Instructional Design Jobs in the Philippines: From Unicorns to Hotcakes

Once upon a time, in the BPO industry of the Philippines, instructional design jobs were rare, if not non-existent. As a trainer and training leader, course development was baked into our responsibilities.

I first landed an official ID (Instructional Design) role 15 years ago. I was a Senior Lead for Content Design and Development, supporting the training needs of non-operations teams (e.g., HR and IT). We were the only team that offered ID services to the entire organization. Lectora was our authoring tool, and we were slowly migrating to the CourseMill LMS platform while painfully dealing with Moodle withdrawal. We lived in simpler times; everything was linear, and the use of negative space was unheard of. And branching? What branching? We worked from home and were only required to report onsite when course requestors preferred face-to-face meetings over virtual ones. It was the perfect job for a woman  transitioning to motherhood. I was constantly in a state of creative bliss.

Fast forward to the pandemic. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. With a series of lockdowns and businesses to run, companies turned to the scalable powers of digital learning solutions and virtual classes. Everyone loved the results.

Today, instructional design jobs are selling like hotcakes. It's a slow and steady journey to hypergrowth. ID teams have become their own units, so valuable that in some BPOs, ID services are even outsourced to high-profile clients. This demand has created a steady supply of ID jobs that are evolving at the speed of light. It's no longer enough for an instructional designer to know ADDIE. Some job postings now require proficiency in graphic design, video creation, and video editing. The ability to leverage AI (artificial intelligence) - whatever that means to the hiring manager - has become a preferred skill.

Instructional Designers are writers, educators, art directors, layout artists, multimedia artists, learning experience designers, scriptwriters, and project managers. While ID jobs may be selling like hotcakes, those who want to build a career in this field are expected to be unicorns (a tall but fair expectation?). After all, Instructional Designers make the learning world a more magical place, one frame at a time.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko