How to Answer Instructional Design Interview Questions
So, you just got that phone call or email alerting you that you’ve been selected for an interview for that instructional design job you applied for a few weeks back. You’re excited about a new opportunity, and you’re feeling proud to be one of a few individuals who have been chosen as a candidate.
But then, the anxiety starts to sink in. You begin feeling the pressure of performing well during the interview, and you start asking yourself, “What questions are they going to ask?,” “How will I be able to explain my experience the right way?,” and “How do I answer their questions concisely without sounding like a total buffoon?”
The truth is, we’ve all been there! Regardless of how much experience you might have, interviewing for an instructional design or eLearning job can be a nerve-wracking process that makes you feel vulnerable and put under a microscope.
However, performing well during an interview and landing a new job is all about demonstrating confidence in your knowledge and skills. And the best way to do that is to know what questions you might get asked and have a plan for how you’ll answer them—even when you might know all the answers.
So, in this article, I’ll share my top interview questions you should be prepared to answer during your next eLearning and instructional design interview, along with my tips (as a former hiring manager myself) on how to answer them.
Tips for Answering Instructional Design Interview Questions
Now, as you review my list of instructional design interview questions, I want to point out a few important things to keep in mind.
First, every interview is different, and every hiring manager has a different interviewing style. If you’re expecting a consistent and standardized experience in the interview process and the types of questions you’ll be asked, think again! Because of this, there’s no surefire way to be 100% prepared for any question you might be asked.
Second, each hiring manager is looking for different things when you answer their questions. Some hiring managers want to hear specific examples from your past experiences, whereas others want to understand your judgment and thinking as a learning professional. When answering any question, the best approach is a combination of these two things: Explain your thinking behind your answers and back them up with relevant examples.
Third, you’ll be asked different questions (depending on who is interviewing you). For example, when you’re being interviewed by the recruiter, you’re less likely to be asked nitty-gritty questions about your instructional design process. In contrast, the hiring manager or the team you’ll be working with will be more likely to dig into the specifics of your experience and process. And it’s for these reasons why it’s so important to be familiar with and understand what to expect at each stage of the instructional design interview process.
Okie dokie! With that all out of the way, let’s get to my list of the top instructional design interview questions you should be prepared to answer!
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General Interview Questions
To kick things off, the interviewer will usually ask some general questions. These questions are intended to set the stage, get to know you a bit better, and establish a high-level understanding of your experience. While there’s no right or wrong way to answer these questions, how you answer them can set the tone for the rest of the interview.
Personally, my recommendation is to keep it conversational and demonstrate that you’re someone who would be easy to work with.
Tell me about yourself.
This is usually the first question you’ll be asked during the interview, and it’s commonly regarded as the hardest question to answer. Too often, candidates let their nerves take over and attempt to win the whole interview with this single question. This often results in the candidate rambling while they attempt to tell the interviewer everything they need to know.
However, I don’t think the answer to the question needs to be as hard as we often make it. Instead, your goal is to provide a simple, high-level, one-to-two-minute pitch about your overall experience, the types of projects you’ve worked on, accomplishments you’ve achieved, and what you’re most excited about with this potential job opportunity.
In other words, keep it simple!
Why are you specifically interested in this role and company?
This might seem like a trick question—one that’s intended for you to blow smoke up the ass of the person asking it—however, you should really take the question at face value. Besides looking for a new job (that’s obvious), why are you interested in the role or company? No, really! Why?!
You see, your answer to this question should demonstrate that you’ve done your research about the company’s goals and the job description itself. And when answering it, you should be able to point to specific things that align with your values, skills, and/or experience.
The challenge with properly answering this question is that it requires a lot of intentionality on your part about the types of companies and jobs you apply for. And so, before you even apply for any job, you should already know the answer to this question.
What’s your greatest strength / weakness?
The strength and weakness question seems like yet another trick question and is one that most candidates overthink. At the end of the day, the goal of asking this question isn’t really about explaining your strengths and weaknesses. Instead, the goal is to evaluate your ability to demonstrate self-awareness and the room for growth in your skillset.
