Guest: Laurel Schulert

In this episode, Laurel Schulert, the Senior Director of Learning Experience at SAP Concur, discusses her journey from being an English teacher to becoming a successful instructional designer. 

Tune in to find out:

• Laurel's insights on why English majors make great instructional designers and the valuable skills they bring to the field.
• Laurel's personal story of transitioning from teaching to corporate training and development, and the challenges she faced along the way.
• Laurel's advice for aspiring instructional designers, including tips on building a strong portfolio and demonstrating their expertise in adult learning theory.

Listen to this episode below: 

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Enjoy the Episode Transcript below:  

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Welcome to Become an IDOL. I'm Dr. Robin Sargent, owner of IDOL courses. This is the place where newbies come to learn and veterans share their knowledge.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

I have here with me today Laurel Schulert, and Laurel Schulert is a— are you a training manager?

Laurel Schulert  

I am the Senior Director of Learning Experience with SAP Concur.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

All right, so since you're already doing a better job of introducing yourself, will you go ahead and continue?

Laurel Schulert  

Absolutely. Thank you, Robin. So, I lead a team of Instructional Designers at SAP Concur. Our team's remit is providing enablement training for the Concur audience within the wider SAP landscape. Like I said, leading with instructional designers and what Robin and I have in common is I actually began my career as a high school English teacher, and so I'm one of those #transitioningteachers, but I made that transition over a decade ago, and so I did it before COVID. I did it before it was cool, and I've survived to tell the tale, and I have now hired many teachers, English majors, folks of that variety, onto my team because I believe in the power of what we can do.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Yeah, that was one of the things that we talked about. We actually got to meet formally at ATD ICE in May this year. And we were talking about how we just love English majors, how they make the best instructional designers, and I said, oh, I even hired my English teacher best friend to come and work in IDOL, and I've hired many, many other English teachers. And so that's what we started talking about because you said, like jokingly, if I was to start a business, what would it be called?

Laurel Schulert  

So, the joke that I've been saying is that if I were to ever start my own podcast, it would be called English majors who have real jobs, and I'm not really going to do that. But then Robin, you said, hey, come on my podcast and talk about it. So here I am. So, I'm one of those English majors who got a real job, and teaching is absolutely a real job, but you know, it's good to know that there is other opportunities out there when we're ready for them.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Right, because a lot of people might look at it as, like a humanities degree, just kind of like, I could say I'm a Bible major who got a real job. Because you look at those types of degrees and you're like, what are you gonna do with that? And I imagine that is the same for History, English, Bible, anything in the humanities.

Laurel Schulert  

Absolutely, you know, and honestly, just you know, the powers of critical thinking, analysis, reading, writing, that synthesizing written communication and putting out polished communication is such a strong point of what we do with such a focus area for the work my team does. And so, I'm always thrilled to find an English major out there in the wild.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Because not only are they good at it, they like it.

Laurel Schulert  

Yes, yes, yeah, no actually, one of the members of my team, when I was interviewing her, she shared, I'm probably a little too pedantic about grammar, and I thought, no such thing. And that is absolutely one of the things that helped her actually move on through the interview process. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Oh, yeah, you're preaching to the choir here. So, what made you transition ten years ago into corporate instructional design? So give me that story you were, you were a teacher, an English teacher, and then what happened?

