Interview Questions to Ask Instructional Designers
This list is for hiring managers and learning-and-development leads who need interview questions to ask instructional designers and want more from the hour than a tour of the candidate's software. It follows the order of the work: a portfolio piece first, then how the candidate analyzes a training request, designs objectives and practice, handles subject-matter experts and deadlines, builds in authoring tools with accessibility in mind, and checks whether the learning worked. The guide covers running the portfolio walkthrough and judging the answers when you have never built a course yourself.
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The questions
Each question, and why to ask it
Portfolio
Pick one course or module from your portfolio and take me from the original request to launch day. Which parts did you build yourself?
Why ask it
Instructional design is usually team work, so the piece on screen may include a graphic artist's visuals, a developer's build and someone else's script. Listen for a candidate who separates their own share without being pushed. If it stays vague, go screen by screen and ask who made each thing.
Who were the learners for that piece, and what did you know about them before you started?
Why ask it
A designer who met the audience can describe them: their shifts, their devices, what they already knew, why they were being trained. 'All staff' or 'new hires' with nothing behind it suggests the course was built from the content outward. The follow-up is where the knowledge came from: a site visit, a survey, or the stakeholder's word.
What did the request look like when it first reached you, and how different was the thing you delivered?
Why ask it
Requests tend to arrive as a format: an hour of elearning, a slide deck to be turned into a course. The distance between that and the finished piece shows whether the candidate questioned the brief or filled the order. Neither suits every job, so decide beforehand which one you are hiring.
Show me the storyboard or script behind this piece. What changed between that and the final build?
Why ask it
The planning document shows more of how someone thinks than the polished module does. If they cannot share it, have them describe what was in it. Changes made after a review or a pilot are a good sign, and no changes at all usually means nobody tested the draft.
Which pieces here were made for a real employer or client, and which were built for the portfolio?
Why ask it
Many portfolios mix the two, especially from people moving out of classroom teaching, and concept pieces are fair evidence of skill with a tool. What they cannot show is work done under a deadline, a reviewer and a subject the designer did not choose. Keep your tone neutral when you raise it, then weigh the samples accordingly.
A lot of training work is confidential. For a project you cannot show me, who was it for and what was it meant to change?
Why ask it
A thin portfolio is not evidence of thin experience when the best work sits behind a client's login. A candidate who can describe the audience, the problem and the outcome from memory has probably done the work. Do not press for material they agreed not to share.
What were you doing before instructional design, and which habit from that work still shows up in your courses?
Why ask it
There is no single route in, and each one leaves a mark. Former teachers often know how to explain and how to pace a lesson, while people who came from a subject area know one audience deeply. The other half of the story is what they had to learn from scratch when they moved, so raise it if they do not.
Which do you build best: self-paced elearning, live sessions with a facilitator, video, or job aids and written guides?
Why ask it
The job title covers several different jobs, and few people are equally strong in all of them. Compare the answer with what your team will ask for in the first six months. Someone whose best work is facilitator guides may be wasted in a role that is all authoring-tool builds.
Analysis
A department head tells you, 'My team needs a course on this.' What do you ask before agreeing to build one?
Why ask it
Play the department head and answer whatever they ask you. You want questions about what people do now, what they should be doing and what is in the way, before any talk of format or length. A candidate who starts outlining modules has skipped the step that prevents the most wasted work.
Tell me about a time you concluded that training would not fix the problem. What did you suggest instead?
Why ask it
People sometimes know how to do a task and still do not do it, because of a slow system, a missing tool or no reason to bother. A designer who has said so to a stakeholder, and offered a checklist or a process change in place of a course, can spare you a build nobody needed. How the stakeholder took the news is the rest of the story.
How do you find out where people actually go wrong on the job, as opposed to where their manager thinks they go wrong?
Why ask it
Managers describe the problem from a distance. Answers worth hearing mention watching the work, reading error logs or support tickets, or talking to the people who do the task well. If the candidate has only worked from a manager's summary, ask what they would do with one afternoon alongside the team.
Take a task you have trained people on and break it down for me: the steps, the decisions and the places it goes wrong.
