Instructional design IS and ISN’T industry specific.
Our skills may be agnostic, but it certainly helps in conversations with SMEs and stakeholders if you have at least a baseline of familiarity with their jargon.
For example, I work in tech at a software company and I’ve learned all about DevOps and that product development lifecycle. My employer serves the telecommunications industry, so I’ve had to learn about topics such as: eSIMs, wholesale data, roaming, IMSI, server-side skills, Oracle databases, tiered architecture, CRM GUIs, and TMForum.
Was that last sentence a load of nonsense to you? It took me years to upskill on this content.
If I got a job in healthcare tomorrow, I don’t kid myself that I’d be ready to build training for nurses immediately.
That being said, instructional designers can apply their skills across retail, healthcare, tech, manufacturing, travel, etc. But we should stay humble and not assume we can immediately hit the ground running in any industry. Experience matters.
The cool thing about being a learning professional, though, is that we are very willing to learn and grow!
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