How to hire a Learning & Development Manager
What the role does, the job description, the interview questions, and the 40-minute screening pack that tells you who can do the job before you book a single interview.
The role
What a Learning & Development Manager does
A Learning & Development Manager is an HR professional who designs, delivers, and measures training and growth programs that build the skills an organization needs.
- Design and deliver training and development programs
- Assess skill gaps and build learning strategies
- Measure the impact of learning on performance
Screen before you interview
The Learning & Development Manager screening pack
Designing learning, coaching, tying it to performance and delivering it well. Every applicant gets one link. You get one ranked report.
- 1
How do you find out what training a company actually needs?
- 2
Describe a programme you built and how you measured its impact.
- 3
How do you get managers to make time for development?
- 4
Tell us about a programme that did not work and why.
- 5
Live, online or blended for a distributed team? Argue it.
Job description
Learning & Development Manager job description
We are hiring a Learning & Development Manager to shape how our people learn, grow, and advance. You will assess skill gaps, build training programs and learning paths, and partner with leaders to develop talent from onboarding through leadership. This role fits someone who blends instructional design skill with a coach's instinct and a habit of measuring what training actually changes.
Responsibilities
- Conduct training needs analyses to identify skill gaps across teams and levels
- Design learning programs, curricula, and role-based learning paths
- Build and manage content in the LMS and maintain a catalog of courses
- Facilitate workshops and coordinate internal and external trainers and vendors
- Develop leadership and manager development programs for high-potential employees
- Create onboarding learning tracks that ramp new hires quickly
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in human resources, education, organizational psychology, or a related field
- 5 or more years in learning and development, training, or talent development
- Proven experience designing and delivering programs that improved performance
- Hands-on experience with an LMS and modern instructional design methods
- Strong facilitation skills and the ability to measure learning outcomes
Interview questions
Learning & Development Manager interview questions
For the candidates who pass the pack. Each comes with a sample answer on the full page.
Ask these after the screening pack, not instead of it. A candidate who has already scored on Training and Development, Strategic Coaching, Performance Management, Presentation Skills has shown they can do the work, which frees the interview to do what a test cannot: find out how they think, how they explain themselves, and how they behave when something goes wrong.
- Ask every Learning & Development Manager candidate the same questions in the same order. Comparable answers are the whole point; a different conversation with each person tells you who you liked, not who was strongest.
- Look for a specific example with a result, not a description of how the candidate would approach it in principle. Follow up once with “what happened next?” and stop talking.
- Score each answer before moving to the next question, and write down what was said rather than the impression it left.
- At volume, record the first 4 of these instead of calling. Candidates answer on their own time, the answers are transcribed and scored, and you keep live interviews for the shortlist.
The pack takes a candidate about 40 minutes, so a Learning & Development Manager applicant arrives at this interview already measured on the parts you can measure without a meeting.
- 01
What made you build a career in learning and development?
- 02
Tell me about the scope of L and D programs you have owned.
- 03
How do you know whether a learning program is working?
- 04
Why are you interested in this L and D role?
- 05
Walk me through how you design a new program from scratch.
- 06
How do you apply adult learning principles in your design?
- 07
How do you manage and get value from a learning management system?
- 08
How do you build a leadership or manager development program?
Frequently asked questions
Send every applicant one link that carries 4 skills tests (Training and Development, Strategic Coaching, Performance Management, Presentation Skills), 2 personality inventories and 5 one-way video questions. springhire scores everything automatically and ranks the candidates, so you interview the top few. The free plan covers 10 candidates a month.
About 40 minutes for the tests, plus 10 to 15 minutes for the video questions. Candidates complete it on their own time, on any device.
A short brief, three to five key responsibilities, a fuller list of duties, must-have and nice-to-have skills, and the requirements. The template on this page has all of it, ready to copy.
Questions that ask for a specific past example and a walkthrough of how the candidate thinks. This page lists 8 with sample answers, and the full bank has more.
Yes. The free plan includes every screening tool with 10 candidate credits a month and no card. Paid plans start at $39 a month.
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