r/Training

Training new reps seems like one of those things that sounds simple until you have to do it at scale. They sit through onboarding. Shadow a good rep for a few days. Do some roleplay. Then they get sent out to talk to real customers and you hope the training stuck. That gap feels big for face to face sales teams. A manager can ride along but that takes hours and only covers a few conversations. New reps can also pick up bad habits before anyone notices. I think this is where AI tools can be the difference. A new rep can record their customer conversations and get feedback on things like discovery questions or objection handling. Managers can review the important moments instead of driving around all week.

They can also show new reps how top performers handle the same situations. It basically gives new reps more feedback while they’re learning instead of waiting until the next ride-along or 1on1s. I could see that cutting down the time it takes someone to become productive. Obviously the tool still needs to be easy enough that reps actually use it. Otherwise it becomes another app everyone forgets about after onboarding lol.

Hi everyone,

I am reviewing our new hire onboarding flow and would love to hear how other teams handle LMS provisioning.

At what point in the onboarding timeline do you give new employees access to your learning management system?

Option 1: Well before their official date of joining (preboarding stage, so they can explore culture, intro videos or basic compliance beforehand).

Option 2: Exactly on Day 1 / Date of Joining (along with their standard IT hardware and account setup).

Option 3: Later during their first or second week (allowing them to first settle in, meet the team and complete manager check-ins before diving into learning modules).

If you grant access before Day 1, how do you handle labor compliance, paid time tracking or security policies? If you wait until Day 1 or later, how do you keep them from feeling overwhelmed by a sudden pile of training assignments?

I would love to learn what has worked best for your organization and what optimal learner experience looks like in your setup. Thanks in advance for sharing your insights!

Got promoted to team lead about three months ago and honestly I'm just winging it most days. I manage a group of 8 people now, mix of junior and senior, and I keep running into situations where I have no idea if I'm handling things right, especially around giving feedback and dealing with conflict between team members. My company offered to cover up to $1500 for a course or certification so I want to actually use that instead of letting it go to waste. I looked into a couple options on LinkedIn Learning but everything feels pretty surface level and not really built for someone brand new to managing people.

Anyone here taken something that actually changed how you lead, not just theory but stuff you could use the next day at work? Doesn't matter if it's online, in person, expensive or cheap, just want something that's actually worth the time.

Hi everyone! I’m hoping to tap into the experience and connections in this community as I make the next move in my career.

I have 10+ years of experience across education, learning & development, training, leadership development, and people management. I’m currently an Education Manager overseeing programming across 24 sites and 100+ staff, and a significant part of my work has centered around developing people.

I’ve designed and facilitated 25+ trainings on topics ranging from active supervision and program quality to management and leadership development. I’ve also coached and developed leaders, led teams of directors, built training resources and systems, and worked to translate organizational goals into practices people can actually use.

I’m now looking to take that experience into a role where learning, development, training, or employee development is the primary focus of my job.

Some of the roles I’m exploring include:
- Learning & Development Manager
- Training Manager / Training Program Manager
- Learning Program Manager
- Leadership Development
- Talent Development
- Employee Learning / Employee Experience
- Instructional Design or Learning Experience roles where my facilitation and program-management background would be valuable

I’m located in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area and am primarily looking for remote roles or hybrid opportunities in the DMV.

My biggest challenge has been translating a career built largely in education and nonprofit leadership into the language of corporate L&D. I know the skills transfer; I’m working on helping hiring managers see that connection as clearly as I do.

So my ask for this community: Are there companies, organizations, job boards, recruiters, or people in the DMV/L&D space that you think I should be connecting with?

I’d also genuinely appreciate hearing from anyone who transitioned from education, nonprofit leadership, or a similar field into corporate L&D. What helped you get someone to take a chance on your background?

I’m not expecting anyone here to find me a job. I’m hoping to learn from people in the field, expand my network, and hopefully find a few doors worth knocking on.

Thanks for any advice, connections, or leads you’re willing to share!

I help with training for a customer support team and one thing I keep running into is the gap between training and the actual job. We can give new hires solid onboarding. We can build a decent knowledge base. Can also run mock calls and have managers review recordings. Then they get on a real call with an annoyed customer and suddenly half of that training goes out the window. The hard part seems to be recall, an agent might know the policy but not remember it fast enough. Or they know the process but miss one step because they are trying to listen to the customer and search for an answer at the same time. We've also got a pretty big gap between our best reps and everyone else.

The top reps seem to know when to explain something differently or ask another question. That stuff is much harder to turn into a training module than basic product knowledge. Post call coaching helps but it also feels a bit like telling someone where they went wrong after the damage is done. And managers can only listen to so many calls anyway. I've been looking into more real time coaching tools like Cresta where agents get hints or guidance during the conversation based on what is happening. In theory I like it because it could reinforce training while someone is doing the actual job. But I can also see agents feeling like they're being watched by a robot all day if it's handled badly. What are your thoughts on this?

i facilitated a remote workshop strategy for 22 people across product, sales and customer success.