Laurel Schulert  

So, I'm from Michigan, born and raised. Michigan historically had really strong educational standards. It's a big union present state, you know, really good quality of life for teachers. Well, I graduated college in 2007. There are no jobs in Michigan in 2007, this is the era of the recession. You know, rust belt auto buyouts, all of that happening. The school where I student taught actually laid off teachers the year that I student taught in 2007, that doesn't happen very often. And so, I spent another year in Michigan, not using my degree, trying to find something that an English major could do. And there weren't really jobs like that out there. And so, I moved to North Carolina because there were teaching jobs in North Carolina. Well, you know, you don't go into teaching wanting to be rich, and that was never my aspiration. However, I expected it to be a little more of a living wage, and when I got to North Carolina, my salary was $30,000. This was in 2008 and every teacher in the state took a 1% pay cut my first year. So, then I was down to 29 and change, and I was frozen there for the next five years. And it just got to be a point where I realized normal adult things like buying a house, getting a new car, paying off my undergraduate student loans, were just completely out of reach for me. On top of all of that, I had a car accident. My car was totaled, so I had to get a new car. Took an ambulance ride to the hospital. That was $1,000 bill that took me a couple years to pay it off. And so just things were compounding, and I thought, wow, I really can't make a living doing this career that required a degree, requires advanced certifications, but I can't make a living doing this. On top of that, I was a waitress the entire time I was a teacher, so working nights and weekends, working summer school. I actually, for two years of my teaching career, was teaching at a school that went year-round. And so, we would do nine weeks in, three weeks out, all year round. And I would spend my three-week vacations at my regular school, going to the public schools, because the year-round school is a charter school. And I would spend those three-week vacations throughout the year going to the public schools and subbing. And so, I'm basically working probably 350 days a year. Easy, 70, 80-hour weeks, when you put it all together, and literally, one day my last year teaching, bell rings, all the kids walk out, and I sat in my empty room all by myself, and I just said out loud in the empty room, I don't want to do this anymore. And I didn't even realize I was feeling that way until I heard myself say it out loud, and then I just thought, okay, I just got chills. There's probably something to this. I don't think I want to do this anymore. And so that began that crossroads of, well, what do I do? I have a Bachelor's in English. I've been teaching for five years. I'm a good writer, I'm a good reader, I'm a good editor. How does that parlay into any sort of career anywhere else? And so, it took me a little while to find instructional design. I, like many folks, was not even aware this was a career path. And so my first step out of teaching, I actually went and got a job at the University of North Carolina, and it was sort of a secretarial clerical role, working in the front office for a surgeon who was affiliated with UNC, and they actually hired me, and I really appreciate their leap of faith. They said, if you can work with students and parents, you can come here and work with patients and their parents. We have a lot of pediatric patients in our practice, and so I worked the front desk of a doctor's office for about a year and a half, and honestly, it was a great experience. I got an instant raise. I was a state employee still. So, my little tenure year from teaching carried over, but I got like, a $10,000 raise coming in the door for a job where I worked nine to five, and it required a high school diploma. And so again, just one more sign of kind of what was wrong with the teaching profession. It was not treated like a profession. So, did that for a little while. My husband and I ended up moving back home to Michigan, and at that point, I'm 30 years old, I have this teaching degree that I knew I wasn't going to use anymore, and I kind of had this, not too early for midlife, but a little bit of a midlife crisis of what am I doing with myself here? And my mother-in-law had this concept that corporate training was a phrase, a concept, a career. She and I had never even heard of instructional design, but my mother-in-law kept saying, you know, I think corporate training is a thing that you could do. And so, I was looking for those types of jobs. Now, we know corporate training isn't the right phrase to be Googling and searching for, but I was just looking for that, and I found something called a training and development specialist at a corporate office, and they wanted someone who actually had experience either doing that or teaching. And they brought me in. They actually had me teach a lesson on the company values during my interview process. And so, I did the teacher thing, and I made it very interactive and made it very conversational, and I made a little handout for people to fill out and reflect, and they loved it. I got the job, and sort of the rest is history from there. That parlayed into a whole career and now leadership in instructional design.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

And you quit that waitress job?

Laurel Schulert  

Yes, that was step one. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

That was step one. It's so interesting because even when you're talking about your teacher salary, that was the same salary I was making as the assistant dean of students at a university.

Laurel Schulert  

Wow.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

And I remember exactly what that feels like, right where you're like I can't even buy a house. 

Laurel Schulert  

No.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Groceries, I have to, I literally clipped coupons.

Laurel Schulert  

My take-home pay was $1,800 10 months out of the year, two months out of the year, I got no paycheck. And so, I mean, it just, you know, all the not even grandiose dreams to all the normal dreams that you have for yourself as an adult with a college degree working in a profession, they weren't attainable. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Yeah.

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Dr. Robin Sargent  

And so got that first training and development role. And what was it— I know that you delivered the thing you delivered the value.

