Entry-Level Instructional Design Jobs: What Employers Ask For

Entry-level instructional design jobs exist, but “entry level” rarely means “no experience”. The job-ad research is consistent on this: employers usually ask for a bachelor’s degree in any field, strong writing and communication, some familiarity with a learning management system (LMS) or an authoring tool, and evidence that you’ve already done design work. That last item is the one that decides most first hires, and it’s the one you can do something about before you apply.

Search for entry-level instructional design jobs and you’ll mostly find job boards: lists of vacancies with salary ranges and no explanation. The career guides that do rank tend to list job titles and suggest a portfolio without saying what employers actually look for or why “entry level” ads ask for experience. This guide covers what the studies of real job ads found, what employers say about new designers, and a plan for building the experience the ads ask for.

What entry-level instructional design ads ask for

Three studies are most useful here. Two read the job ads themselves; the third asked employers directly. All three are US-based, and the newest data is from 2023, so treat the numbers as a guide to what employers value rather than a forecast.

Degrees: a bachelor’s, usually in any field

Weber, McCarthy, Campbell and Bauer analysed 130 full-time US postings for instructional designers and instructional technologists, collected from Indeed in May 2023, and interviewed twelve hiring leaders across schools, universities, not-for-profits and companies (Weber et al., 2024). Most of the postings, 60 per cent, were corporate (including healthcare); 23.8 per cent were in higher education.

A bachelor’s degree was the minimum in 73.8 per cent of postings and a master’s in 12.3 per cent. More useful for career changers: 57.7 per cent accepted a degree in any field, and another 20 per cent didn’t name a field. Only 5.4 per cent asked for a degree specifically in instructional design or learning technology. A master’s was listed as preferred in 43.1 per cent, so it helps, but it is rarely the price of entry.

Experience: nearly always mentioned, often one to two years

An older but more detailed study looks at experience directly. Raynis coded 93 instructional design postings collected from Monster, Indeed, ATD and EDUCAUSE in September and October 2016 (Raynis, 2018). Experience was mentioned in 96.8 per cent of them. One to two years was the range asked for most often, in 38.7 per cent of postings, followed by three to four years (32.4 per cent) and five to seven (32.3 per cent).

The kind of experience matters as much as the amount. Instructional design experience was the most requested (67.7 per cent), followed by experience of the kind of working environment the job sits in (60.2 per cent). Teaching or training experience was named in 32.3 per cent.

The 2023 interviews point the same way.

That’s the core of the “entry level, two years’ experience” puzzle. Employers aren’t necessarily asking for two years in a job titled instructional designer. They’re asking to see design work. A portfolio of real projects, even small or unpaid ones, is how a new designer shows it.

Skills: communication first, tools second

When Weber and colleagues coded the general skills in the postings, communication led by a wide margin.

Written communication was named in 72% of instructional design job ads, more than any other general skill

Share of 130 US instructional design postings on Indeed naming each skill, May 2023 · % of job postings

Within instructional design knowledge, the most common requirement was familiarity with design frameworks, models and strategies (56.2 per cent), followed by teaching across modalities such as in-person, online and blended (33.8 per cent) and adult learning practices (33.1 per cent). If the vocabulary is new, the ADDIE model is the framework you’re most likely to be asked about.

Specific tools were named less often than you might expect: an LMS in 29.2 per cent of postings, video in 20.8 per cent, Articulate in 16.2 per cent and Adobe Creative Suite in 15.4 per cent. The authors report that hiring managers did not always require particular technologies, and some preferred candidates who could learn them. The older Raynis data had LMS experience (50.5 per cent) and eLearning authoring software (49.5 per cent) in about half of postings, with authoring tools more common in corporate ads and LMS experience more common in higher education.

The practical reading: you need to be comfortable in one LMS and one authoring tool, and you need to write well. Collecting tools is a weaker use of your time than showing finished work.

What employers expect of a new designer

The job ads say what employers ask for. A survey of employers says what they expect once you’re hired, and the bar is higher than the word “entry level” suggests.

Villachica, Marker and Taylor surveyed members of a professional association for instructional designers and analysed 185 responses (Villachica et al., 2010). More than half of respondents expected entry-level designers to be able to carry out 22 common design activities spanning all five ADDIE phases, from analysis through evaluation. Then they were asked how well new hires actually managed.

The study is old and drew on a convenience sample, so don’t read it as a measure of today’s market. But it explains something job seekers notice: employers hire for the whole process, not just building screens. A candidate who can show analysis, design decisions and evaluation, not only a polished module, is answering the question employers are really asking.

