Instructional Designer interview questions and answers
Use these sample Instructional Designer interview questions to evaluate candidates’ skills. Feel free to customize these questions to your training needs.
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Instructional Designers develop educational material for traditional, classroom-style training sessions and web-based courses. Their role is to identify training needs and create content that is both instructional and appealing.
Educational activities play a key role as employees develop their skills, cover knowledge gaps and ultimately, take on more complex projects and improve their performance. So, for this position, you should hire people who understand the importance of employee training and continuous learning. Look for candidates who are able to identify training needs, set educational goals and select the most effective instructional methods. These people will manage to design programs that respond to your employee development requirements.
During interviews, ask candidates to describe previous projects. Focus on activities that resemble training programs you (want to) develop, like instructor-led courses or e-learning sessions. Also, test candidates’ knowledge of relevant technology, including design, video-editing and audio script tools. If applicable, ask candidates to present a portfolio with work samples and have them explain how they designed one or more of those programs.
Operational and Situational questions
- We’d like to design a short course for employees who are going to use a new software. Would you design separate courses for technical and non-technical staff? Why/why not?
- What kind of simulation activities would you develop to train salespeople?
- If hired, how would you review our current training courses? What information would you use to assess their effectiveness?
- What interactive elements (e.g. graphics, videos and quizzes) would you add to make a theoretical course more engaging?
Role-specific questions
- What’s your experience with recording scripts? What software do you use?
- Are you familiar with creating graphics using tools like Photoshop and Illustrator?
- How do you measure a program’s effectiveness?
- Describe step-by-step the curriculum planning process. Who do you collaborate with and what limitations do you take into consideration?
Behavioral questions
- Describe a successful learning program you designed. How did it help develop employees’ skills?
- How do you research what kind of learning technology you will use and how to structure your content when designing a new course?
- Have your trainees ever failed to understand educational material? If so, what did you do?
- Describe a time you had to teach instructors how to use an e-learning platform. Mention all methods you used (e.g. manuals and presentations.)