Your portfolio is your store window. It's the first thing a hiring manager sees, and it usually decides whether you get the interview. As you browse, notice what these portfolios have in common.
Onboarding, compliance, software training, safety, customer service, and plenty more. Hiring managers want proof you can build for their world, and every one of these portfolios speaks corporate.
eLearning built in Storyline and Rise, design documents, storyboards, job aids, video. A hire-worthy portfolio shows you can run the whole design process, start to finish.
The strongest portfolios explain the learning gap, the objectives and the design choices behind each piece. A hiring manager reads that as the work of an instructional designer.
When you Google instructional design portfolio examples, you can't tell who made them. They may have 10 years of experience and you wouldn't know. These were built by career changers using the Applied ID Portfolio Method.
Every portfolio on this page belongs to its creator and opens on their own site. Grads: want yours added or updated? Reach out through the Connect page.
Every portfolio above started at zero. Getting from there to a store window like these is exactly what we teach.
Become an AI-Ready Instructional Designer runs four free live nights, Nov 9 to 12. On Night 2 you'll see every sample a hire-worthy portfolio needs, plus the Working with AI page.
Save your seat →Already building? The Portfolio Scorecard grades your portfolio the way a hiring manager would in the first ten seconds.
Score your portfolio →Jumpstart Your Instructional Design Career
A weekly podcast and a Substack on moving into instructional design, from me.