Mentoring & career coaching
Instructional design mentoring, for when you're the only one who does this.
Most instructional designers work without anyone senior to check their thinking, and a lot of them are the first ID their company ever hired. I mentor designers through live projects and coach people into the field and up through it. Bring whatever you are stuck on to a free 30-minute session.
- $70/hr
- No commitment
- Book as needed
- NDA if you need one
Sessions open with things like
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“Only 12% of people finish the training. How bad is that?”
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“They want 16 modules in six weeks. Is that insane, or am I slow?”
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“They asked me for a course. I'm fairly sure it should be a job aid.”
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“I quoted $4,000 and they said yes immediately. Did I underprice it?”
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“Sixty applications, two callbacks. Is it my portfolio or is it me?”
Who this is for
You don't need another certificate. You need someone who has seen this before.
Instructional design is a field where a lot of people learn the models and then practice alone. The models are not usually the problem. Knowing which one to trust on a Tuesday afternoon with a stakeholder waiting is a different skill, and it is faster to borrow it than to build it. Same goes for the job hunt, where the advice is everywhere and almost none of it comes from someone who has read the applications.
You are a team of one
You are the only instructional designer at your company, and possibly the first one they have ever hired. Nobody there can tell you whether your analysis holds up, because nobody there has done it before.
You are stuck mid-project
You have narrowed it to three plausible directions and no way to choose between them. You want to think out loud with someone who has already been wrong in all three.
You need to prove the work mattered
Leadership wants a number. You have smile sheets and completion rates, and neither one says what you need it to say.
You are working for yourself
You set your own scope, pricing, and boundaries with clients, and there is nobody to tell you whether the number you quoted this morning was reasonable or whether the project you took is going to eat you alive.
You are looking for the next job
You were laid off, or the contract ended, or you have decided to move. The applications are going out and something between the résumé and the offer is not landing, and job boards will not tell you which part.
You are trying to get in
You are coming from teaching, training, or somewhere else entirely, and you want a straight read on what transfers, what to build a portfolio out of, and which corner of the field to aim at.
Sessions have covered root cause analyses, KPI arguments with leadership, learner research when nobody will grant access to learners, stakeholders who already picked the wrong deliverable, storyboards pulled apart before a client sees them, which authoring tool fits the work and the budget, scoping and pricing freelance projects, portfolios that aren't getting callbacks, and the plain does-this-make-sense sanity check.
The first 30 minutes are free
It's a working session, not a sales call.
Thirty minutes, free, and I spend them on your problem instead of my pitch. Most run long, because the useful thing tends to show up around minute twenty. There is no proposal at the end, no follow-up sequence, and nothing to sign.
- 01
Before
Send me whatever you are working on. The analysis, the outline, the deck, the survey results. I read it ahead of time so the session is not spent catching me up. Bring nothing and we talk it through cold. Both work.
- 02
During
You describe the problem and I ask the questions I would ask if it were my project. Often the problem turns out to be a different problem than the one you walked in with, and that is usually the useful part.
- 03
After
You leave with specific next steps and the reasoning behind them. If that was all you needed, we are done and you owe me nothing. If you want to keep going, we book more time.
How a session goes
What that actually sounds like
Descriptions of this work stay vague, so here are four of the questions that come up most, and the answers I actually give. Exchanges are anonymised and shortened. The opinions are not.
How do you measure whether training actually worked?
The designer
All I have is satisfaction surveys and LMS completion rates, and hardly anyone finishes.
Mike
Completion is the wrong measurement here. There’s no reason for me to go through fifty hours of training if I want to click two buttons and I can’t find them. What you want to measure is whether people learned the thing they came to learn.
The designer
There’s not much other data to work with.
Mike
If the videos are on YouTube you can analyze the retention graphs. Where people drop off tells you either the video didn’t help or they solved their problem and left. Either way you walk out with a better question than the one you started with.
What goes in an instructional design portfolio when you have no client work?
Breaking in
I have no client work and no experience. What am I even supposed to put in a portfolio?
Mike
Volunteer and make something real for someone, something that actually solves a problem. A nonprofit, a church, a friend or a family member. That’s better than a made-up project because you can tell a real case study, and you can put the organization on your résumé.
Breaking in
And if I can’t find anyone to volunteer for?
