Let Inspiration Be Your Guide

Whether you’re new to the talent development field, transitioning from a different industry such as teaching or the military, or considering a consulting career, gain insight into the most rewarding next step based on your interests and current skills.

Talent Development Career Pathways is a new tool from the Association for Talent Development that enables members to explore job families and roles within the TD field. Currently, users can search among eight job families: career and leadership development, instructional design, learning strategy, learning technology, organization development, talent development executive leadership, training coordination and administration, and training delivery and facilitation.

Career Pathways connects directly to the Talent Development Capability Model, so TD professionals can transfer their scores in the model’s self-assessment to the new platform. That feature enables you to easily map skills and proficiency for potential roles. Users can also explore based on activity or capability such as data analysis or coaching.

Individuals using the tool can research typical tasks, average pay, and common job titles from individual contributor to executive. For example, if you’re thinking about transitioning from an instructional designer individual contributor role to a program lead in training delivery and facilitation, consider which skills you already possess that overlap with your desired job’s description. Job role pages also include profiles on real TD professionals who work in those roles, so you can learn firsthand what they love about their job and the challenges they face.

Meet Jordan, for instance, an individual contributor in learning strategy. His title is director of training and development. Jordan is one of three TD team members in a company of 850 employees. His greatest challenge is influencing the partners he works with to be more open to creative ways of developing their people. He enjoys being part of a small team and supporting the entire enterprise. Those interested in getting into his role type can follow his advice to “be an adopter and motivator of innovation.”

The Career Pathways tool is also connected to the ATD Job Bank, so users can learn about opportunities in their ideal field and responsibility level.

During ATD25, Morgean Hirt, ATD’s director of credentialing, and Sarah Cannistra, author of Land Your Next L&D Role, conducted a session about the Career Pathways tool in the Career Center on Tuesday, May 20 from 10 to 11 a.m.

Hirt will lead a corresponding virtual session on Wednesday, May 21 from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.

Read more about ATD25 at conferencedaily.td.org.