So, if you get asked this question, be honest! For your strengths, identify something that relates to a skill set the interviewer is looking for in the role and highlight how your skills complement their needs. And as for your weakness, think about an area you need to improve upon (ideally, not something that’s mission-critical to the role you’re applying for) and explain what the weakness is, how you identified it, and what you’re doing to overcome it.
Don’t be one of those people who claim not to have any weaknesses or attempt to turn their weaknesses into a strength. Instead, this is your opportunity to show that you’re self-aware.
Where do you see yourself in the next three to five years?
Now, I gotta be honest here: I hate this question! However, it’s one that many hiring managers like to ask, and it often leads to candidates providing BS answers like, “Well, I hope I’m here, working with you.”
Blah! 🤮 Don’t do that!
Instead, if you do get asked this question, share your vision for your career. You don’t need to provide specifics on the company or manager you’ll be working for—after all, you’re not a psychic! So, use this time to share the types of projects you’d like to see yourself working on and the skills you would like to develop in the future.
Why should we hire you?
Okay! We’re now down to this last general interview question you might get asked, and this is another one that often feels like a trick question. Just like “Tell me about yourself,” this question often causes many candidates to let their nerves get the best of them and start rambling. The truth is, the answer to this question is much simpler than it might seem; it just depends on when you get asked it.
If you are asked this question at the beginning of the interview, your goal is to demonstrate your basic understanding of the role and how your skills and experience align with it; that way, you can dig into those things in more detail during the interview.
However, if you get asked at the end of the interview, your goal is to reiterate your understanding of what the company is looking for and how it connects to the skills and experience you’re able to provide. Instead of your answer being about what you might want to explore further during the interview, the goal is to provide a highlight reel and summary about why you’re the best fit for the job.
Instructional Design Interview Questions
Next, we have our instructional design interview questions. And while this whole article addresses questions you might be asked during an interview for an instructional design or eLearning development job, the questions in this section are focused specifically on how you apply the various theories and processes of instructional design.
Walk me through your instructional design process.
This question is often asked to evaluate your understanding of instructional design and your process for approaching a new project. Your goal here is to demonstrate how you can apply adult learning theory to solve real-world business and performance issues in a structured way.
Whether you prefer the ADDIE or SAM models, I recommend explaining a high-level overview of how you evaluate a performance issue by conducting a needs analysis, aligning training efforts with business results through action mapping, designing blended and fit-for-function training solutions, and evaluating the effectiveness of your solutions.
Tell me about a time you optimized a training experience for adult learners. How did it affect your design decisions?
The goal of this question is pretty obvious: To evaluate your understanding of adult learning theory. Ideally, if you’re able to offer a specific example of adapting a learning experience for adults, then do it! Otherwise, your goal is to explain your understanding of adult learning and how you would make the necessary adjustments to a training experience you were designing.
This is where you might want to reference Malcolm Knowles’ Principles of Adult Learning and David Merrill’s Principles of Instruction and provide some specific ideas of how you’d use them to create a training experience for adult learners.
Tell me about a time when a training project didn’t go as planned or get the results you expected. What happened, and what changes did you make?
This question is designed for the interviewer to evaluate how you measure the effectiveness of your training solutions and use those results to make informed changes to your instructional design. The good news is that you can share an example that had either a positive or negative outcome—it’s less about whether the outcome was positive or negative and more about how you determined it and how it affected your later design decision.
So, when answering this question, I recommend referencing Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Evaluation and explaining what evaluation techniques you may have used as part of the design of your training program.
Tell me about a time when you have had to make a design compromise. How did you make that decision, and what was the outcome?
The goal of this question is to evaluate how flexible you are with your instructional design decisions. Let’s face it: As instructional designers (especially in a corporate or workplace setting), we don’t have 100% say over every aspect of the training solutions we create. And sometimes, we have to design around different constraints.
So, your answer to this question should focus on your ability to creatively adapt the design of your training programs while still attempting to achieve the desired outcomes.
How do you adapt your deliverables to accommodate different needs or learning styles for your audience?
