An Instructional Design Consultant collaborates with teachers and programmers to develop training plans and enhance the learning experience. They are tasked with redesigning courses, developing entire courses or curriculums, and designing training materials, such as teaching manuals, student guides, learning objectives, researching e-Learning options, and developing usability tests.
To become an Instructional Design Consultant, you must possess a bachelor's or master's degree. However, some companies will hire you without a degree if you have prior designing experiences and creativity.
The graduates who gravitate towards this field end up laying claim to annual earnings at $75,464. The current median pay for an Instructional Design Consultant ranges from $73,744 to $83,473 in the U.S. However, this figure can vary significantly depending upon your experience, skills, or organization.
Instructional Design Consultant Overview
Instructional Design Consultant Careers
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an instructional design consultant. For example, did you know that they make an average of $27.93 an hour? That's $58,091 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 6% and produce 11,500 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does an Instructional Design Consultant Do
There are certain skills that many instructional design consultants have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed decision-making skills, interpersonal skills and leadership skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be an instructional design consultant, we found that a lot of resumes listed 9.2% of instructional design consultants included instructional design, while 7.9% of resumes included learning management system, and 7.1% of resumes included subject matter experts. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the instructional design consultant job title. But what industry to start with? Most instructional design consultants actually find jobs in the technology and finance industries.
How To Become an Instructional Design Consultant
If you're interested in becoming an instructional design consultant, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 23.4% of instructional design consultants have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 53.7% of instructional design consultants have master's degrees. Even though most instructional design consultants have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become an instructional design consultant. When we researched the most common majors for an instructional design consultant, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on instructional design consultant resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become an instructional design consultant. In fact, many instructional design consultant jobs require experience in a role such as instructional designer. Meanwhile, many instructional design consultants also have previous career experience in roles such as senior instructional designer or technical writer.
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Instructional Design Consultant Career Paths
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, an instructional design consultant can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as senior instructional designer, progress to a title such as training manager and then eventually end up with the title contract project manager.
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Average Salary for an Instructional Design Consultant
Best Paying Cities
Recently Added Salaries
Job TitleCompany  | Company | Start Date | Salary |
|---|---|---|---|
Solugenix Instructional Design Consultant Instructional Design Consultant | Solugenix Solugenix | 10/24/2019 10/24/2019 | $164,87310/24/2019 $164,873 |
Randstad Instructional Design Consultant Instructional Design Consultant | Randstad Randstad | 10/18/2019 10/18/2019 | $125,22010/18/2019 $125,220 |
Solugenix Instructional Design Consultant Instructional Design Consultant | Solugenix Solugenix | 09/13/2019 09/13/2019 | $164,87309/13/2019 $164,873 |
Randstad Instructional Design Consultant Instructional Design Consultant | Randstad Randstad | 08/03/2019 08/03/2019 | $135,65508/03/2019 $135,655 |
Mastech Digital, Inc. Instructional Design Consultant Instructional Design Consultant | Mastech Digital, Inc. Mastech Digital, Inc. | 06/21/2019 06/21/2019 | $114,78506/21/2019 $114,785 |
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Top Colleges for Instructional Design Consultants
1. Harvard University
Cambridge, MA • Private
2. University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA • Private
3. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC • Public
4. Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA • Private
5. California State University - Long Beach
Long Beach, CA • Public
6. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Public
7. Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL • Public
8. University of Connecticut
Storrs, CT • Public
9. New York University
New York, NY • Private
10. North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC • Public
Top Skills For an Instructional Design Consultant
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 9.2% of instructional design consultants listed instructional design on their resume, but soft skills such as decision-making skills and interpersonal skills are important as well.
- Instructional Design, 9.2%
- Learning Management System, 7.9%
- Subject Matter Experts, 7.1%
- Project Management, 5.5%
- Job Aids, 4.9%
- Other Skills, 65.4% See All Instructional Design Consultant Skills
Best States For an Instructional Design Consultant
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an instructional design consultant. The best states for people in this position are Connecticut, California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts. Instructional design consultants make the most in Connecticut with an average salary of $83,810. Whereas in California and Minnesota, they would average $72,422 and $71,533, respectively. While instructional design consultants would only make an average of $71,311 in Massachusetts, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Connecticut
$83,810
Avg. Salary
2. District of Columbia
$82,733
Avg. Salary
3. Michigan
$66,821
Avg. Salary
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