhuman. It can mean learning new things, taking on some additional tasks adapting easily to change. That's a big one. These are essential qualities in any career field and assist actually learning and development. So, I've already got, you know, Kate's got an example in the chat that you can put on a resume. If that is something that applies to you, I'm not encouraging anyone to put something on a resume that isn't honest. Um, so some other ways this might show up on a resume adapted instruction to meet individual learners needs, not learning styles, assumed additional teaching responsibilities in response to shortages. That one, you may or may not want to include on a resume if you don't want to end up working really long hours or something. But it's just a thought of something that you probably have done. So if you can think of other ways to highlight on your resume that you're flexible, and that you can adapt to change, drop those into the chat, please. I love that all of you are jumping in to answer the question about free elearning authoring tools. Cindy, you posted a link, Theresa posted a link. So really awesome information being shared in the chat. Thank you for that. All right, so at the very end, I want to ask you to reflect for a moment and go back to a little bit of that positive, soft, soft self talk. I'm sorry, I cannot talk self positive self talk. That might mean he was talking about this morning. What teacher superpowers Do you have that will help you stick your superhero landing in the field of learning and development? So put some I would like everyone to put one thing that you are just really good at in the chat. And it could be one of the soft skills I talked about. It could be something completely different. Something that's that you're really good at, it's going to make you stand out in l&d. Now I'm just gonna pause. tech savvy, awesome. Canva creations, that's wonderful problem solving. Things that everyone else has given up on that's important. Effective listening, encouraging. encourage engagement, awesome. Creativity, tech savvy empathy. Yes. That's me to organization creativity, passion for learning, adaptable. I can't keep up with all y'all. That's awesome. Awesome. Okay. And I want to share if you got the handout, and I'm going to post that in the chat again, you can click on these links and find the articles that I referenced to come up with this list. And to those statistics from earlier in the presentation. I also have some other resources. Teaching a path to l&d. If you're not already in that group, make sure that you join it if you are coming from teaching, it is the number one my first recommendation for any teacher going into learning and development. The other links on this slide are blog posts that I wrote, that should be helpful for anyone coming into instructional design that post how to become an instructional designer, the ultimate resource list is a huge list. It might seem overwhelming at first, but I encourage you to just take it one little step at a time. Starting with those those blogs that I listed at the very beginning of that post.

Because there's so much information this field is a field full of helpers. And we get into this field because we want to help people. Therefore, there have already been a ton of articles, written a ton of podcasts, a ton of videos, posted for free to help other instructional designers, other learning and development professionals get started in this career and succeed in this career. So before you shell out money for an academy or certificate, I'm not saying that you shouldn't because those things can be valuable. But before you do that, look at what's already available out there for free. And there's a lot. Alright, so I will open it up for questions in just a sec. These are ways that you can get in touch with me. My preferred method is, you know, connect with me on LinkedIn. That's always good, but my email address is there to my Twitter. And I have a blog at Scissortail ces.com. That I would love for you to check out. This is a link to that how to become an instructional designer ultimate resource list. Thank you, Megan. Yeah, okay. And I just Ashley said, Can you please resend the link to this presentation. If you look up just a few chat messages I posted Well now that's LinkedIn. I thought I posted it again just a second and I'll post it again. There you go. Okay, so I would like to see if we have any questions. If I've missed any in the chat, where we see you can let me know I'm looking now

I'm not seeing any right now. If you posted a question, and I missed it, please plop it into the chat again, because I just am not seeing it. So thank you so much for your kind words and engagement throughout this presentation. It's been a lot of fun. Alright, so there is a question, what do you think is the most common reason why transition teachers get rejected during work, interviews. So, there will be some other speakers later in the week who will share a lot about this sort of thing. In fact, there's a panel discussion about with hiring managers, so they'll be able to speak to this better than I will really, but from what I've seen, it's teachers not necessarily understanding how to translate their skills into the language of learning and development and how to show that what you know, and what you can do is relatable to a learning and development career. I know when I started, there were just you know, acronyms and other terms that I just didn't know. And fortunately for me, my first corporate ID job, I had a mentor who was a former teacher, and she was able to do that translation for me. And that was so helpful. I am eternally grateful to her and continue to work with her to this day, even though we're both not with that company anymore. There is a presentation in this conference, I can't remember what day Luis might be able to help me out about that sort of translation doing those terminology. But to me, there's that. And unfortunately, teachers do run into some pushback. Occasionally, I just saw a LinkedIn post, and I can't remember who posted it now about a job description, where they said, instructors or teachers need not apply. Basically, they said, don't apply. If you are a K 12 Teacher, and you have no instructional design experience, I get that for a senior level position, you shouldn't be applying for senior level, even if you have 25 years in the classroom. You're not ready for a senior level learning and development position yet. I'm sorry, there are others out there. Thought Leaders and so on who might tell you that you can. But I think for your first LNG job out of the gate, probably not, it's not going to take you long, like it didn't take me long to convince an employer that you know, pardon my language, you know your shit. But you can do this. But to get in and get your foot in the door, you might have to take something that's a little more entry level. Does that. I hope that answers the question.