Mike
Then teach somebody something useful, and make it relevant to the industry you want to get hired in. Going for medical? Do medication calculation, or patient soft skills. Higher ed? Best teaching practices, or how to teach a concept students always get wrong. Last resort, teach something you know really well. A hobby. How to windsurf, how to cook a meal you love. It’s fun and you’re not off chasing subject matter. What I’d skip is generic onboarding at a made-up company. It’s fine, but it comes off shallow, and when they ask about it and you say you invented it, that’s weaker than volunteering or a hobby that actually means something to you.
Do you need a master’s degree to be an instructional designer?
Career changer
Every posting says master’s preferred and I don’t have one. Am I wasting my time?
Mike
It depends more than anyone wants it to. Most jobs ask for a bachelor’s and list a master’s as preferred, and plenty of those never enforce it. Higher ed is the strictest, they genuinely value it and some won’t look at you without one. Other places put it in the required column and then waive it anyway if the portfolio is strong enough.
Career changer
So should I go get one?
Mike
I’d never discourage anyone from it. Education gives you a baseline that experience doesn’t, and experience gives you one that education doesn’t. Neither half is dispensable. But if you already have the experience and you don’t want to spend the time and the money, not having it is not a deal breaker. It can make the search easier depending on where you want to go.
Which authoring tool should an instructional designer learn?
The designer
Do I need to learn Storyline, or is that dated advice at this point?
Mike
For better or worse a lot of companies still want Articulate or Captivate, and that’s changing, slowly. But the skills transfer. Once you learn one of the web-based tools you basically know the rest, and most of them you can pick up in a week. It’s the design that goes into the tool that matters, not the tool. If a job is only going to look at Storyline, fine, grab a free trial and work on it.
The designer
And beyond the usual ones?
Mike
We’re moving back into the age of personal software and AI is accelerating it. Alongside the common tools, look at something like Claude Code or Codex. There’s real opportunity in AI-assisted building, and you stop being limited to what Articulate decided you should be able to make.
Career coaching
Getting in, and getting to the next one
Sometimes the question is the job rather than the work. People laid off and eight months into a search, designers going after a role they're not sure they're ready for, career changers coming out of teaching or training, and people weighing an offer with nobody neutral to ask. Nearly all the advice they've already read was written by other candidates.
Work out where you fit
Instructional design is a dozen different jobs wearing one title. Corporate, higher ed, government, nonprofit, freelance, and the specialist niches all want different things from you. We start by naming which one you are aiming at, because the portfolio you build depends on the answer.
Fix the portfolio
I have screened these from the hiring side, so I can tell you what a reviewer sees in the first thirty seconds and what they never scroll far enough to find. Includes the résumé, since a portfolio nobody opens is a résumé problem.
Run the search
Where these roles get posted, which titles to search that are not called instructional designer, how to read a job description for the work hiding behind it, and when an application is not worth the hour it takes.
Interview and negotiate
Practice walking someone through your work without narrating slides, answers for the questions that trip people up, and a straight read on an offer before you accept it, including what is negotiable beyond salary.
The career guides, the sector quiz, and the skills survey on this site may help answer many of the early questions.
Who you're working with
Ask a hiring manager, not the internet
When you book a session you're booking me, Mike Stein. I'm the person who reads your portfolio or your analysis and shows up on the call.
- I have hired instructional designers, screened thousands of portfolios, and sat on many hiring committees, so I can tell you how yours reads from the other side of the table.
- I wrote two books for the field, on design thinking and on project management for learning design.
- I rewrote the r/instructionaldesign wiki and moderate the sub, so I see what the whole field is stuck on rather than only my corner of it.
- I still build. Courses, simulations, and accessibility work for universities, nonprofits, and utilities. The advice comes out of work I am doing this week.
I'm also going to tell you when I think you're wrong, which is the entire reason to pay for this instead of posting the question in a Slack group.
Pricing
Pay for the time you use
Independent instructional design advisory usually runs $100 to $150 an hour. Mine is $70, because the designers who need it most are usually the ones without a budget line for it.
Free working session
$0 30 minutes
Bring a real problem and we work on it. Not a discovery call and not a pitch. Nothing is owed afterward, and most people book this before anything else.
Book a sessionHourly
$70 per hour
Mentoring or career coaching, whatever you need that week. Nothing to commit to and no minimum number of sessions. Reading your documents ahead of the call is part of it, and short questions by email are free. Book once or book every week.
