Congratulations on securing an interview for the coveted role of an L&D consultant! As you embark on this exciting opportunity, it’s crucial to equip yourself with the right strategies to ensure a successful interview. In this blog post, we will share four valuable tips that can help you prep for your interview and significantly enhance your chances of landing the role. Though these tips may seem straightforward, they hold immense potential in making a lasting impression during the interview process. So, let’s dive in and discover how practicing these tips can give you the edge you need to excel in your L&D interview.
1. Do your research!
Before you step foot (or virtual foot) in the interview, be sure to explore not only the role to which you have applied but also the organization and the industry. Here are some helpful tips for places to research:
- Organization. Explore the company’s website and social media accounts.
- Industry. Be up-to-date on L&D trends and relevant happenings within the training world.
- Role. Read through the role description (maybe a couple of times), be prepared to address how your experience aligns, and come equipped with relevant questions.
As an L&D consultant, keep a pulse on the new approaches and tools used to engage the learner and any methods preferred by the organization you are interviewing with. It is often very easy for an interviewer to spot a candidate that has not done their research — don’t be that candidate!
Innovative Tip: Be sure to know and research how the interview will be conducted. For example, if the interview is held via Zoom or Microsoft Teams, be sure to complete a test run ahead of time to avoid stressful time-of-interview technical issues.
2. Be clear and concise
The ability to evaluate how a candidate communicates is one of the most critical components of any interview. It is your responsibility to demonstrate that you can be clear and concise when answering any question. Avoid long-winded, round-about, repetitive, prolonged, monotonous, rambling answers (see, no one likes a run-on). Listen to the question, ask any clarifiers, and answer the question completely and to the point.
Check out my other blog post, The Top 4 Soft Skills You Need to Ace an Interview, for additional tips. As an expert in the world of training, it is imperative to excel in this. If you can’t be succinct with an interviewer, how will you demonstrate that you are succinct with a learner?
3. Articulate alignment + achievements
One of the best ways to impress an interviewer is the ability to eloquently speak about how your experience, past projects, and achievements align with the role and have examples at the ready. An interview is not the time to be modest. Share successes, give examples, and provide metrics that represent what you can offer a client. As a consultant, we know you’ve seen it all, and we want to focus on how those past engagements will equate to a successful partnership. Avoid the following during an interview:
- Sharing examples that focus more on your team versus you.
- Calling out what you didn’t do and missed opportunities.
- Speaking negativity about previous projects, teams, or clients.
Innovative Tip: For instructional designers: think about the best ways to share how you engage your learner. What sets your deliverables above the rest? What tools and techniques do you utilize to get through to your audience?
4. Speak to a versatile portfolio
If you are seeking instructional design consultant roles, you will often be asked to provide a portfolio of samples demonstrating your instructional design skills. If you don’t already have one, start pulling samples together. Here are some helpful tips for the portfolio portion of an interview:
- Be prepared to have examples at the ready that illustrate your abilities and the applicable services you are looking to provide the organization.
- Don’t limit your portfolio to showcasing the end course/training either, be sure to have samples that showcase your process, inclusive of analysis, curriculum design, and development.
- Talk about your approach and the steps you take to ensure an engaging and effective training solution.
- Speak specifically to the role you played in creating the training, the tools you used, the effectiveness (if applicable), and the challenges you faced.
Now that you have a few tips to ace your L&D interview, go forth and execute. Do your research, be concise, be ready to speak to your successes, and have a portfolio at the ready!
Interested in landing an interview for our network? Learn more and apply here!
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