One of the most exciting aspects of a career in instructional design is the number and variety of roles you may be asked to take on, depending on the needs of your organization. Instructional designers can be curriculum writers, e-learning developers, assessment specialists, training facilitators, project managers, LMS administrators, data analysts, and more. While this versatility undoubtedly adds value to any team, it can also be quite difficult to communicate the extent of your contributions to your manager during performance review time.

Difficult, but not impossible.

If you want to make your ID savvy and skillset more visible to yourself, your manager, or your organization as a whole, start by creating your own hype doc.

What’s a Hype Doc?

A hype doc is a curated document where you can log your work contributions and highlight their impact. You can design it with the aim to share it with your manager or you can use it as a tracking and motivational tool to help you celebrate your professional wins, big and small.

But shouldn’t my manager know what I was hired to do?

Yes, but that’s not always the case. Many instructional designers work within operations, customer success, or people teams, meaning your manager may not have a background in your specific area of expertise. Managers are also involved in many overlapping conversations and initiatives on a daily basis so it’s easy for your contributions to get lost in the noise if you don’t actively showcase your work. Additionally, the role of an instructional designer still feels quite ambiguous to some business professionals, but they may not openly acknowledge or be fully aware of this gap.

For comparison, let’s consider the work of a software programmer. The role of a software programmer is widely understood across sectors and it has a fairly standardized career ladder. Software programmers produce tangible outputs that can be easily measured, such as code, applications, websites, or new product features.

Meanwhile, the role of an instructional designer can look very different across sectors and organizations and there is not one well-established career trajectory. Instructional designers create learning experiences, some more tangible than others, whose impacts are measured over a significant period of time. Common metrics such as learner performance, engagement, and knowledge retention are harder to quantify and influenced by many other factors, making it more difficult to establish timely and direct correlations with your instructional design efforts. This is where a hype doc can help!

Why Instructional Designers Need a Hype Doc

Instructional designers often find themselves deep in the work—filtering training requests from different departments, building courses, managing timelines, and troubleshooting LMS bugs and it can be easy to lose sight of the big picture.

You may already add your wins and progress updates to the weekly 1:1 agenda with your manager, but it’s also important to keep a separate master list (your hype doc) in order to highlight the cumulative impact of your efforts. Regularly updating your hype doc will better prepare you to request a promotion at your next performance review.

Even if you don’t have a lofty career progression in mind, keeping a hype doc is still a good habit to adopt. It helps you celebrate your milestones, reminds you of the positive moments during the tough times, and counteracts imposter syndrome. Whenever you think you can’t do something, your hype doc will show you just how far you’ve come.

What to Include in Your Hype Doc

You can create a hype doc any way that makes you happy, but you can also just start with a simple spreadsheet, like this one. (Feel free to make a copy for your own use). Here are some helpful categories to include:

• Core Competencies: List the skills and areas of expertise that are required for your role.
• Achievements: Log concrete examples of how you delivered with your skills. Important: This doesn’t have to be something that will impress your manager. Yes, it can be the delivery of a high-impact training program, but it can also be something as small as catching a small typo in a script. Record what matters to you!
• Evidence: Link to examples of your work.
• Impact: This could be a sample of feedback from learners, performance data, project outcomes, testimonials from colleagues and supervisors, or anything that demonstrates how your work drives organizational success. You can even create another category for different departments to demonstrate your impact across teams.
• Company Value: Companies love it when their employees live out their values. If the work you did was a great example of a particular company value, share the value and explain why.

Hot tip: If you decide to include “Department” and “Company Value” categories, you can also use this data to create a pie chart that shows who you are helping and how you show up the most.

Schedule Time to Update Your Hype Doc

Your hype doc will only grow if you water it. Set a calendar reminder at least once a month to set aside some time to record recent achievements, feedback, and metrics. This will ensure that you don’t forget important details or meaningful conversations that may not otherwise be visible. Regular updates will also keep you prepared in case you suddenly find yourself back on the job market or you’re looking to make a change.

Your Hype Doc is For You

A well-maintained hype doc is an invaluable tool for your performance review, but you do not have to share the actual document with your manager because this sometimes takes the fun out of making it. Write it like a love letter to yourself; don’t worry about switching into manager-speak mode just yet.

Then, when your performance review nears, you can start to refine your approach. Use your hype doc to refresh your memory on key achievements and to frame your discussion points for your conversation with your manager. Providing specific examples and metrics will help you confidently articulate your success and make the case for growth and new opportunities at your organization.

You got this!

Additional Resources:

AI Powered Hype Docs

Figma Hype Doc Template

Notion Hype Doc Template

More Hype Doc Templates

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