How to edit your LinkedIn for an Instructional Design role
If you’re looking to transition from teaching into tech as an Instructional Designer, one of the first things you should do is set up your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a professional networking site that many tech companies use to find and hire employees. When I left teaching, I didn’t know about LinkedIn, so I had to start from square one. And I struggled quite a bit with it! I didn’t know anyone that made the transition from teaching to Instructional Design, so I built my LinkedIn profile through lots of trial and error. My goal in this article is to help you set up and edit your LinkedIn profile so that you can avoid some of the same mistakes I made. Let’s get into it.
For more information on my transition into Instructional Design, check out From Teacher to Instructional Designer (what I did and what I wish I had known).
Fill out your profile
To start, go to LinkedIn and create an account. It’s free! Once you’ve made your account, you’ll want to start filling out the main sections of your profile: About, Featured, Experience, Education, Skills and Endorsements, and Accomplishments. Let’s break down each one.
About section
The About section of your profile if where you can share a bit about yourself. It’s a bit like a “get to know me” section that can include information that people won’t be able to learn just by reading your work experiences. It’s up to you what types of information you want to share:
You can share a professional description of yourself and your career journey
You can share technologies you’re experienced with (e.g. Storyline 360, Adobe Illustrator, video editing softwares, etc.)
You can share your hobbies and interests outside of work
You can also share a combination of information - a professional description of yourself AND/OR technologies you know AND/OR a bit about your hobbies and interests outside of work
Featured section
The Featured section of your profile is where you can link out projects and pages from your portfolio website. If you’re still working on your portfolio website, you can link out to a few other things in the meantime:
Articles you’ve written relating to curriculum design/development
Videos links to conferences you’ve spoken at or presented at
Sample courses you’ve built for a corporate/business setting
Articles you’ve been featured in relating to curriculum design/development
Take your time with this section, it doesn’t need to be filled out right away, especially as you’re just getting started with your Instructional Design journey. Just be sure to update it as you begin to create content and have projects to showcase!
Experience section
The Experience section of your profile is where you get to showcase all of your career and related experience. When I first created my LinkedIn, I made the mistake of really centering my profile around student growth (because that’s what I was used to reporting on!). I also didn’t know that company recruiters (people who do the hiring) use keywords to search for and filter out profiles to help speed up their search process! So I didn’t optimize for keyword search. It took me a while to learn these things, so here’s a quick guide to creating an optimized Experience section of your profile..
Include any experience you have related to leading/creating professional development for other teachers
Include any experience you have with online learning, more specifically, building and managing courses in online learning platforms
Include any experience with technologies you used to create curriculum
Include any experience you have with video editing, video recording, and any software you used to work with videos
Remove any mention of student data, such as increasing class reading average by X% (instead, focus on which ways you used data to inform your course design)
Remove any mention of managing classes/class size, or students in general
Remember, this isn’t a teaching resume anymore, it’s an Instructional Design resume, so you want to try to curate your experiences to focus more on corporate, technology-related experiences that you’ve had as a teacher!
Education section
The Education section is where you can fill out any degrees you may have. It’s optional to include the years that you went to your respective schools, so only include it if you feel comfortable.
Skills & Endorsements section
The Skills & Endorsements section is where you can pick a few key skills that you want to showcase. This section isn’t necessary to fill out, but it surely doesn’t hurt if you have time! For Instructional Design roles, you’ll want to focus on any skills relating to curriculum design and development, as well as any technological skills you have.
Accomplishments section
The Accomplishments section is a great way to showcase any certificates you’ve taken related to Instructional Design. When you take a course online, you might get a link to a certificate or a downloadable PDF - add that here! Some examples of course/cert topics you can take are:
Video editing
Curriculum development
Technical writing
Web design
UX/UI
HTML & CSS
E-Learning
Project management
Graphic design
Network
Once you’ve filled out your profile, it’s time to start networking. Add your colleagues that are also on LinkedIn, and reach out to Instructional Designers that might share a similar background. The great part about LinkedIn is that you can search for people with a specific job title and then filter down by either region, school, company, etc. I’d recommend adding a personal note to requests you send (if you don’t know the Instructional Designer personally).
Summary
While transitioning to Instructional Design from teaching, it’s important to take your time editing your profile and authentically network with like-minded people. You may come across roadblocks and/or job application woes, but that’s all part of the process. Ask for feedback about your profile and be open to continuously improving your story. You’ve got this!
