Who are professional development facilitators and trainers?

Professional development and trainers tend to fall under the broader umbrella of Learning and Development, sometimes lovingly referred to as L&D. Interestingly, many other positions that transitioning teachers gravitate toward (and typically have transferable skills in) fall into Learning and Development. Other familiar roles include 

1. Instructional Designer (though some might argue that Instructional Design is an entirely different cluster there are some really strong arguments that ID can be housed solidly within L&D)

2. Curriculum Development

3. e-Learning Developer

4. Performance Improvement Consultant

5. Training Coordinator/Specialist/etc.

6. Learning Analyst

7. Assessment Specialist/Administrator

8. Knowledge Management Specialist

9. Onboarding Specialist

(and we could really keep going for quite a while here.)

 

The thing that makes this particular job category so interesting is that there are really 2 primary categories to trainers.

There are external-facing trainers – the ones that train users, customers, clients, etc. These folks are the more commonly seen and most commonly thought of. We see them at professional developments put on by curriculum and technology companies at our district offices. They might attend large convention events like California’s CUE conference or the National ISTE conference. Either way, they’re primary objective is typically to convey information about a product to a customer to help that customer successfully use that product. 

And then there are internal-facing trainers – those that train new employees, contractors, volunteers, etc. These folks are typically within the Onboarding department of a given division and function as a bridge between human resources and the leadership of that division. For example, the Onboarding team within the Customer Success department of an organization takes new Customer Success hires that the Human Resources team has vetted, interviewed, and hired and prepares those new employees for their given role. Once those new employees are prepared for their job (or as well as they can be minus on the job prep) the Onboarding team “graduates” those new employees and “hands them off” to the leadership of the Customer Success department, effectively letting those managers know that these new employees are ready to begin serving in their respective roles. 

A dive into job descriptions

EdTech

Using this job search, I pulled 5 Professional Development Facilitator and Training  positions from the EdTech space. 

Some examples include:

  • “Design and deliver internal onboarding and ongoing training for regional team members to support understanding of professional development session content and best practices for PD delivery”
  • “Respond to regional needs, customizing and/or developing compelling in-person, remote, and asynchronous professional development assets for teachers, instructional leaders, and district leaders”
  • “Deliver high quality live and recorded professional development sessions to customers to drive engagement with and platform”
  • “As Subject Matter Expert, you will research, write, and develop high-quality professional learning for on-site and online delivery that will impact educator practice”
  • “Proactively analyze post-event data, trends, and feedback to identify training needs, improve the learning experience for customers and develop additional offerings”
  • “Leading lesson study cycles for teachers”
  • “Create implementation support resources as needed”

Mixed Careers

To compare EdTech against Professional Development and Training in other fields, I used this job search. I pulled 6 positions from a wide variety of fields – anything from a recruiting agency to an IT services company to a staffing and recruiting services company. 

Some examples include:

  • “Contribute to the development and preparation of training materials”
  • “Support the learning environment through appropriate preparation and effective time management, maintaining a positive attitude and professionalism, and apply a learner-centric approach to promote engagement”
  • “Research training issues, identify root causes, recommend practical solutions, and implement those solutions in collaboration with fellow team members and the customer”
  • “support delivery of scheduled new hire learning programs to meet the forecasted hiring and staffing needs for client groups”
  • “Develop client specific learning programing targeted towards building skills and competencies required for current roles and to support future expansion”
  • “Partner with client stakeholders to ensure training documentation, resources or job aids are up-to-date and cataloged properly”
  • “Plan, monitor, track, and communicate continual training”

What are the major differences?

The primary thing that stands out to me is the explicit use of teaching strategy-style language in the mixed career job descriptions (i.e. the explicit direction toward tracking outcomes, monitoring engagement, following up, etc.) that would be natural and aren’t mentioned in the EdTech jobs as these are things that occur naturally in these spaces. Beyond that you might experience a little bit of a learning curve with the products you’d be working with as some of these are working with industrial technologies that might be new but other than that, if you’ve facilitated trainings at a school or district level – these would feel fairly natural to you, I would bet.

Visual Learner?

Compare the two images. The word clouds are the responsibilities list that I fed into a word cloud generator. There’s a little bit of a difference but I think some of that comes from a shallower word pool this time around as well as an emphasis on explicit teaching-related skills within the mixed-career job descriptions. Overall I still feel these two sets are relatively similar. 

EdTech Word Cloud

Mixed Careers Word Cloud

Do they need a portfolio?

Let's ask ourselves some important qualifying questions.

Does this job have content creation as a focus? 

Generally yes.

While some Professional Development Facilitators and Trainers are given templates to work with, many will have to customize those templates to meet the needs or demands of their specific clients. Some will have to create those materials or some materials from scratch. If you have materials from trainings that you have permission to use in a portfolio and especially if you have the data to show how effective and impactful that training was – that is incredibly powerful evidence to a hiring manager that you are a strong candidate for a position in this field. 

Should someone applying to this job highlight a process they’ve created? 

Potentially. 

While you likely don’t need to demonstrate a process, you may need to show that you have a sense of style or flow. This is something you can demonstrate pretty successfully with a training Slide Deck but is really powerful when you have actual video or audio of yourself giving the presentation. The most important part of any training is the engagement factor, so if you can show that engagement first hand, rather than just relying on your resume to convey those metrics (i.e. 70% of educators indicated this training enabled them to better implement product X into their classroom), that’s another big point in your favor. 

Is this a job for which you should highlight any work (i.e. publications, blogs, podcasts, creative materials, etc.) that they’ve already created? 

Maybe. 

If you’ve been able to get published in any kind of magazine, journal, or paper or mentioned in an article because of training that you led – absolutely! That should be on your portfolio, LinkedIn profile, and in your resume/cv. 

If your vlog or podcast would double as some kind of training (maybe you give really great trainings on Google Sheet tips and tricks!) I would include those as things to highlight. They’re not traditional professional developments and trainings like we think about when we think about district level PDs but those also make them innovative, interesting, and frankly – more fun. They are also more easy to showcase and capture metrics around. 

Now that we've established that they probably DO need a portfolio, what's should they do instead?

While this isn’t every single step that you’ll need to take, here are the major things to put on to your checklist:

1. Review your content

What do you already have created that can be used as-is or can be recycled to meet some of the job description’s highlights that are common for professional development professionals and/or trainers? 

2. Identify any gaps

What content is missing from your portfolio that you will need to create so that a hiring manager or reviewing content expert can see the full scope of your skill and flexibility?

3. Select your display platform

How will you display your portfolio so it’s clean, concise, and inviting? 

4. Create your brand

What brand identity will you establish and maintain so that potential employers and hiring managers have a clear picture of who you are and what value you can bring to them as an employee and asset to their team?

5. Publish, network, and share

How will your networking and sharing strategy change or evolve to include your portfolio? Who will you share this new resource with? Where should this resource appear in your resume and social media profiles? When should you make this available to prospective employers?

Think you might need some support creating or working on your portfolio?

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Just have questions? I got you.

Want to talk with someone about your portfolio face to face? 

Need some quick feedback on your portfolio but don’t have time for a 1:1?