S1 E12 Growing Your Career
Episode Audio
Tim Slade shares what he’s been learning about career growth.
Connect with Tim on LinkedIn.
Transcript:
The following transcript was auto-generated and may contain typos or spelling errors.
Amy Petricek
Hey everyone, I wanted to give you a quick heads up before we got the show started to let you know that today's episode is probably not suitable for little ears due to language. All right, let's go ahead and get this show started. Welcome to the share what you learned podcast. I'm Amy Petricek, learning enthusiast and the host of the show to share what you learned podcast is designed for learning professionals to share something they're learning in the field of instructional design. Today I'm talking to Tim Slade about growing your E learning career. Hi, Tim, welcome to the show.
Tim Slade
Hey, Amy, thanks for having me.
Amy Petricek
I had the pleasure of being on your show recently. I don't know if you'd call it a show per se, maybe webinar webcast. I don't know what I'm calling Yeah. But it's great to have you over here on mine. Again, because I've been on your show. I know a little bit about you. But we'd love to hear in your own words a little bit about who is Tim Slade in the off chance that maybe someone has not heard of you or found you on LinkedIn yet and also how you came into the field of learning and development. Because I think it's a really fun and unique story about that.
Tim Slade
So you know, my journey into instructional design and elearning I used to think it was really unique and obscure. But the you know, the thing that I've learned over the years is that there's more side doors and backdoors into our industry than there are front doors. So I I fell into instructional design and E learning and training, whatever you want to call it a little I used to say a little over 10 years, but it's been well over 10 years now, I used to catch shoplifters for a living. And so I have a degree in criminal justice. And I worked in retail loss prevention for a huge chunk of my really, really early career. And one day my boss came along and he said, hey, you're really great at catching shoplifters. There's a training coordinator job opened at the corporate offices in the loss prevention department, you should apply for that and train others how to catch shoplifters. And so I applied for it. And I interviewed for it. And I was 23 at the time, and I was living in Phoenix, Arizona, where I live now. And the job was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so on the other side of the country, and I got the job. And I don't know how I got the job in retrospect, like I was totally unqualified for it. And so I moved across the country on a whim and I did it thinking it was going to advance my loss prevention career, like my goal at the time was like, I'm going to become the corporate loss prevention guy. I just got my degree in criminal justice, like, this is what I'm going to do. And I got thrown in the deep end of the pool with instructional design and elearning. And I had no clue what I was doing. And about a year into the job, I quickly realized that I was no longer a loss prevention professional. I was a training professional, who just happened to be creating training on the topic of loss prevention. And it created I had this whole career identity crisis, I had no idea like I had that like where the heck am I going with my career? What should I do, because I was really enjoying the elearning design, because I was primarily what I did was elearning development. And so I decided to let los perinton go and can continue down the path of elearning and instructional design. And so that was that was back in 2009. And since then, I've worked at various companies doing elearning development, I've worked for government agencies, state agencies, doing e learning development and large corporations and small custom e learning development companies, and then freelancing, and then technology companies. And then in 2019, I decided to start freelancing full time and make it my business. And so that's what I do now. So between doing customer learning development for different clients, I do that as half my job and the other half of my job is helping other people learn how to become elearning. Designers. Yeah. So that's me. I
Amy Petricek
appreciate that. You said you almost think it's more normal now that people come inside and backdoors versus the front door. I think there's a lot of truth to that. But the way you communicated that was really articulate and I think is really helpful.