Finally, this question can either be a trick question or act as a red flag for you as a candidate. If you get asked about learning styles, the interviewer is hopefully testing to see if you know that learning styles are a debunked theory. In that case, your goal is to share your understanding of the research on learning styles and instead share how you go about designing the delivery of training according to the outcomes you’re seeking to achieve.
Project Management Interview Questions
In addition to any instructional design-focused questions, you’re likely to also get asked questions related to your project management skills and how you’re able to collaborate with various stakeholders and subject matter experts.
What strategies do you use to gain agreement and buy-in with your stakeholders and subject matter experts?
Being an instructional designer usually means working in collaboration with various stakeholders and subject matter experts. And, more often than not, your stakeholders have a lot of say—if not the final say—on much of the work that we do. So, the goal of this question is to evaluate how you effectively collaborate with your stakeholders and SMEs and how you navigate corporate politics and egos.
When answering this question, I recommend sharing how you bring your stakeholders and SMEs along for “the journey” of your design process. This might include how you prefer to conduct a kickoff meeting, how you use design documents and project plans to communicate your design process, or how you manage review cycles.
Tell me about a time when a project went off track or out of scope. What did you do to recover the situation and successfully deliver the project?
This question is often asked to evaluate how you react when something doesn’t go as expected or when a stakeholder moves the ”goalpost” outside of the original scope of the project. Your goal in answering this question is to highlight your ability to adapt to changing circumstances and attempt to keep everyone happy in the process.
With this question, I recommend explaining how you manage scope creep by anticipating it ahead of time and how you work to negotiate an agreeable solution with your stakeholders and subject matter experts.
Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a tough stakeholder or subject matter expert. How did you resolve the disagreement, maintain relationships, and make progress on the project?
Along the lines of the previous question, this question is intended to evaluate your ability to work with demanding stakeholders and subject matter experts. Oftentimes, the people you’re working with as an instructional designer can be senior executives and other individuals who hold a lot of political capital throughout the organization.
When answering this question, your goal is to demonstrate how you manage expectations, negotiate agreeable solutions, and balance the demands of your stakeholders with the needs of your learners.
Tell me about a time when you had to juggle multiple projects or conflicting priorities at once. How did you manage and prioritize your time?
Finally, this question is designed to understand your ability to pivot easily from one priority to another. This is especially common in corporate sector jobs, where a project can be shelved and efforts directed towards other priorities.
So, when answering this question, I recommend explaining your process for creating project timelines; that way, you can visualize the scope of your workload and see how different project dependencies interact with each other.
eLearning Development Interview Questions
Finally, this brings us to questions related to eLearning development. While you may not get asked any of these questions (depending on the role), it’s never a bad idea to be prepared! Even if the job isn’t titled “eLearning designer,” there’s a strong chance that eLearning development will be part of your job as an instructional designer.
What are your criteria for picking the right eLearning authoring tool for your projects?
While most organizations have a predetermined set of authoring they use for eLearning development, this question is asked to determine how you make informed decisions about one tool or another. Too often, many instructional designers and eLearning developers make arbitrary decisions about the tools that share their deliverables.
And so, when answering this question, your goal is to explain the different variables you might take into account that will affect which tool you might use for a given project. This might include the project timeline, the complexity of the course content, the level of interactivity needed, etc.
What’s your process for drafting an eLearning storyboard?
Different learning and development teams handle eLearning development in different ways. For example, on some teams, you may be responsible for the whole design and development process, including storyboarding, visual design, and development. And on other teams, you might be responsible for writing the storyboard and handing it off to a developer to build in the eLearning authoring tool.
And so, this question is intended to understand your process for drafting a development-ready storyboard. When answering this question, I encourage you to highlight what elements you prefer to include in a storyboard and when you prefer to use a written vs. visual storyboard.
How do you determine what interactivity to include in an eLearning course?
And finally, this question is designed to evaluate your understanding of when and how to incorporate meaningful, performance-based interactions into your eLearning courses. Remember, not all interactivity is created equally! And while there’s a time and a place for click-to-reveal style interactions, they aren’t always the best when it comes to driving performance change.
And so, when answering this question, I recommend highlighting how you design interactivity to help learners put skills into practice. This might come in the form of a system simulation, a branching scenario, or even a simple set of quiz questions.