Why ask it
Task analysis is easier to demonstrate than to describe, so let them do it aloud. Notice whether they separate what someone must memorize from what they can look up while working. That split decides how much of the course needs to exist at all.
What do you do when you are given no access to the learners before you design?
Why ask it
It happens often: the audience is on shift, spread over many sites, or guarded by the stakeholder. Workable substitutes include a recent hire, a team lead, call recordings or a five-question survey. A candidate with no workaround ends up designing for an imagined learner.
How do you decide what to leave out of a course?
Why ask it
Everything an expert knows feels essential to the expert. Look for a rule the candidate applies, such as cutting whatever the learner will not use in the task, or moving reference detail into a document. The last thing they cut, and who objected to losing it, makes a good second question.
When is a job aid, a short video or a conversation with a manager the better answer than a course?
Why ask it
A designer with one format builds that format for every request. The choice should hang on the task: how often it is done, how costly a mistake is, whether someone can look a thing up in the moment. Recommending a job aid and having made one are different, so find out which it was.
What do you want written down and agreed with the stakeholder before any design begins?
Why ask it
The audience, the behavior that should change, how success will be judged, and who reviews by when: a designer who gets those agreed has a way to stop a project drifting. If they name a document, such as a design brief or a project charter, a blank copy of it is a fair thing to request.
Design
Which design model do you lean on, such as ADDIE or SAM, and where do you bend it?
Why ask it
Naming a model shows training in the field. Describing where it gets shortened under a deadline shows experience. Be wary of anyone who claims to run every phase in full on every project, and find out which step they drop first when time is short.
Write a learning objective for something you know well, then tell me how you would test it.
Why ask it
Give them a minute and a topic of their own choosing. A workable objective names something a person can be seen doing, under stated conditions, and the test follows from it directly. Verbs such as 'understand' and 'be aware of' are hard to test, whether or not the candidate cites Bloom's taxonomy, so see if they catch that themselves.
People ask for training to be 'engaging.' What does that word mean to you, and what gets called engaging that is not?
Why ask it
Games, badges and animation are what many requesters picture. A designer who ties engagement to relevance, such as a problem the learner has this week or a decision they really face, tends to build shorter and plainer courses. If gamification comes up, have them describe one case where it helped and one where it was decoration.
In your courses, what does the learner do, as opposed to read, watch or click through?
Why ask it
Practice is usually the first thing cut when a build runs late, so its presence says something about a designer's priorities. The activities worth hearing about resemble the job: handling the call, filling in the real form, spotting the fault. Clicking to reveal more text is not practice, whatever the template names it.
Tell me about a scenario or branching activity you wrote. Where did the wrong options come from?
Why ask it
Believable wrong answers come from real mistakes, usually collected from experts or from incident records. Invented ones are obvious, and learners pick the right path without thinking. Where the distractors came from tells you how close the candidate got to the actual job.
How do you write an assessment question that tests more than recall?
Why ask it
Ask them to turn a simple fact question into one that requires a decision, right there in the interview. The skill matters most if your courses feed a certification or a compliance record. Follow with how they set a pass mark and who agreed to it.
How do you design one course for an audience that includes first-week beginners and people with ten years in the job?
Why ask it
A single path through the material bores one end of that audience or loses the other. Pre-tests that let people skip ahead, optional depth, and practice cases sorted by experience are common ways through. A candidate who says the content is the same for everyone has probably not watched a veteran sit through the basics.
How do you handle mandatory content where the legal or policy wording cannot be changed?
Why ask it
The designer rarely controls the text of a compliance course. The craft lies in leaving the required wording intact and putting the effort into examples and practice around it. Who signs off such content differs by employer, so have them describe the approval chain at their last one.
How does your design change between a virtual classroom session and a self-paced module on the same topic?
Why ask it
A live session can draw on discussion, questions and the other people present, while a module has to carry everything alone. If the answer is that the slides stay the same and a presenter is added, the candidate has probably built one kind and not the other. A look at one of their facilitator guides settles it.
Which principle of adult learning or learning research do you use most, and what does it change on the screen?
Why ask it
The name of the principle matters less than the second half of the answer. Spacing practice out, cutting decorative material and having learners retrieve an answer before it is shown are ones candidates often raise. If someone builds everything around learning styles, ask what evidence they have seen for that.