Book timePortfolio & résumé review
$120 flat
A written review of your portfolio and résumé from someone who has screened both from the hiring side, plus a live debrief to work through it and decide what to fix first.
Get a reviewHiring an instructional designer, or want someone to level up a whole in-house team? That is consulting, and it works a little differently.
Common questions
Before you book
What is instructional design mentoring?
Instructional design mentoring is one-on-one guidance from a senior instructional designer on the work you are doing right now. Instead of a course or a curriculum, you bring live problems: an analysis you are unsure about, a stakeholder pushing the wrong solution, a metric that will not prove what you need it to prove, a portfolio that is not landing interviews. At ID Atlas mentoring is $70 an hour with no package and no retainer, and the first 30-minute session is free.
What is instructional design career coaching?
Instructional design career coaching is one-on-one help getting into the field or moving up in it: choosing which sector and niche to aim at, building a portfolio that survives a hiring reviewer, writing a résumé that gets past the first pass, running a job search that amounts to more than mass applying, preparing for interviews, and reading an offer before you sign it. At ID Atlas that is $70 an hour, or a flat $120 for a written portfolio and résumé review with a live debrief.
What is the difference between mentoring and career coaching?
Mentoring is about the work: you already have the job and you want a second opinion on an analysis, a design decision, a metric, or a stakeholder. Career coaching is about the job itself: getting one, choosing between them, or moving up. Same rate and the same free first session, and plenty of people cross from one to the other, usually about six months after they land the role.
How is mentoring different from taking a course or getting a certificate?
A course teaches a general process and leaves you to apply it. Mentoring starts from your project, your constraints, and your stakeholders. Most of the designers I work with already know the models. What they are missing is a second opinion from someone who has made the same call before and can tell them whether this one is a good one, which is not something a certificate can give you.
How much does an instructional design mentor cost?
Mentoring is $70 an hour and the first 30-minute session is free. Independent instructional design advisory usually runs $100 to $150 an hour. I keep mine at $70 because the designers who need it most are usually the ones with no budget line for it. A portfolio and résumé review is a flat $120. If a shorter check-in is all you need, message me and we will work it out rather than making you buy an hour.
Do I have to commit to a package or a set number of sessions?
No. There is no minimum and nothing to sign. Book one session, book one a week for three months, or book nothing again after the free one. Plenty of people come back once a quarter when something hard lands on their desk, and that is a completely reasonable way to use this. If buying a block of hours up front is easier for you or for your finance team, we can set that up, but it is an option rather than the price of entry.
Can we meet regularly instead of one-off?
Yes, and for a long or messy project it usually works better. We set a standing weekly or biweekly slot at the same $70 an hour so you have a fixed point to bring progress to. Booking two or three weeks out is the easiest way to get the time you want, since the current and following week fill up unpredictably.
Can you review my documents, decks, or storyboards?
Yes, and it is included in the session time rather than billed separately. Send it over ahead of the call and I will read it first so we can spend the session on the substance. If you would rather walk through it together live and cold, that is fine too.
Will what I share stay confidential? Can we sign an NDA?
Yes to both. What comes up in a session stays in the session, and I do not write or speak about mentee work without asking first. If you want that in writing, I am happy to sign an NDA with you or with your company. I sign NDAs on client projects regularly, so it does not complicate anything on my end.
Can my employer pay for this?
Often, yes. If you are the only instructional designer at your company, mentoring is usually the cheapest professional development they can buy you, and it is easier to justify than a conference. I invoice the company directly and can provide whatever documentation their finance team needs. Framing it as senior review on a live project tends to land better than framing it as coaching.
I am changing careers into instructional design. Can you help with that?
Yes, and it is a large share of the coaching work. Teachers, trainers, academics, and people coming from unrelated fields all bring transferable experience, and the hard part is knowing which parts of it a hiring manager will credit and which parts to stop leading with. Before you spend anything, read the career guides on this site and take the sector quiz and skills survey, since they answer most of the early questions for free. Bring what is left to a session.
Do you review portfolios and résumés on their own, without ongoing coaching?
Yes. The $120 review is a standalone product and most people who buy it never book anything else, which is fine. You get a written review of both, marked up specifically rather than in generalities, plus a live debrief to argue with me about it and decide what to change first.
Where are you based, and do you work across time zones?
Everything is remote, over video, with designers in the US and abroad. Midweek is typically the most open on my calendar. Booking a couple of weeks ahead gets you the widest choice of times.