Tim Slade
Yeah, I mean, that first, I didn't think that I thought I was just as anomaly. But I remember, in 2010, I went to my very first learning and development conference, which was learning solutions in Orlando, I was very fortunate that my employer sent me there. And I remember I can't remember what said, I can't remember if it was this particular session I was in, or I was talking to people, but I quickly realized that there were more people like me, people who are good at something. And then they got put in a training role. And then they realized they were trainers and and so I it's in our industry. I think this is still true. I think there are more people who are really subject matter experts who became trainers or instructional designers than people who actually went to college to become instructional designers or trainers and that's changing you know, college programs are now offering degrees in elearning, and instructional design and but but there's still a ton of people in this industry who fall into it by accident,
Amy Petricek
me being one of them, you being another. So I thought you would be just perfect to have on to be talking about growing your career, your elearning career in light of one, the career that you built from the criminal justice system to now, but also, that's what you're doing now in your Academy is helping people build their elearning career? Yep. So I'd love to hear what are some of the roadblocks that you experienced when you were trying to grow your career? And how did you overcome
Tim Slade
speaking specifically to elearning I think the the biggest roadblock I faced was realizing that being a really good elearning designer, and this is true, even if you're just an instructional designer, even if your primary focus isn't elearning. It's more than just instructional design. Like it's more than just writing good learning objectives and having performance based content or conducting a needs analysis with elearning. Specifically, it's so multi, I can never say this phrase multi disciplinary, is that right? You know what I mean by that, like, it requires so many different skill sets that I think it's challenging for folks that you elearning is a form of multimedia, right. But it's mixed multimedia you might have on screen animations, and text and graphics, and then audio narration or video, and then you're in or it's interactive, and has to look good, and then also be, you know, instructionally sound. And then in addition to all of that, you also have to be a project manager and manage stakeholders and subject matter experts and manage expectations. And then you got to know a little bit about LMS is and maybe video production or audio production. And before you know it, you realize that, like what we do is like this mixed bag of different skill sets, as you know, some people just are graphic designers, that's their full time job. Well, that's just one piece of what we do, or UX design or UI or user interface design or audio editing, you know. And so for me overcoming those barriers was, I don't know, the answer is kind of a non answer. But it was creating a lot of really crappy elearning. And then, and then figuring out how to raise the bar for myself. You know, every time I I created a new course,
Amy Petricek
that is the learning process. Y'all start really crappy. And you can only get better from there and say, Oh, I wonder if I could have done this better. And why is this thing glitching? And those kinds of things. I think what I love about that is just how true and authentic it is to the learning process. Sure, I say this a lot. But one of the reasons I do this podcast is because I think people see a lot of end products and assume that that's where people started. But the reality is, we all started with crappy learnings and have grown and evolved from there. And so just having an opportunity to share what what are some of those things that all of us have experienced early on and our learnings. And so I appreciate you sharing what those roadblocks were for you with our audience.
Tim Slade
Yeah, I saw this great quote on LinkedIn, I can't remember who wrote it, or it was an image somebody shared. But somebody said, The thing I saw said, the price of entry is embarrassment. It's true. And if you don't, if you can't, if you if you look back at your past work, and you're not embarrassed by it, it means you haven't grown, you know. And so I look back at my past work and some of my early work, I'm incredibly embarrassed by it, it was awful what I was creating, but that means I've grown and that's a good thing.
Amy Petricek
When I was transitioning into instructional design, I made part of my embarrassing piece to be like, I'm going to post my first sample of this thing on LinkedIn, knowing full well, it was going to be my worst version. But that a piece of it was beginning that instructional design mindset of like, there will always be feedback on anything ever always that you create. But why not start that now? Even when things are not your best? And give, continue to flex that muscle? I guess?
Tim Slade
Yeah, I think you know, for for those people out there who are really committed to growing and developing their skill set, I think one of the hard lessons you have to learn is that you're never going to be satisfied with where you're at, you're always going to know that you could do better improve your skill set. And so to your point, like just putting out there where you're at right now, knowing that can be better. Well, that's a state that you're always in to some extent, right? Because that lack of satisfaction with where your skill set is, at any given time, at least that means you're striving to be better. And so even as I look at my skill set, like I feel very accomplished and capable with what I can do, and I'm confident but I am constantly looking at what I'm doing going Gosh, I know I can improve it. And I push myself to do that, you know, so
Amy Petricek
it's also the art of walking away. We just got a call it stops here. We're done. I'm curious what you'd say maybe this is what you've already touched on in that last bit there. But what are some things you would recommend for any and all learning and development professionals to be mindful of as They're looking at moving and advancing within the field.
Tim Slade
Um, I think the one of the big lessons that I learned through my career as I've, I've grown as a professional, not only just growing my career, but growing my skill set is that most of the growing doesn't happen during your nine to five job, most of the projects we work on at work are not really that exciting. And they're really not always that challenging. Sometimes you get lucky and you have a few challenging projects. But like the obligatory compliance course that you build, or, you know, that's not really where growth occurs, growth occurs, the time you put into your skill set outside of your nine to five job. And so for me, I can think of more instances where I've grown as a professional, and in turn that helped grow my career by the things I was doing during my nights and weekends. Like just opening up storyline and creating court, like, you know, one of the examples of my portfolio is on how to cook a turkey. Like I never had any interest in getting hired by like, a chicken company or turkey company, my goal was to, you know, just play with storyline and see what I could do with it. And that's what came out of it. And I won awards for that really weird elearning example. And so it's the, the one of the one of the ways I always distinguish whether or not somebody is truly passionate about being not exceptional in this industry, but like growing and really want to really wants to do it, is whether or not they're willing to invest their personal time in bettering themselves. If at the end of the day, you go home at 5pm, you've left work and you don't think about elearning, or storyline or instructional design until 9am on Monday, and then I have to wonder, like, really, how passionate are you about it? You know, for me, the world of elearning multimedia development, all the things that I do, it's all I think about, it's all I think about and not all the time, you know what I mean? But it's it's I put an incredible amount of time and effort into my skill set during my nights and weekends. And it's it, that's what's made me successful, not the jobs I've had or the projects I worked on at work. I don't know if that makes sense. But
Amy Petricek
my brain goes to growth in your career and your profession and your skill set doesn't just happen to you. You're an active participant and have to actively work towards that.