Experts and deadlines
How do you open with a subject-matter expert who has never worked with a designer before?
Why ask it
The first meeting sets the terms: what the expert provides, what the designer decides, how much time it will take. Candidates who do this well explain their role early and ask about real cases instead of requesting everything the expert has. What they send the expert beforehand, if anything, shows whether this is a habit or an ideal.
An expert hands you 120 slides and says every one is essential. What happens next?
Why ask it
Most working designers have lived this, so you should get a story and not a theory. One way through is to ask what a learner would get wrong without each section, then offer the remainder a home as reference material. Watch for respect toward the expert as well as firmness.
How do you get what you need from an expert who has no time for you?
Why ask it
Experts have day jobs, and the course is rarely their priority. Short recorded interviews, a draft to correct in place of a blank page, and hours set aside by the expert's manager are moves an experienced designer reaches for. A candidate who simply waits will miss your dates.
What do you do when two experts disagree about the correct way to do the task?
Why ask it
It comes up more than people expect, especially across sites or shifts. The designer should not pick a winner on a technical point. Look for someone who brings the disagreement into the open and gets whoever owns the process to rule on it.
How do you learn enough about an unfamiliar subject to design for it without becoming the expert?
Why ask it
Have them name the least familiar topic they have ever taken on. The story shows how they read source documents, what they ask and when they stop. Knowing enough to ask good questions and spot a gap is the goal, and a candidate who has to master the subject first will be slow.
How do you run review rounds so that comments arrive once, in one place, from the right people?
Why ask it
Feedback that trickles in by email, chat and hallway conversation is a common reason course projects overrun. A named reviewer list, a deadline for each round and a single document or review tool are the marks of someone who has been through that once already. Then ask what they do when two reviewers contradict each other.
A stakeholder asks for a significant change a week before launch, after sign-off. How do you respond?
Why ask it
There is no one right answer, which is why it is worth asking. You are listening for someone who states the cost in days, offers a smaller change that could still ship on time, and lets the stakeholder choose. Flat refusal and silent overtime are both warning signs.
Say we need a 20-minute module with two branching scenarios. How long would you quote, and what usually throws your estimates off?
Why ask it
Any number is acceptable if they can say what it rests on: past projects, a ratio they trust, time per screen. Build time swings widely with interactivity, media and the number of reviewers, so a quote with no questions attached is a guess. Late content, slow reviews and narration re-recorded after a script change are the familiar answers to the second half.
How many projects do you usually carry at once, and how do you decide which one gets tomorrow morning?
Why ask it
Course work stalls while an expert reviews or a voiceover is recorded, so designers often run several builds side by side. You are after a system: a tracker, a weekly look at what is blocked, a rule for whose deadline wins. Tell them how many your team runs at a time and watch whether the number surprises them.
Tools and access
Which authoring tools have you built in, such as Articulate Storyline, Rise or Adobe Captivate, and what is the most complex thing you made in each?
Why ask it
A list of product names says little, since a person may have opened a tool once. The most complex build separates someone who fills templates from someone who works with variables, triggers and custom interactions. If your team's tool is not on their list, ask how long the last new one took them to learn.
On your last build, who made the graphics, recorded the narration and edited the video: you or someone else?
Why ask it
On a small team the designer does all of it, and on a large one almost none. Match the answer to your own setup. If they would be your only builder, the sample to judge is one where every asset was their own work.
Which learning management systems have you published to, and what went wrong the first time a course went live?
Why ask it
Anyone who has launched courses has a story about a module that would not mark complete or a video that would not play in the company browser. The story shows how they troubleshoot and how they get on with the system's administrator. No story at all may mean someone else always handled the upload.
How do you set up completion and score tracking, and how do you test it before launch?
Why ask it
Expect to hear about SCORM or xAPI packages, what counts as complete, and a trial upload to a sandbox or test site. It matters most where completions feed an audit or a certification record. Who decided the completion rule matters too, because that is a business decision as much as a technical one.
How do you make a course work for someone using a screen reader, or a keyboard and no mouse?
