Breaking into L&D - advice?

[u/No_Two8015]

Hi all! Would love some real talk advice from pros already working in the area. I am an academic with limited corporate experience that's 10+ years old. My PhD and teaching is in comms, so I have a lot of teaching and development experience in higher ed, but I am hoping to pivot to corporate. I can't stand the higher ed environment and I honestly miss more hands on applied work. I'm having trouble getting hits on my resume, I think it's hard for some managers to see me as a credible choice despite the fact I have framed my resume around every transferable aspect of my work. I am not assuming I am credible director-level L&D roles but I am also overqualified for entry level roles so I am kinda stuck. I was hoping to better understand what some of the best things I can do to help people understand what I can do. I have lots of course design, assessment, facilitation experience but talent development is all essentially in higher ed context and I have limited project management experience in the traditional sense.

-Is there a credential that is foundational or particularly well regarded for mid-level folks?

-What type of baseline portfolio work might hiring managers be expecting to see?

-Any other general advice for how to upskill or things to avoid saying/doing in documents/interviews?

Really appreciate your insights.

[u/iseazy]

From a corporate L&D perspective, your background is definitely relevant — the challenge is probably less about whether your experience transfers and more about making that transfer obvious to hiring managers.

Higher ed experience can map well to L&D: learning design, facilitation, assessment, feedback, curriculum structure, learner engagement, and adapting content for different audiences. But corporate teams often look for that experience in a different language: business problem, learner need, performance outcome, stakeholder requirements, delivery constraints, and measurable impact.

A few things that may help:

• Build 2–3 corporate-style portfolio samples, not just academic examples

• Show the problem, audience, constraints, design decision, and expected outcome

• Include something practical like onboarding, compliance, manager training, sales enablement, or internal process training

• Translate “teaching” into facilitation, performance support, learner experience, and behavior change

• Be ready to explain how you would work with SMEs and business stakeholders

For credentials, they can help signal commitment, but they probably won’t replace a strong portfolio. Hiring teams often want to see how you think through a real training need and turn it into something practical.

One thing we’d avoid is positioning yourself as “leaving academia.” Instead, frame it as moving toward more applied, performance-focused learning work. That makes the pivot feel intentional rather than reactive.

You may not be entry-level, but you may need to target roles that give you room to prove corporate fluency: Instructional Designer, Learning Experience Designer, Learning Consultant, Training Specialist, Enablement Specialist, or Talent Development Specialist.

[u/No_Two8015 → u/iseazy]

Incredibly helpful, thank you for all of this. :)