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Learning and development work helps people build capabilities needed in an organisation. For teachers, the familiar elements may include explaining ideas, planning practice and giving feedback. The new challenge is connecting learning to a workplace need and understanding how adults will use it in their jobs.
This pathway is worth exploring if you enjoy working with people and helping them improve. It is still important to investigate the workload, travel, administration and performance expectations of each role.
What might an L&D role involve?
Jobs and Skills Australia’s training and development profile describes work including identifying needs, creating materials, coordinating training and evaluating its effectiveness. Use this as a broad occupational description; the page’s legacy ANZSCO statistics are not a prediction of your salary or job prospects.
Job advertisements may emphasise facilitation, onboarding, compliance training, leadership development, learning systems or program coordination. A small organisation may combine several functions. A larger organisation may have separate designers, facilitators and administrators.
Start with the performance problem
In a workplace, a request for training does not necessarily mean that a course is the right solution. People may lack access, time, clear instructions or an agreed process. Practise asking what needs to change before proposing a workshop.
- What should people be able to do?
- What happens now, and how do we know?
- Is the difficulty knowledge, skill, access, workload or an unclear process?
- Who needs to be involved in deciding the response?
- How will we know whether the change helps?
This is a useful interview discussion because it demonstrates that you can investigate a need rather than immediately build slides.
Worked example: plan a short adult-learning session
Use a practice brief in which a team needs to write clearer handover notes. Draft a 20-minute session: compare two sample notes, identify what the next person needs, practise rewriting a note and use a simple checklist to review it.
Create all examples yourself and mark them as practice materials. Do not use real student records, staff information or workplace incidents. Add a short explanation of what you would ask the employer before delivery, such as the approved handover process and confidentiality requirements.
For evaluation, propose checking the quality of a practice note against agreed criteria and following up on whether the process is usable. An attendance list shows who attended; it does not by itself show that workplace performance improved.
Translate your experience accurately
If you have led professional learning for colleagues, describe the audience, need, format and your contribution. If your experience is mainly classroom teaching, explain the relevant skills while being honest about the different audience. You can say you designed learning activities and used feedback to revise them without calling that corporate L&D employment.
Prepare one example of adapting an explanation, one of responding to feedback and one of coordinating people or resources. Where you have a genuine result, describe how you know it occurred. Where you do not, explain the process and what you learned.
Check qualification requirements before spending money
Internal workplace training and training within a registered training organisation can have different requirements. For RTO work, the 2025 Standards and Credential Policy are relevant, alongside the employer’s requirements and the subject area. Ask the recruiting organisation which credentials and industry experience the actual position requires.
For other roles, compare several advertisements before choosing further study. Write down recurring requirements and distinguish compulsory credentials from tools you could learn through a focused practice project.
Questions that reveal whether a role will suit you
- How often would I deliver sessions, and to which audiences?
- Does the role require travel, evening delivery or multiple time zones?
- Who handles bookings, attendance records and the learning management system?
- How are priorities agreed when teams request training?
- What does good performance look like in the first three months?
Look at the routine as well as the appealing parts. If you want less live delivery and more resource development, compare instructional design. If you enjoy schedules and keeping a program moving, training coordination may also be worth investigating.
Your next small step
Collect three relevant advertisements and create the short practice session above. Then ask a person working in L&D to comment on the relevance of the sample, not whether they can get you a job. Our informational interview guide includes a low-pressure way to approach that conversation.
Image: AI-generated editorial illustration. Sources are linked throughout this guide.