Tim Slade
Oh, yeah. I I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think a lot of times, I used to work with somebody who, when I first got my first corporate elearning job, this was when I was still working loss prevention, I had a co worker there who so desperately wanted to be promoted, they felt like they earned this particular promotion, they wanted it and they were just sitting there waiting for it to be handed to them. And years later, I left Kohl's I'd done a bunch of things like it was 10 years later, that person was still waiting in that position for that promotion, because they thought that they earned it. And that my point in that story and the point and and what you said why that resonates with me so much is that I think too often people put they tie their success to their career in their careers to a particular individual, particular boss, a company or team. And at the end of the day, like you, you are responsible for your success, you are responsible for going and getting promoted. And that might mean leaving that company or that team or doing something different or pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, you can't make it dependent on other people or other things it has to be You are the active participant, because nobody's gonna hand it to you.
Amy Petricek
I'm also thinking of people who are new to instructional design, I have the opportunity of interacting with a lot of people who are just new to the profession and wanting to get into it. I think there is some shell shock for some people of Oh, this is gonna take work and oh, I have to build a portfolio. I have to learn storyline. It's overwhelming. And I think it
Tim Slade
what's the phrase, I'm thinking of it, it's like a smack of reality in your face. You know what I mean? And, and it's hard, because, you know, and we were talking about this earlier, before the podcast, there's so many people so desperate to change careers or get a new job and, and that's great. Like, it's great that you've identified you want to change careers and go into a new path. But it requires a lot of hard work and time. Nothing new. You know, I talked about this when I talk about freelancing like it took me 10 years to build up the confidence and the savings and the skill set to go freelance it didn't happen overnight and getting a corporate job or growing your career or whatever it it's not going to happen overnight by any means. It takes a lot of time and effort and work and reflection and failure and mistakes, you know, and that's part of the process.
Amy Petricek
So for some of these people who are newer to instructional design or newer to the profession that's going to be built into your timeline of finding a job is these mistakes are going to be part of it. And other people might bear witness to it and see how you respond in those moments and thus see character really come out and I'm a big proponent of referrals into jobs. I think networking and really knowing As the is one of the best ways to get into a job. And so I think when people see character in those moments of crisis, or potential crisis is an opportunity to show who you really are, and potentially, maybe somewhere down the line that turns into a job.
Tim Slade
Yeah, absolutely. I don't know if that's at all connects with what you're with what you're saying. But the way that resonates with me is, you know, some. When I used to man, I used to manage a team of instructional designers and elearning designers, and we had this, I don't want to call it a motto or philosophy, and feel free to bleep me in excuse my language, I say this, the acronym was fit fo. And what that stood for was figure it the fuck out. And what I found, and this is true in my personal life, and my professional life, and it was true, when I was managing a team, we did our best work when we were thrown in the deep end of the pool and had to figure it the fuck out. And we had to fit flow it and, and you're right, and it brings out character, and you grow when you're in those moments, and it shows you what you're really capable of I you know, I do a lot of mentoring with people who are trying to build their portfolios. And it's hard sometimes for people to build, it's easy to procrastinate when you don't have skin in the game where you don't have something on the line. And I had this one particular student who was who was just kind of dragging their feet building this portfolio example. And then all of a sudden, they had a job opportunity come up that was like two days later, and they wanted to see this work sample. And she freaked out at first. And I'm like, just fit flow it like just fit flow it. And she whipped out that portfolio example overnight, and it was great. And she got that job as a result of it. And so sometimes actively putting yourself in this situation, those high risk situations, it builds character, it shows character, and it shows you what you're really capable of. Sometimes you need those external pressures. What I
Amy Petricek
haven't brought up is, well, I haven't explicitly or very clearly brought up that you have an academy. Yeah, that's specifically for helping people grow their careers. And it's called the elearning designers Academy. And so since we're on this topic, and you have that Academy, can you tell us a little bit about how that could be a resource for others to learn and grow and professionals, What kinds of things do you offer, and what kind of people might be a great fit for it.