Laurel Schulert  

Yeah.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

But what were some, what were like, the things that you learned the most about from that first role?

Laurel Schulert  

Yeah, great question. Um, so this was at the headquarters of a moving company, and so we did training for movers and drivers, and we did training for customer service, sales, and marketing. I gravitated just more towards that customer service, sales side. Luckily, someone else handled the mover, driver training. And at this time, it was a franchise business, and they didn't have corporate training in place. They were, you know, and they were going to start requiring all the franchises to go through a training program that hadn't yet been built. So that's why my role was created to build that. And what I realized was, you know, I'm so used to being in front of a classroom and doing the training myself. That's not the case here. This was 10 years ago. We're living in a pre-zoom world. I'm like, how do I do this? And how can I set up all of the franchises to be successful? And honestly, the metaphor that came to mind was sub-plans. You know, think about when you're back in the classroom and you need to make a lesson plan. It's someone else, you don't know who is going to carry out. They're going to come in, step in your place, and carry out this lesson plan. You don't know who they are. You don't know what their qualifications or skills are. They really need it kind of handed to them. And so, I literally blocked out for this company what the first 40 hours on the job should look like for a new hire coming into customer service and sales and marketing, and what the manager should be doing for that employee's first 40 hours. Everything from the HR paperwork on day one to starting the company training to taking them out to lunch on their first day. And I literally blocked out hour by hour, and I kept calling it sub plans, because that was the metaphor that made sense to me. What does this first week on the job look like for all the new hires coming into this company, and this basically became the manual that all managers at all the franchise locations all around the country could then use to onboard their customer service and sales and marketing employees. And so, it was really groundbreaking for the company to have this and just that whole metaphor of sub plans. Had I not had that, I don't think I would have been so successful in building something that other people could roll out as easily.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

And so obviously, I bet you also noticed that not only your teaching qualifications but your background in English—

Laurel Schulert  

Yes.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

About those skill transfers.

Laurel Schulert  

Absolutely.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

And you gave a little bit of hint about, you know, how useful that is in instructional design, but you want to get a little more— 

Laurel Schulert  

We have to be good communicators as instructional designers, the written word, whether it's spoken, written, is everything that we do. And when I was in that first role, and honestly, to this day, everything my team does in an entirely different setting. Everything we do is relying on effective communication. We write content for documents. We write scripts for live training. Whether we're carrying out the live training or someone else is, there's that whole sub-plans idea again. We write scripts for videos. We narrate videos. We write scripts for e-learning courses. We narrate e-learning courses. And then think about your classic SME, your subject matter expert. They give you the hodgepodge of information. It could be old training materials. It just could be top of, top of their head, ramblings that you take notes when you talk to them, you know. It could be really boring manuals. It could be the, you know, wall of text PowerPoints that we all hate so much. Your SME's give you this jumbled hodgepodge of information and say, here you go, turn this into a 15-minute training by next Tuesday. And you have to be a good reader, a good writer, and a good critical thinker to really just drill down to what's important, what aligns to the business goals, what is going to lead to behavior change on the job, and how can I communicate this way? It's effective, it's engaging, it's aligned to some sort of measurable objective, and that's what we have to do, and that's where I found English majors and English teachers really shine in doing that work.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

So now you are the training director?

Laurel Schulert  

Yes, yep. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

And so are you- you said a lot of your people are already or they were English majors. So what do you look for them actively, or they just happen to be the candidates that stand out?

Laurel Schulert  

You know, it's a little bit of both, honestly and so I haven't put it necessarily in like a job description, that I'm looking for an English major, but, you know, it's something that I always notice. And I really do think these are the people who tend to have the really interesting portfolios. These are the people who tend to interview really well. These are the people who tend to have really well-written cover letters, really interesting cover letters that show their personalities, that show their strengths. And these are the people whose work really catches my eye. And then I see they're an English major, or here, anecdotally, through conversation, learning this major, and I'm like, yeah, that was really not, not a surprise. And then that English major, it expands a lot of different degree types. On my team, we have the traditional English language and literature major. That's my degree and a few others. We have someone who majored in professional writing. We have someone who majored in journalism in undergrad and then got a master's degree in creative writing, and she puts together some amazing, brilliant content and so the English majors come in all shapes and sizes and all different backgrounds, but that writing and the passion and the interest in writing really shines through in their work. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Oh, so some people might be listening to this Laurel and they're thinking, okay, yeah, yeah, English majors make great IDOLS. But what are some of the things that people who are non-English majors can do to improve their own communication and writing skills? If you were to give a few tips.

