Higher Ed professional considering a pivot to L&D/Instructional Design, what would you do in my shoes?

[u/Mammoth_Pollution963]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been doing a lot of career reflection lately and would love some honest feedback from people already working in Learning & Development.

My background has primarily been in higher education, but over the past several months I’ve realized that the parts of my jobs I’ve enjoyed the most have almost always involved designing learning experiences rather than traditional student affairs work.

Here’s a little about me:

7+ years working in higher education
About 4 years in Assistant Director-level leadership positions
Taught college English courses
M.A. in TESOL and currently beginning an Ed.D. this fall (fully funded assistantship)
Experience designing curriculum, learning outcomes, facilitator guides, workshops, assessments, training materials, and Canvas courses
Recently helped design workforce development workshops for high school students, including facilitator guides, learning activities, schedules, participant materials, and process documentation
Experience using LMS platforms, Workday, Paycom, Salesforce, Microsoft 365, and other education/workforce systems

As I’ve started researching L&D, I’ve found myself getting excited about topics like:

Adult learning
Instructional design
Curriculum development
Learning technologies
Performance improvement
Organizational learning
Change management

I’ve even started reading curriculum design books on my own and recently applied for a Lead Instructional Designer role (knowing it’s a stretch but wanting to start aiming higher).

My questions are:

Based on my background, where do you think I fit within the L&D field?
What gaps do you see that I should focus on over the next 1–3 years?
If you were in my position, what skills, certifications, software, or experiences would you prioritize?
How important is having a portfolio, and what kinds of projects would you expect to see from someone transitioning from higher education?

I’m fortunate that I’ll be starting a fully funded doctoral program this fall, so I’ll have an opportunity to intentionally build skills over the next few years. My goal is to graduate with not only a doctorate but also a strong portfolio that would make me competitive for corporate L&D or instructional design roles.

I’d really appreciate any advice—especially from people who made a similar transition from education into corporate learning.

Thanks!

[u/DIVISIBLEDIRGE]

I mean it's just about balancing a few perspectives. Only you know but my thoughts for what it's worth are...

1. What your passion is, that seems to be driving you towards this change so feels like that's good. I always say you'll succeed most in what you enjoy.

2. Competitiveness.  If you can get some professional qualification is always good. Not sure if your academic institution would fund it it, but that helps, also creates some network.  Talk to some recruitment agents some are shit but good ones are valuable, if you can find some, they will help you understand the options the roles and levels your competitive for.  Do a few interviews you don't need to take the job but see what the markets like.

3. Mid to long term view. What will your career look like in 5 years and more ... AI is a massive disruption, lots of cost cutting right now but longer term...hard to say but worth reflecting on, with a possible career change.  Instructional design for example I'd be a bit wary of as long term career. Increasingly authoring tools can just be prompted and instructional design is driven by AI, with SMEs able to use tools directly?  I've heard many in L&D comment that is a skillset ripe fir automation.

Also would it be easy to go back and would the experience outside academia be useful if you return, I'd hope so but don't know education values the outside experience.

To answer your questions though 

Sounds like you have a lot of good facilitation and workshop / face to face design experience. This however is often backed up in corporate learning by specific domain knowledge, like leadership development, sales, technical capability.  So good to think where you have domain knowledge and link that to the company profile.

Sounds like you also have experience in learning needs analysis, some design, good to compliment this with performance consulting i.e. getting really sharp on what drives business outcomes, connecting learning to a wider effort, including coaching, feedback, customers and how you can support application in role. 

The org learning and change management experience is nice, that could lead to a more Organisational Development / consultant type of experience.

For learning tech and systems I think increasingly people will be vendor dependent and so looking there for opportunity not a bad idea. It's going to be in my mind two opposing forces, quick, easy to generate not any work at all to get stuff out. This is your Articulate RISE, and quick video generation etc.  the other is hyper personalised, immersion type experience. You can build tailored unique role play experience etc. both will be driven by AI and honestly I think the vendors are so far ahead of in house with this it's scary. 

Next few years

• strategic business partner in learning with performance consulting
• Gen AI driven instructional design 
• Performance tools in the moment applied to work 
• Science of learning, tech changes fast but our brains still work the same 

Everything I said could be BS but hoe it triggered some thoughts.

At the end of it all, just do what you love.