Why ask it
Alternative text, captions and transcripts, focus order, color contrast and a test with the assistive technology itself are the specifics to hear. Many candidates will refer to the WCAG guidelines. Which standard your organization has to meet depends on where and what it is, so find that out internally and ask how their past employers handled it.
Tell me about an interaction you redesigned or dropped because some learners could not use it.
Why ask it
Drag-and-drop exercises, timed quizzes and hover effects are frequent culprits. A candidate with a real example has tested for access instead of assuming it. If they have none, ask at what stage of a project they check, since leaving it to the end is expensive.
How do you design for people who will take the course on a phone, on a shared computer on a shop floor, or over a slow connection?
Why ask it
Office-based assumptions fail quickly with frontline staff. Shorter pieces, less video, larger touch targets and a check on the real devices are what experience sounds like here. Describe your own learners' setup and see what the candidate wants to know about it.
Where has generative AI found a place in your process: scripts, quiz items, voiceover, images? What do you still check by hand?
Why ask it
The checking is what you are hiring: accuracy against the expert's source, tone, and whether confidential material went into an outside service. A candidate who uses none is not ruled out, and one who uses it everywhere should be able to name an error they caught. Tell them your organization's rules if it has any, and ask how they would work within them.
If you left tomorrow, what would the next designer find in the project folder for one of your courses?
Why ask it
Courses outlive the people who build them, and an update a year on is only cheap if the editable source exists. Named layers and variables, a folder of original assets, and a record of fonts and image licenses are the habits to hear about. If your last designer left you a published file and nothing else, you already know why this is on the list.
Results and fit
How do you find out whether a course changed what people do at work?
Why ask it
Many teams stop at whether people finished and whether they liked it. A candidate who has gone further will talk about observation, manager check-ins, error rates or a before-and-after comparison, and may frame it with the Kirkpatrick levels. If they do, have them say which level they reached on a real project and who handed over the data.
What do you look at in the LMS reports after launch, and what has that data made you change?
Why ask it
Question-level results show which quiz items nearly everyone misses, and drop-off points show where people quit. A designer who reads those reports treats launch as the middle of the job. If the system they used reported only completions, find out what they wished it had told them.
Tell me about a course that did not work. How did you find out, and what did you do?
Why ask it
How they found out is as informative as the failure. Someone who heard it from a complaint six months later was not looking. Someone who saw it in pilot data or quiz results and reworked the piece is showing you the habit you want.
How do you pilot a course before it goes to everyone?
Why ask it
A pilot can be five people in a room or a single site for a month. What you need to hear is that real learners, not only reviewers, went through it, and that something changed as a result. The fix their last pilot forced is the detail that shows it happened.
What do you do with learner feedback that says a course was too long or boring?
Why ask it
Defensiveness here is a preview of how they will take feedback from you. The useful response is to find which part dragged, check how long people really spent, and cut. Someone who has shortened a course after launch can tell you by how many minutes.
A senior leader asks whether a program was worth the money. What do you show them?
Why ask it
This one shows whether the candidate can talk to people outside learning and development. A good reply starts from a number the leader already watches, such as errors, time to competence or early turnover, and is careful about claiming that training alone moved it. Saying a past employer never shared those numbers is honest, and then what they asked for becomes the answer.
If I handed you one of our existing courses to improve, what would you look at first?
Why ask it
You can make this real by sharing a module before or during the interview. Candidates who begin with who takes it and what those people still get wrong afterwards are diagnosing, and those who begin with the visuals are redecorating. Both may be needed, but the order shows their instinct.
How do you keep up with the field, and what have you changed in your own work because of something you read or tried?
Why ask it
Podcasts, conference talks and professional groups are easy to list. The second half is the filter: a habit dropped, a tool adopted, a template rewritten. It also shows how the candidate treats a trend, as something to try on one project or something to roll out everywhere.
What do you need to know about how courses get requested, reviewed and signed off here before you could say yes?
Why ask it
Their questions show what has gone wrong for them before: no access to experts, no time to pilot, a stakeholder who dictates the format. Answer truthfully, because a designer who joins expecting analysis time and gets none may not stay long. It also makes a natural close.