Job titles that work as entry points

Entry-level design work hides under many titles, and the title tells you less than the duties. This table is our reading of how these roles usually divide; check each ad.

Title to search	What the work usually involves	What to show
Instructional design assistant or associate	Supporting a senior designer: storyboards, quiz writing, editing, building in a tool	A storyboard and one built module
eLearning developer	Building courses in an authoring tool or LMS from someone else’s design	A finished, working module and its source file
Training coordinator or specialist	Scheduling, delivering and sometimes designing workplace training	A short training plan with its evaluation
Learning content developer or writer	Writing scripts, job aids and course text	Writing samples aimed at adult learners
Curriculum assistant or developer	Mapping and documenting programmes, often in education	A course map with objectives and assessments
Educational or learning designer (Australian and New Zealand universities)	Working with academics to design units and online subjects	A redesigned unit with your rationale

If you’re moving from teaching, our guide to instructional design jobs for former teachers covers how classroom skills map onto these roles.

How to land a first instructional design job: a six-step plan

To keep this concrete, we’ll follow one invented but typical example: a 26-year-old who studied psychology, works in customer support at a software company, and has been rewriting the team’s help articles and new-starter notes because nobody else would.

1. Read twenty ads in one sector and separate required from preferred

Pick one sector for your first applications: corporate, higher education, government or not-for-profit. Read twenty of its current ads and copy every requirement into two columns, required and preferred. It’s easy to rule yourself out by reading preferred items as required.

Our support worker reads twenty corporate ads in her city. The required column keeps saying “bachelor’s degree”, “excellent written communication” and “experience designing training”. The preferred column holds the master’s degree and the specific authoring tool. She has the first two; the third is what she needs to build.

2. Get one real project where someone else owns the content

Experience that counts is design work done for someone else, with a brief, a deadline and a reviewer. You can usually find it before your first design job: an induction module for your current team, a short course for a not-for-profit or professional association, or a job aid for a process everyone gets wrong.

Our support worker offers to turn the new-starter notes into a short onboarding module for support staff. Her manager agrees and a senior support lead acts as the subject expert, the person who owns the content and checks it’s right.

3. Document the whole process, not just the result

Employers in the Villachica survey expected work across all five phases, so show all five. For each portfolio piece, keep: the learner brief, the objectives, the assessment, the built module, what happened when people used it, and what you changed. Our online course design checklist covers what to check at each stage.

Our support worker pilots her module with the next two new starters, notes where they got stuck, and revises two lessons. That revision log shows evaluation, which a portfolio of finished screens can’t.

4. Learn one LMS and one authoring tool by building, not by watching

Choose the tools that recur in your twenty ads and learn them by building your project in them. Depth in one tool, shown in finished work, reads better than a list of tools you’ve opened once. Many tools have free trials or free tiers; check the current terms before you start.

5. Prepare a writing sample and explain your decisions

Written communication was the skill named most often in the 2023 postings, and interviews will test how you explain your choices. Prepare a short design rationale for each portfolio piece: why this sequence, why this assessment, why this much practice. Naming the principle behind a choice, such as cognitive load when you split a dense lesson, turns instinct into an argument a hiring manager can follow.

6. Apply wider than the job title

Apply to the adjacent titles in the table above as well as “instructional designer”. Our support worker applies for two instructional design associate roles and an eLearning developer role at software companies, where her product knowledge counts as the “working environment” experience the Raynis data says employers value. An internal move into her own company’s training team is on the list too: an employer that already knows your work is often the easiest first step.

What the pay data says, and doesn’t

There is no reliable public pay figure for entry-level instructional designers. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track instructional design as a separate occupation. Its closest category, training and development specialists, had a median annual wage of 69,280 USD in May 2025; the lowest-paid 10 per cent earned less than 38,760 USD and the highest-paid 10 per cent more than 123,250 USD (BLS). The BLS lists a bachelor’s degree as the typical entry-level education and notes that some positions ask for experience in areas such as staff development or instructional design.

Those figures cover a broad category that includes trainers as well as designers, so treat them as a rough frame, not a starting salary. Outside the US, check your own country’s labour statistics and the salary ranges in current ads.

Four mistakes that slow a first hire

1. Treating preferred as required. If you meet the required column and half the preferred, apply.
2. Building a portfolio of screens. Polished slides with no brief, objectives or results show building, not design.
3. Only searching one job title. The work you want often sits under another name.
4. Waiting for permission to get experience. Design work done for a real team, unpaid or internal, is still design work. Do one project properly and document it.

What to do next

Open twenty current ads in the sector you want, split the requirements into required and preferred, and mark each one you can already show evidence for. Then find one real project, for your team or a local organisation, that would let you show the rest.