Laurel Schulert  

Yeah, absolutely, I would say concision. It's no secret that in corporate settings, a lot of people have very short attention spans, and so knowing how to get to the point and be concise is always very important. Another interesting thing, that's a question my team comes across time and time again, is the importance of corporate branding. And so, I work for a company that has very strict brand guidelines. Everything that we produce has to be a certain font, a certain color, a certain this, a certain that, logo placed here, not placed there. And there's a whole entire manual put together by our corporate brand team for how to follow the corporate brand guidelines. And people around us tend to perceive my team as sort of the neighborhood brand police in our organization, and we're not. We've just taken the time to do our homework and read the brand guidelines, and so that's something that I would really say can really help your work stand out and come out as very polished and professional, especially in a corporate setting. If your company has brand guidelines, get really familiar and get really comfortable with them, so that you're making content that reflects that corporate imagery. Especially when it's being used externally, like any sort of customer enablement, customer-facing presentations, and content. But it's also important internal because the internal employees deserve a good look and feel to their content also.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

So, I know that you now been on both sides, right? You have been the one who is looking for the what do they call it corporate training job, and now you are one who is in the hiring manager position. So, to wrap up our little chat about the importance of writing skills as instructional designers, what would be your best and final advice for those that want to become an IDOL?

Laurel Schulert  

My best and final advice is really to work on your portfolios. I would focus on quality over quantity. Just like we always hear average recruiters spend 10 seconds looking at a resume, things like that. When I get very serious about a candidate, I really do that deep dive into their portfolios, and I would rather see a small number of quality pieces than a large number of pieces that may not be as well thought out. I'd say a couple do's and don'ts, just from my perspective as that hiring manager. Obviously, I'm a transitioning teacher. I've hired quite a few of them. I really see the value that teachers bring, but I would look at people who create portfolio pieces that are intended for an adult audience. If all I see are K12 and student-facing materials, it doesn't translate as readily to someone who's ready to think about adult learners in adult settings. And so, I'm not opposed to seeing pieces that were created for the K12 audience, but I don't want that to be all that I see. I also really like multimedia. On my team, we have to sort of be masters of all media. So again, we create everything from documents to PowerPoints to videos to e-learning and so I'd like to see a little sampling of what they can do. And then I also always just look for clear evidence of adult learning theory, because it's not just about looking pretty, creating beautiful materials, using the bells and whistles I really want to see is there an objective. Is it measurable? If this, if this is a learning experience, they've actually used somewhere in real life, what was the outcome? Do they have any evidence of evaluation? And so I'm always looking for those adult learning theories and best practices to see that they really know their craft, and teachers know their craft like nobody else. 

Dr. Robin Sargent  

I love it. Laurel, it was just such a nice little fresh air just to have you come on and talk about the wonders of the English language and writing and the collaboration between our fields. So, thank you so much. Is there anywhere that people can find you and connect with you? 

Laurel Schulert  

Absolutely, LinkedIn. Definitely looking forward to continuing the conversation. If anyone has comments, questions, feedback, I would love to hear from you and hear your stories.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Oh, thank you again.

Dr. Robin Sargent  

Thank you so much for listening. You can find the show notes for this episode at idolcourses.com. If you like this podcast and you want to become an instructional designer, an online learning developer, join me in the IDOL courses Academy where you'll learn to build all the assets you need to land your first instructional design job, early access to this podcast, tutorials for how to use the e-learning authoring tools, templates for everything course building and paid instructional design experience opportunities go to idolcourses.com/academy and enroll or get on the waitlist. Now, get out there and build transcendent courses.

Laurel Schulert  

Thank you.

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