Everyone added notes, so the board looked highly collaborative. After the session, i checked the activity and found that 6 participants had contributed most of the ideas.

The imbalance wasn't obvious bc quieter participants were still reacting, voting adn adding variations. the main issue was anchoring. Once the cp of the sales posted enterprise expansion, many later ideas became versions of enterprise features.

For the next workshop, i am considering private ideation before revealing the responses. Small groups would receive different evidence packs: support, tickets. churn reasons, usage data and sales losses. They would generate ideas independently before combining themes.

Has anyone tried separating ideation by evidence source? I'm trying to avoid a situation where the workshop appeas democratic but seniority shapes the board before some people have even formed their own view. Anonymous voting helps but by voting stage the idea pool may already be biased.

I have been at my current company for a few years and have built multiple ILTs from scratch that I facilitate. I am currently searching for a new job, which has me wondering about what is considered my IP and what belongs to the company?

I know that the company will continue using the courses I built and will find new people to facilitate, and of course I have no problem with that, as they were built for the company. But I’m wondering if it is considered wrong or even illegal (in the US) to download my materials and facilitator guides if I leave for a new job. Of course I wouldn’t just copy and paste those courses in a new company, but having my notes and materials would be beneficial if I ever build something with a similar theme or topic.

Does anyone have experience or insights with IP in corporate learning?

My company wants to do a tech exchange with Google for a small group of developers. The plan is to present an overview of Google AI capabilities, and provide resources (training, developer docs, support) so they can develop an MVP based on solution that could potentially be further developed for our clients.

I’m trying to come up with use cases for the tech exchange. I’ve have identified the domains (modernization, migration, AI development) and aligned it to Google’s tools like Gemini, LLM, BigQuery, etc. However, our business leads are worried my use cases are too specific and we won’t have the time or capacity to develop it during the tech exchange (7 weeks with 4-6 hours a week dedicated for this).

Does anyone have any resources or recommendations on how I can go about with this? Anyone with experience developing use cases for tech exchanges or hackathons?

What's your main audience that you train?

Are they internal in an organization? Or are they those looking to upskill on their own via an MOOC eLearning provider like Coursera.

Genuinely curious because I've seen trainers/strategists just give "training" to learners who request it, but that's it. It's very A to B, and repeats with each new cycle.

What are the nuances that you've experienced with each learning audience (groups, learners, employees) and if you've been with the same type of learning audience for your whole career (i.e. corporate trainer) what are several things you've seen change over time in delivery, experience, or how it was from year 1 to year now.

I am an instructor in the National Guard, I teach folks technical skills both in emergency/tactical medicine (at the entry level mostly), disaster and emergency management, and sUAS operation in multiple contexts

Something I've been running into lately is that I'm being asked to put together courses on various different things and sit down to write up an action plan and really don't know where to start. I also have the issue where I ramble on in courses. I'm confident, but I get ahead of myself and find that I will dabble in subjects that aren't relevant for the course itself.

Can anyone direct me towards resources or programs that would fit the need? I like doing this, I love training, I love sharing the knowledge, but I really need to enhance and augment my skill set with education in education. My CoC recommended I enroll in an instructional design program, and found one that they will pay for. Someone in another command recommended I get a certificate in Adult Education from a university in my state.

Ok if you sell training to other companies, please weigh in on a recent conversation we've been having!

The client already has an LMS, so why not just hand over the SCORM package instead of the full delivery setup. It's pretty reasonable, it's cheaper for them, faster for you. So why not?

What one clever L&D mind pointed out is that LMS isn't training, it's a content delivery box. So yes, it will track who completed, gate a quiz, and create a nice certificate. But it won't notice if someone is stuck or nudge a learner back in just before they give up. Somewhere in the loop there has to be an actual person, even if that's just a forum thread or async office hours instead of a live class.

That's the part that catches up with you later. Yeah, you lose the platform fee, but that's the small stuff. The real loss is you've got no way to tell if the training actually worked, and nothing to show the client when it's time to renew. It's just sitting there as a zip file in their system at that point.

What are your thoughts? Does a training program need some human contact to count as training? Can you still call something training once you've stripped out any way to actually reach a human.

Background

I’m a Senior Instructional Designer with an MA in Technology and Learning Design. I work in the utilities industry. Over the last year I’ve been helping my department integrate AI tools into our workflows. After a brief stint with a localized Amazon product (essentially a third-hand version of ChatGPT), we moved to Microsoft Copilot. So far, so good. At home, for my own projects, I use Claude, Grok, and Gemini.