Tim Slade
So I started building the elearning, designers Academy, probably around 2018, I self published my book, the elearning, designers handbook in 2017. And then I and then I started building some online course content to accompany the book. And then I wrote the second edition of the book and published that last year. And I started really investing my time in building the academy because my goal, my goal, not only in the book, but also the Academy was to provide all of the stuff, the information, the knowledge, that tribal knowledge, all the things I wish I knew, when I was thrown in that deep end of the pool of learning how to become an elearning designer, and so much of the so much of the formal educational content that's available, whether it's through universities, or even through programs like ATD, it's so focused on the theory, it's, you know, adult learning theory, adult learning principles, which are important. But people really need practical knowledge, people need to be able to manage a project, create a project plan, do a needs analysis, design a learning solution, use storyline. And so that was kind of my goal is to create a program that allows people to really focus on the practical knowledge. And then, when I launched, when I started, when I launched the program, it kind of intersects two things. It's those practical skills, which is what employers are looking to hire for, they want to know, can you do the things that I need you to do? And then the way that employers validate that is by what you put in a portfolio. And so the program is how it kind of intersects these two goals like help you learn the practical skills of elearning development. So how to do a needs analysis, how to manage a project, how to write a storyboard, how to use Articulate Storyline to build a course we do all of that. And then how do you showcase those skills in a portfolio? And so I provide resources to help people get up and running with their portfolio so that they can feel prepared to go apply for jobs. So in terms of who is the program is good for you? No, it is it is truly at its heart. It's a it's an E learning program is for people who want to get into elearning. It has all the instructional design aspects of it. But it's it's people who want to learn the art of the design and development of E learning.
Amy Petricek
What a great resource. I know when I come out into the world. I was one of those. When you posted on LinkedIn about I was like one of those who went straight to clicking it and opening it up and then like, Oh my gosh, like, what he's created is really it's just really thorough. That's from like, was really evident from my first click. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, you're most welcome. Well, I appreciate you sharing about growing your career and helping other instructional designers grow their career. I'd love to transition over to the rapid round questions I get to ask every guest on my show. So we'll start out here first, Tim with learning is and you get to fill in the rest.
Tim Slade
Learning is something that we are doing all the time. In the world of instructional design, sometimes I think we, we think learning we treat learning as an event. And learning isn't an event. And training isn't about learning is a process that's constantly happening. And so learning something we're doing all the time,
Amy Petricek
wholeheartedly agree, thanks for calling that out. When you're mustering up the courage to learn something new. What song do you put on?
Tim Slade
Oh, whenever I'm learning something new, or I'm feeling outside my comfort zone, or I'm feeling insecure or unsure? I'll fully admit like, I go blast some like really good Beyonce music and I feel empowered about that.
Amy Petricek
That's my answer. Like, nobody's ever asked me this question. But that's my answer. What's your go to song? Do you have a go to song?
Tim Slade
Oh, flawless is good one all I mean, I like them all. So
Amy Petricek
right, you can't go wrong, right? When you're asked to do a brand new task with the skill set you do not yet have where does Tim Slade turn,
Tim Slade
I turned to Google a lot. And I turned to Google, and I'm really good at faking it. And we talked about this earlier, like, I just throw myself in the deep end the pool. So I don't know if I turn anywhere. I mean, Google is always you know, there's, it's amazing what you can find on Google. But when I'm outside, pushed into a situation where I don't know what I'm doing, I embrace being outside my comfort zone, because that's where the magic happens. That's where you grow. So I embrace those moments like that, without learning without learning. We'd be stagnant, boring people. True. Yeah, we would be stagnant, boring people that I'm just gonna stand with that without learning we'd all be stagnant, boring people.
Amy Petricek
I wish you could see his face like his head was like coward. And like, this is what it is. I wish I had a more eloquent answer, but it is. Well, thank you. What's the best way for listeners to be in contact with you after the show? And is there anything that you're working on that you'd love to share?
Tim Slade
Oh, well, the people can get a hold of me on LinkedIn, you just type in Tim Slade, I'll show up. or on Twitter. I'm there as well. Or the E learning designers academy website at E learning academy.io? Is there anything I'm working on that I'd like to share? Yeah, I've well for a while. And when I say I'm working on it, like I'm doing a lot of hard thinking, and taking a lot of notes. But that's the work I've been working on a book has nothing to do with elearning or instructional design. And again, feel free to bleep this if you need to bleep it. It's called the Confessions of a corporate fuckup. And so it's about it's a it's a book full of career advice, but it can apply to anybody. And so I'm trying to, I'm trying to take a lot of the career advice I give people, new instructional designers and elearning designers and see how I can apply that to any sort of professional and it's, it's about it's about making your own way and charting your own path in your career.
Amy Petricek
That is so exciting. You've you've started to write this already.
Tim Slade
I have a lot of cards on the Trello board. It's It's It's one of my 2022 goals, start writing that so like to actually start writing it.
Amy Petricek
Okay, keep your eyes peeled everyone. It's coming. That'll be so great. I know I read your what your the what's called the E E Learning Centers handbook. I read that one and thought, Wow, this is so helpful and so approachable. And I felt like I had some tools to walk away with so I can only imagine how much the same or more helpful. Round two would be with a different book. Yeah, I Oh, so see. Thanks so much, Tim for sharing all about growing your elearning career with us today. Be sure to check out his website at elearning academy.io, which is full of resources. I also want to give a shout out to you my listeners for learning with us today. Until next time, stay open, receptive and kind.