Need to Hire Online Training Developers? Here Are 4 Questions You Should Ask!
Whether you have a great online learning development team but need more capacity, or you don’t have internal expertise to develop online learning, you may need to hire online training developers to create training programs for you.
But not every online business training company is the same.
Online class development is a special expertise that requires online course development training, skill and experience.
There are lots of online training developers out there who would love to work for you. If you’re looking to hire an online business training company or a solo instructional designer, here are four questions you
can pose to candidates to help determine whether they’re a good fit for your project.
What services do you provide?
Seems obvious, but it’s often overlooked. If a company presents itself as an online business training company, you may assume they provide a wide range of service including instructional design, course
building (the process of taking a storyboard and building out the individual slides in a program like Adobe Captivate or Articulate Storyline), hosting elearning and consulting with you on the best way to achieve your business objectives through education.
However, that’s not always the case. Sometimes an online business training company is really a course builder. And if you don’t have instructionally sound storyboards, you’re not going to get an effective program. Or, they may really be a hosting company that provides course design to sell their LMS.
What are your core competencies?
There are lots of online training developers out there capable of online class development. Some have tons of experience and others just enough to talk the talk. Would you rather hire an online business
training company who has successfully completed hundreds of courses? Or one that just wrapped up their first and barely got it to play? After they tell you what services they provide drill down on each
one. Ask to see samples of their work in each area.
Probe how much they done and what clients they’ve performed that service for. Should we do all our training online?
Do your best to ask this question with the innocence of a child.
Yeah, it’s a trick question. What you want to find out is whether they are strictly elearning developers, or whether they have experience
creating curriculum for classroom training, too. If they’re strictly online learning developers, they’ve got a hammer and every project will look like a nail. If they have a broad perspective on education, they’ll be
a much better resource for you.
Can we see your stuff?
First, if they don’t have sample training programs to show you, or claim they can’t show you their work, walk away. Find another online business training company. If they do have samples, do their samples
demonstrate that they’ve successfully done what they’re trying to get you to hire them to do? Is the instructional design effective? Is the graphic design stimulating?
Can they articulate what business problem the training was trying to solve and how it was solved? Do they have samples of low-end work
where they provided an effective training program for a client on a budget, as well as high-end, high-budget samples?
The proof is in the pudding. Online training developers should have lots of stuff to show you and should be glad to do so.