I’m unapologetically all-in on AI (I even had Grok review this before posting it), and I believe AI has made instructional designers more important, not less. I’m also worried that the profession will start losing valuable people, either to overzealous management or to practitioners who are intimidated by the tools.

What I'm Seeing

Most companies that roll out AI tools simply hand them out. Training, when it exists, is mostly a long list of things not to do. The reason is straightforward: relatively few people inside the organization have a real grasp of what these tools are actually good for. AI is still new and moving fast.

The result is that many employees who have had access for months are only now realizing they can use it to summarize email chains, draft messages, or sort their inboxes. Based on common usage, you’d think AI was primarily an email tool.

There are also people who would still be using rotary phones if they could. Some on principle, others because their first encounter produced garbage output and they wrote the technology off entirely. Both groups are missing the capability curve, or they’re approaching it so slowly they risk being left behind. I keep coming back to a line I saw recently that feels exactly right: “AI will not take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI will.”

How AI Should Be Used

If you don’t know what RAG is, you should learn. Understanding retrieval-augmented generation, along with solid prompting, will change both the speed and the accuracy of your work.

In oversimplified terms: imagine you have a brilliant new assistant fresh out of a master’s program. You ask her to write a knowledge check on the company’s logout procedures. You can either rely on what she remembers from school and general industry knowledge, or you can hand her the actual company documentation and have her work from that. The second option is obviously better. That is essentially what RAG does. You give the model the real source material, then direct it. Here’s how I typically start:

Prompt: "You are a highly skilled instructional designer. I need you to help me create a knowledge check for our company’s logout procedure. I’m uploading SME-vetted documentation on this topic with this prompt. Analyze the contents. Ask me any clarifying questions you have. Then create a set of learning objectives. Prefer Mager-style objectives where feasible and Bloom’s taxonomy for everything else. I will use these objectives to build the knowledge check."

Once the clarifying questions are answered and the objectives are reviewed (preferably by an SME), I move to the next prompt:

Prompt: "Using the learning objectives and the documentation you already have, construct a set of knowledge check questions and activities. For multiple-choice items: make the distractors similar in length to the correct answer, ensure they are plausible but clearly wrong, randomize the options, and provide four choices for each question."

You still read every item carefully. The point is not to hand over judgment. It is to let the model handle the heavy lifting of analyzing large amounts of source material quickly and accurately. That is one of its most powerful functions for instructional designers.

A Pre-AI Project

Just before I had reliable AI tools, I built a full training program from roughly 140 pages of source material spread across seven formats: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, scans, text documents, handwritten notes, and transcribed interviews. Sorting, updating, segmenting, and sequencing the material alone took weeks. Developing objectives, assessments, learning activities, ILT/VILT materials, and eLearning took about three months in total.

Once I had AI tools, I fed the entire set of source documents and the finished program into the model and asked it to evaluate the design. The analysis took less than thirty minutes. The program largely held up, but both the SMEs and I had missed several issues. I was able to regenerate and refine everything in a few hours, not months.

My Advice

Learn to use AI to accomplish the tasks of the job. The job itself has never been the tasks. The job is judgment, and judgment is more important than ever. AI will create whatever it is asked to create. The amateur will create training where none is needed. The professional decides what is worth building, what the source material actually means, and whether the result is accurate, safe, and useful in a high-stakes environment.

I actually wrote a book on this topic, but I DO NOT suggest you buy it.

In some respects, it's already out of date.

Perhaps the most useful part of the book are the appendices, and you can access them here for free at the following website: www.indieprocess.com

Once again, that's a free resource. I'm not flogging my book.

I work in L&D and have been with my current company for 5+ years now.

Not here to complain about my company at all! I've actually had a GREAT experience and have been given a ton of opportunities to learn and grow. The problem is that pay raises and title jumps just don't really come with this company lol.

For reference, my title is still Coordinator.

A few years ago they eliminated a Training Manager role and I absorbed most of those responsibilities. I was grateful for the opportunity to learn and take on more, but when I asked for a pay raise, or at the very least a title change to reflect what I was doing, they said no. I was making in the low $40s at the time.

Not long after that I got an offer for a Training Manager position at another company in the mid $70s. They actually told me during the interview process that I was overqualified for the position.

I ended up turning it down because it would have been a VERY long commute(4h+ RT), 5 days a week in office, with no flexibility. I tried to negotiate different hours or some kind of hybrid option, but they were pretty old school about everyone being in the office.

Which I understand, their company, their rules. But once I factored in the amount of time I'd spend commuting, plus gas and tolls, the pay difference just wasn't enough to make sense. Especially since my current job is hybrid and VERY flexible.

That offer did eventually result in a pretty significant raise at my current company, and with yearly cost of living increases I'm now in the low $60s.

