This was me. And this could be you. But you’ll get there!

Making a career change can be overwhelming. Thinking about all the new things you will need to learn in order to get a job can produce a lot of anxiety and imposter syndrome. 

When I first decided to change careers from a special education teacher to an Instructional Designer, I was excited to learn more. Then it hit me. The more I learned, the more I got overwhelmed with all of the tools, theories, and practices I needed to know to be successful and confident. I learned several things along the way to help calm down that overwhelm to focus on my goals and learning. Here are my tips:

1. Analyze job descriptions - There are so many tools out there, and when I first joined the IDOL courses Academy and...

 I left public education for the corporate world. Once I updated my LinkedIn page and toggled on the switch “open for opportunities,” I was inundated with messages from recruiters who thought I would be the “perfect fit” for their opportunity. I was so excited! They were already knocking down my door to offer me a job. I will land my coveted IDOL role in no time I thought.  I quickly learned that was not the case. I had become part of the very competitive world of recruiting.  The recruiting process is more about helping the hiring company and recruiting firm than it is about helping a candidate land her dream job. 

Companies often hire external recruiters to find viable candidates to fill open positions. Recruiters search for those candidates in places such as LinkedIn, Indeed, and other job...

Are you getting ghosted after interviews?

Are you relying on friends & family members for feedback on your portfolio?

Do you wish you had a community to guide & support you during the job search process?

You can go from being ghosted to becoming one of your future company’s best hires with IDOL courses Academy. I did!

Before joining IDOL courses Academy, I was a literacy teacher/teacher trainer & coach, who was spinning her wheels on how to officially break into the instructional design industry. 

I dove in taking courses, reading books & blogs, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos. In 2019, I even attended the ATD conference, networked, and attended the career center, where I managed to land two interviews.

One of the interviews seemed promising. I liked the team, and I had a feeling that they liked me, too. Then, they popped the big question: “Do you have a portfolio?” 

I did not. I only had a couple of samples I had created...

The first week at a new job can feel like the first week of school.  There are nerves, excitement, and “first day jitters.”  You don’t know if you will make new friends or anything else that is going to happen. The first week goes by in a blur and yet takes forever. Here is the low down of our first week as IDOLs.

Kristi:

My first week started off crazy with my orientation day (which you can read about in the Day 1 blog). Tuesday I started working remotely. I worked on what the company calls technology-based training (TBT) ALL. DAY. I literally sat at my computer all day clicking through the epitome of bad training. The team reassured me that these were made by a higher level of the company, not by them and we all laughed. I checked my calendar for Wednesday and I was invited to a training session by the Learning Consultant on my team. It was a four hour training! Basically it consisted of the Learning Consultant and the other...

Here are my reasons why I think you should invest the time to build your instructional design portfolio:

1. Career Transitioning.

If you are...

“I only got the job because I got lucky.”

“Will they find out I don’t know what I am doing?”

Do any of these sound familiar? You may be dealing with imposterism. And you are in good company.

If you aren’t sure, take this Imposterism self-assessment created by Pauline Rose Clance.

Imposterism. Imposter Syndrome. Imposter Phenomenon. Imposter Experience. 

These terms describe how high-achieving people fail to recognize their success and/or accomplishments and have persistent self-doubt and fear of being exposed as a fraud. They struggle with attributing their performance to their competence and often attribute success to luck or other outside factors.

No matter what you call it, imposterism is real and present in the business world. It is not a disease or an abnormality, but can have a harmful impact on job performance and satisfaction, and eventually cause burnout.

Prevalence, Predictors, and Treatment of...

Diary of a New IDOL-Day One

The day we have been waiting for has finally arrived. It is the first day in our role as an official IDOL! 

Kristi:

My first day was pretty chaotic. I went into the office for orientation along with at least 90 other temp workers. Every two weeks, my company holds a new hire orientation. This week was especially large because they are hiring in preparation for the open enrollment that will begin in October (I work for a health insurance company). 

Once I got in the building, mask and all, I was escorted by my one and only fellow ID on my team to our floor. She set me up with my computer and showed me around the building. I was so excited to see where I would be sitting every day (the view!!) and to see all the extra amenities that the building had (a gym, a cafe, work treadmill rooms). 

Then we sat down and tried to get me set up with all my logins and such to prepare me to go to my home office until January. That is where the...

Hello, this is Kristi Oliva and Veronica Reed. We each come from different backgrounds and have taken different paths to where we are today, but we have both worked hard and are now proud to be starting new roles as IDOLs. Through this blog/vlog we will be sharing with you what it is like as new IDOLs. We will shed light on our journey from the first day to day 90 and tell you what happens behind the scenes when you land your first ID role.

We hope that our experience can help others have the confidence to apply for and land that IDOL role without doubting their abilities.

Kristi:

I come from a teaching background. After 12 years of teaching, I knew that it wasn’t what I wanted to do anymore. Even though I wanted to switch careers, I didn’t know what I was qualified for. I honestly thought my only options were to either become a school administrator, or get my PhD and teach at a university. Neither of which really got me excited. 

While doing a job...

 I was very excited when I was asked to be part of a large, high profile project. We were asked to redesign a New Hire Training (NHT) that traditionally was done face-to-face and took approximately five weeks to complete.  The redesign was an innovative concept to the company, and the reason it became such a high profile. Everyone wanted to know how the new concept would work. We developed a blended learning course for NHT, which reduced training time to only 3 weeks. 

You are probably thinking – Blended learning is nothing new. It has been a valid teaching strategy for years. However, my new company had been solely creating facilitator-led training before this. We were finally breaking into more modernized training methods.

This was going to be my very first...

Are you a perfectionist?

Are you struggling to build your first portfolio?

Do you feel like you're spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere?

STOP! Right where you are. Save yourself wasted time and effort by learning from my mistakes.

Here are some revelations I had while working on my portfolio:

Set realistic expectations for what your portfolio should look like based on your current abilities and experience as an instructional designer. If you are new to the field, aim to demonstrate your proficiency and understanding, instead of skill and expertise.

While the portfolios of experts and leading industry practitioners are great sources of inspiration, your portfolio will likely not look like theirs. As a novice, you do not have the experience to create a portfolio equivalent to the portfolios that took others years and sometimes a decade-plus to work up to.

Here are some examples of what your first portfolio website might look like:

Christine Prince

Bonnie Lou Davis

...