Final Tips for Instructional Design Interviews
Alright! So, those are my top questions you can expect to get asked during an instructional design interview. Now, before we wrap up this article, I want to share some final tips on how to answer these questions, how to say “I don’t know” with confidence, and how to make the interview more conversational.
Use the STAR Method for Behavioral Questions
Now, as you think about each of the questions I outlined in this article and how you might answer them, it’s important to remember what I mentioned earlier: Your goal is to provide an answer that demonstrates your judgment and backs it up with a relevant example. The best way to do this is with the STAR method.
The STAR method is a technique for responding to interview questions in a straightforward way, allowing you to tell a story by laying out the situation, task, action, and result. And typically, the STAR method is best used when responding to situational or behavioral questions, such as:
“Tell me about a time when…”
“Describe a situation where…”
“Give me an example of…”
Answering questions with the STAR method is pretty straightforward. You just need to think of a situation that relates to the question being asked and tell a story, explaining…
The Situation: Set the scene and provide context for your example.
The Task: Describe your responsibility and involvement in the situation.
The Action: Explain the specific steps you took to address the problems presented in the situation.
The Result: Share the outcomes of your actions and what you learned.
Learn How to Say “I Don’t Know” with Confidence
At some point during an interview, you’re bound to get asked a question that stumps you or one where you don’t have the relevant experience to provide a good answer. And in those situations, you might feel inclined to make up a response or “wing it,” hoping to pull the wool over the eyes of the interviewer.
Well, as a former hiring manager and someone who led an instructional design and eLearning development team, I’m here to tell you that we can tell when you’re trying to pull crap out of thin air. Don’t do it!
Instead, I encourage you to get comfortable with saying “I don’t know” with confidence. It’s okay if you don’t have an answer to or relevant story for every single question. And in those moments, it’s your opportunity to explain your judgment or thinking about a given topic.
For example, let's say a hiring manager asks you to share your experience conducting a needs analysis, but you've never actually conducted one before. Instead of saying "I don't know" or "I've never done that before," you can say something like:
"That's a great question! While I've not yet had the opportunity to conduct a needs analysis in a practical setting, I've been researching a lot about them, and here's how I'd go about it..."
This answer lets you turn a negative into a positive. Yes, you're being upfront and honest about your experience (or lack of experience, in this case), but it also lets you pivot and demonstrate your thinking and judgment. And this is ultimately what the hiring manager wants to know.
Ask a Ton of Questions
And finally, at the end of the interview, there’s one last question the hiring manager or interviewer is likely to ask you, and it’s “What questions do you have for me?” And I won’t lie; this is perhaps the most important question during any interview. If there’s one question you can get wrong and ruin your chances of moving forward, it’s not having any questions!
I encourage you to ask a ton of questions not only at the end of the interview but throughout as well. Asking questions back to the interviewer is a great way to turn the interview from a one-way interrogation into a two-way conversation.
For example, if you get asked a question about your instructional design process, after you provide your answer, it’s totally acceptable to turn it around on them and ask them what their process looks like. This is a great way to evaluate how your answer aligns with their current expectations and provides you an opportunity to share even more about your skills. It also does a great job of showing your curiosity and interest in the role.
Put Your Instructional Design Interviewing Skills into Practice!
Knowing what questions you might get asked during an interview and how to answer them is only one piece of the puzzle. To truly feel prepared and do your best during the interview, you need to practice answering questions! A great way to do that is to use AI to conduct a mock instructional design interview! Check out this video, where @Tim Slade shows you how!
What’s Next?
There’s a lot more to explore when it comes to preparing for an instructional design interview. Keep learning by checking out these additional resources!
The Bottom Line
Interviewing for any instructional design or eLearning development job can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. There’s no predicting what questions you’re going to get asked or what to expect from the process—every interview is going to be different and unique.
Remember, your goal when answering any instructional design interview question is to demonstrate your judgment and thinking and provide as many examples as possible. And the more you practice and prepare, the more natural and confident your delivery of your answers will become.
So, what other tips do you have when it comes to answering instructional design interview questions? What other questions would you add to the list? Share your thoughts, tips, and questions by commenting below!