Then a couple of years ago our department went through another leadership change and I absorbed parts of a more senior role for several months. Even after the position was filled, I kept a lot of those responsibilities.

So at this point I've basically absorbed a mix of Manager and Director level tasks while my title is still Coordinator lol.

My actual job now is a mix of instructional design, LMS administration and management, reporting and analytics, designing printed and digital training materials, creating strategic training and leadership development plans for the year, developing and executing company wide training programs and rollouts, managing trainer programs, and supporting operational initiatives.

I also plan, execute, and facilitate classroom style training workshops, as well as help plan and present at larger company wide summits and training events.

Basically I get to touch A LOT of different areas of L&D, which is honestly one of the reasons I've stayed so long. I've learned a ridiculous amount here.

But I'm at the point where I really want my next move to be a significant career move, not just leaving a job I love to make slightly more money somewhere else.

I'd really like to get into the $100k to $115k+ range and also get somewhere where I can continue learning and expanding what I do.

I currently work in hospitality, so other areas of hospitality seem like they could be a pretty natural transition. Delta or Hilton is honestly the DREAM. I feel like a lot of my experience could translate pretty well there too.

But I'm also really curious about how I could break into the tech side of L&D. Companies like Affirm, Pinterest, etc. really interest me. Leadership development, learning program management, instructional design, LMS/Learning Systems... I'm pretty open to where I land as long as my experience translates and there's room to grow.

My fiancé keeps telling me to "just find a recruiter."

Okay... how???

Do I literally just search for L&D recruiters on LinkedIn and start messaging people? Are there recruiting firms that specialize in L&D? Do recruiters even work with individual candidates like this or are they mostly hired by companies when they have a specific position they need filled?

And if anyone here has made the jump from hospitality/operations into tech or another higher paying industry within L&D, I would LOVE to know how you did it and how you positioned your experience.

I know the job market is tough right now and I'm genuinely grateful to have a job that I really do love. I'm not miserable and trying to escape tomorrow, so I have the luxury of being picky and taking my time with whatever I do next.

But I also want to have kids, own a home, save money, travel, and just build a good quality life. A salary in the low $60s doesn't go nearly as far as it used to in a major US metro. I already live 45 minutes outside of the city to offset the cost and even out here things are expensive.

I think I'm just reaching the point where I realize that loving my job might also be keeping me stuck.

I could stay here another 5 years "hoping" the right promotion eventually comes along, but considering my title is still Coordinator, I'm not exactly holding my breath 😂

I feel like it's time to start growing myself in other ways and see what else is out there.

So... if you were me, where would you start?

And seriously, where are these recruiters my fiancé seems to think are just wandering around waiting for me to find them? 😂

I’ve been working with two clients both asking for training to align with models they made or adopted, and I wonder if this is common in your industry?

1. Created their own competency and proficiency model, white collar, internal research type jobs in healthcare.
2. Adopted an industry standard for skilled trades. Use the parts relevant to their jobs.

I’d be interested in understanding if you work from one that existed or created one…or don’t work from these at all.

I’d assume if your company or industry has a credentialling system, you would build alignment. If not, I figure it might be less common to have one.

Is there a place I can take kids(8-15 years old) to learn soft skills(After school). like communication, debates, team work, time management, problem solving, adaptability, critical thinking etc? I feel these skills are what is needed in the job-market at times, no matter the technology advancement at the time. I consider them joker/ immortal skills. Trying to prepare them early on, especially that due to Qatar's labour laws, they will not be able to learn these skills until they enter the job market/volunteering(15-18 years).

Trying to instil these skills early on.

Other parents, care takers, do you think such courses/trainings would add value to the quality of your kids life or it's too early? Your advises is much appreciated.

From Mumbai, India

I believe I posses the skillset needed for the role. I have facilitated a few sessions and enjoy the training part. But corporate may require something else. I am not sure about that part. I wanna understand the role better so I can interview with confidence and land it in my first attempt.

please share anything that could help

When it comes to evaluating employee training, I've noticed that relying only on completion rates or quizzes doesn’t really tell the whole story. What approaches have you used to measure whether training actually drives behavior change or improves performance? I’m interested in practical frameworks or experiences, especially from those who’ve moved beyond standard metrics. What’s worked for your teams, and what hasn’t?

One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is translating training participation into meaningful business outcomes. Beyond simple completion rates, what methods have you used to measure whether training is actually driving performance or retention? Curious to hear what’s worked (or not) in your organizations and how you’ve communicated these results to stakeholders.

Hello all, I'm looking for some of your favorite or most effective examples of recorded software training sessions. It could be something on YouTube, or something embedded into a website as a part of their in-house product training. I'm looking to study some of these examples and distill what effective training looks and feels like outside of the on-paper theory.