Luis Malbas  
And just real quick that last, that session you're referring to is from Laney, Laney is fun. It's the last session of this event. Yeah, it's Friday at 2pm Pacific 5pm. Eastern. She's going to be focused on that there are a couple sessions in between one with Rick Jacobs and the other one with Matt Wozniak word. They're gonna be talking about moving into the business world from from teaching.

Kayleen Holt  
But yeah, in a few different posts Kara I believe it was Kara tomorrow. Charisse tomorrow morning is going to be talking about skills that instructional designers need. And then someone else is also talking about it. So you might get some, some different perspectives. And I know Kara was a hiring manager for a long time. So that'll be really important. I have hired people I have interviewed people, but not to the extent that some of these other folks have have done yeah, and there's there's the panel with hiring managers to Louise, do you know what day that's yeah,

Luis Malbas  
that's Tom. Tom McDowell. And he's gonna have Cara Heidi Kirby and Emma. I can't remember Emma's last name from the UK. So far, those are the three on there. And then that's Friday as well, I believe. Yes. Friday at 9am. Pacific Time noon. Eastern. Cool.

Kayleen Holt  
Thank you. All right. And and I want to share that throughout the week. You might see me at my virtual table, usually from from like two to three central time which is like right now it's almost two o'clock where I am so like that to your timezone and I'll be at my virtual table and you can share your resume or your portfolio with me and I'll give you feedback. It's one person's feedback. But I mean, I hope that's helpful. But I hope this presentation was helpful in helping you get some confidence and know that you do have some important skills that are transferable into learning and development, it may take some extra work for you to be able to articulate those skills, so that a hiring manager sees them. But you have a community of helpers, and CLDC, who will help you get to where you need to be. And I know Bella, who is in this session right now, she manages Tim sleds, elearning designers community and they are also super, super helpful. Sarah Steve X community that teaching a path to learning and development also very, very helpful. Like I said, community of helpers, we are here for you. Yeah, I do encourage you not to spam people on LinkedIn and ask them immediately for feedback, because we're also busy people. And so, you know, form, you know, build a relationship, but use the opportunities that are out there, like these virtual tables this week. Yeah, get some input and advice.

Luis Malbas  
Kayleen there are a couple more questions. I know you're gonna be in a table right after this, but I will be gonna go for this one. Yeah, do you recommend listening skills under each job entry on a resume or have sections that are labeled these headings you provided?

Kayleen Holt  
Oh, actually recommend listing skills separately from the, from your job listings. But yeah, like having a skill section on a resume, at least for me, when I'm looking at resumes that's really helpful. So I can immediately see, okay, I need someone who has experience with this LMS oh, this person does, or I need someone who knows about accessibility, which I always do whenever I like, right now, I don't need to hire anyone. But when I do, accessibility is really important to me. So those sorts of things, highlight them on your skills. I don't know that I would make sections labeled like the headings I, I listed in the presentation. But if you can call any of those skills out, that's important, especially those top three that employers mentioned in that global survey.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, I got another one for you. This one's from Russell sweep. I've heard that some recruiters don't encourage soft skills in your resume. Do you believe there should be a balance between between soft skills and hard skills?

Kayleen Holt  
Yeah, I think a balance is a really good approach. Because I think the reason that some recruiters don't encourage soft skills is because anyone can say, I'm a people person. And whether it's true or not, what you want really is evidence that shows that you're good at those things. So rather than only listing collaboration and problem solving, show me how you collaborated with people and solved a problem. That's what I want to see. I want to see evidence.

Luis Malbas  
Excellent. Okay. Well, so we have you at a virtual table coming up right at at 12. Pacific, three Eastern, and then after that, Alison Sollers is going to be on a virtual table to discuss what was it it was understanding, l&d job ads and your resume. That's a great opportunity as well, Alison, I just interviewed her in one of our teacher transition episodes. And she's fantastic. So I highly recommend that as well. So I'm making sure make sure that you take a look at the agenda. And then of course, tomorrow we're starting with Karen North who was definitely somebody would be great for all of you to see. And the rest of the day is looking fantastic as well. So hopefully the schedule is okay with everybody. I kind of wanted to build it so that there was space in between to get some work done. I know I get some work done in between, and we enjoy the rest of the event. Kayleen thank you again so much. And we'll see you on the virtual table.

Kayleen Holt  
Thank you. Okay, thanks, everybody.

Luis Malbas  
Bye bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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