How to interview an instructional designer
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Plan the interview around the job you have
Decide which instructional designer you need
The title covers people who mostly analyze and write, people who mostly build in an authoring tool, and people who do both plus video and graphics. Before choosing questions, write down what the first three projects will be and who else is on the team. A sole designer needs strength across all six groups. One who joins a team with a developer can be lighter on Tools and access and stronger on Analysis and Design. If the job is mostly project coordination, lean on Experts and deadlines.
Take a sample as a learner first
Go through at least one portfolio piece from start to finish before the candidate arrives, and note where you got bored, lost or stuck. Those notes make better prompts than any list. Choose the piece closest to your own work for the walkthrough and tell the candidate which one it will be, so they can bring the storyboard.
Choose ten to twelve questions
With a portfolio walkthrough taking a third of the hour, there is room for about that many and their follow-ups. Take two or three each from Portfolio and Analysis, since those reveal the most about how a designer thinks, and one or two from each remaining group, ending on the last question under Results and fit. Ask every candidate the same core set so you can compare them on something other than who was most likable.
Bring someone who has built a course
If you manage learning but have never authored a module, ask a designer or developer to sit in for the Tools and access questions. Without one, ask the candidate to share their screen and open the source file of a sample. How easily they find their way around their own build tells you a good deal.
The portfolio walkthrough and the work sample
Give the walkthrough a third of the time
Have the candidate share the piece and narrate it. Interrupt with the Portfolio questions as you go: who the learners were, what the request said, what changed after review. A finished module hides most of the decisions behind it, and the narration is where they come out.
Ask to see the unfinished documents
Storyboards, design documents, a needs analysis summary, a facilitator guide. These show writing and reasoning, which an authoring-tool template can disguise. Candidates bound by confidentiality can redact them or describe what they contained.
Keep any exercise short and away from your backlog
One workable task is a one-page brief with a request for an outline, two objectives and one practice activity, done in under an hour or talked through live. Use an invented topic or one you have already finished. Asking candidates to produce a course you intend to launch is unpaid work, and the ones with other options may decline. Whether and how to pay for a longer exercise is something to settle with your HR team.
Judge the questions they ask about the brief
In a live exercise, the first five minutes carry the most information. A candidate who asks about the audience, what people do today and what success would mean, before proposing anything, is working the way the job requires. One who opens the authoring tool straight away has shown you their habit too.
What strong answers have in common
They start with the learner and the task
Across every group, the better answers begin with who is learning and what that person must be able to do, and only then reach content, format or software. Answers that begin with the slide deck or the tool are running in the opposite direction.
They contain a particular project
'I always collaborate closely with experts' is a position. 'The pharmacist could give me twenty minutes on Thursdays, so I sent her a draft to correct' is evidence. When an answer stays general, ask for the most recent time it came up.
They admit limits
It is rare for an instructional designer to have measured behavior change on every project or met an accessibility standard without a miss. A candidate who says where they fell short, and why, gives you more to go on than one with a spotless record.
Vocabulary is not the test
ADDIE, Bloom's taxonomy, Kirkpatrick and SCORM are easy to learn as words. Ask what the term changed about a real piece of work. Equally, a career changer who lacks the vocabulary but describes sound practice in plain language may be the stronger hire.
Where these interviews go wrong
Hiring the slickest module
Animation and polish are the easiest things to see in a sample and the least connected to whether people learn from it. Score the analysis and the practice activities separately from the look.
Treating tool experience as the job
Someone who already designs well can usually pick up a new authoring tool fairly quickly. Learning to design well takes much longer. Unless you need a finished build in the first month, weight Analysis and Design above the software list.
Leaving accessibility out because nobody raised it
When the subject is missing from the interview, it tends to go missing from the courses as well. Find out which standard applies to your organization before you meet candidates, so you can tell them what they would be working to.
Promising analysis time you do not have
If requests in your organization arrive as fixed orders with fixed dates, say so. A candidate who thrives on needs analysis will leave a role that is pure production, and one who prefers production may be exactly who you need.
Straying into personal territory
Small talk about a candidate's age, family, health or background has no bearing on course design and can create legal risk. The rules differ from place to place, so check with your HR team and keep every question tied to the work.