What Is a Learning and Development Director and How to Become One

By ZipRecruiter Marketplace Research Team

As a learning and development director, your responsibilities are to analyze existing training programs to determine whether they provide employees with the skills needed to perform their jobs. Your duties include evaluating instructor performance, determining whether the company should add new training programs, and helping prepare a training budget for a department or organization. You must often communicate with vendors and customers to understand their needs, discuss issues with management, conduct surveys within the company, and determine which types of training are most suitable for the company and the way its employees tend to learn. In large organizations, learning and development directors frequently travel to visit other offices.

The primary qualifications to become a learning and development director include seven to 15 years of career experience with leadership and education. Learning and development directors often have degrees in business management or teaching, but these are typically secondary to a proven track record of creating and modifying instruction plans. You may be asked to produce teaching materials for other instructors to use and to cooperate with a translator to ensure materials provided in other languages are accurate, so experience working on a global scale is helpful. Fulfilling the duties of this job requires excellent communication and leadership skills, extensive knowledge of learning strategies, and the ability to coordinate with others.