Top 12 Learning and Development Manager Skills to Put on Your Resume
In a crowded job market, a Learning and Development (L&D) Manager has to show sharp judgment, practical craft, and a knack for moving the needle on performance. The right mix of skills signals that you can design learning that sticks, scale programs with tech, and prove impact with data. Below, the core 12—modernized, tightened, and ready for a resume that doesn’t get lost in the stack.
Learning and Development Manager Skills
- Instructional Design
- ELearning Development
- LMS Administration (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard Learn)
- SCORM/AICC
- Talent Management
- Performance Consulting
- Leadership Development
- Succession Planning
- Employee Engagement
- Diversity Training
- Data Analysis (e.g., Tableau, Excel)
- Project Management (e.g., Asana, Trello)
1. Instructional Design
Instructional design is the disciplined craft of building learning that works—needs in, outcomes out—using models, evidence, and iteration to drive skill, confidence, and performance.
Why It's Important
Good design ties learning to business goals, engages different learners, boosts retention, and speeds transfer to the job. It turns training into results, not just courses.
How to Improve Instructional Design Skills
Make it systematic, but never rigid. Useful moves:
Start with the gap: Run a crisp needs analysis to separate skill gaps from process or tooling issues. Target the real problem.
Write sharp objectives: Use SMART, performance-focused verbs, aligned to metrics leaders care about.
Blend methods: Mix microlearning, scenarios, guided practice, and spaced reinforcement. Build for mobile from the start.
Design for access: Bake in accessibility (WCAG principles), plain language, captions, alt text, and keyboard navigation.
Prototype fast: Apply SAM or iterative ADDIE. Test with a handful of learners, then refine.
Measure and adapt: Track completion, confidence, behavior change, and business outcomes. Adjust content based on evidence.
Keep learning science close: retrieval practice, feedback timing, interleaving, and real-world context beat information dumps every time.
How to Display Instructional Design Skills on Your Resume
2. ELearning Development
eLearning development turns objectives into digital experiences—interactive, responsive, trackable. It blends media, practice, and feedback so people learn anywhere, anytime.
Why It's Important
It scales knowledge, standardizes quality, cuts delivery costs, and keeps pace with shifting priorities. Learners get flexibility; leaders get visibility.
How to Improve ELearning Development Skills
Define the win: Spell out what learners must do differently after the course. Build only what serves that end.
Know the audience: Map roles, contexts, constraints, and motivations. Write to them, not at them.
Make it active: Use branching scenarios, simulations, short challenges, and immediate feedback. Less lecture, more doing.
Design for devices: Responsive layouts, touch-friendly controls, fast load times. Offline options where possible.
Ensure inclusion: Color contrast, transcripts, captions, screen-reader friendly structure.
Ship, measure, iterate: Gather learner feedback and usage analytics. Patch weak spots fast.
Keep skills fresh: Explore new authoring features, animation, and media standards. Practice with real constraints.
How to Display ELearning Development Skills on Your Resume
3. LMS Administration (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard Learn)
LMS administration means configuring, securing, and running the platform that delivers learning—courses, enrollments, data, certificates, integrations—without friction.
Why It's Important
A well-run LMS shortens time to launch, makes access effortless, and surfaces the data leaders use to fund, fix, and scale learning.
How to Improve LMS Administration (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard) Skills
Standardize builds: Use course templates, naming conventions, and catalogs. Fewer clicks, fewer errors.
Tighten access: Set roles, permissions, SSO, and data-retention rules. Mind privacy and compliance.
Simplify the path: Clean navigation, clear labels, short enroll flows, mobile-friendly pages.
Use analytics: Track enrollments, progress, time-on-task, and completions. Report against KPIs that matter.
Keep it current: Regular updates, security patches, backup routines, and sandbox testing before release.
Design for the phone: Responsive themes or the official app experience. Many learners are mobile-first.
Build for accessibility: Ally-like checks, alt text enforcement, and accessible templates.
Upskill users: Offer quick guides, office hours, and a power-user community for instructors.
How to Display LMS Administration (e.g., Moodle, Blackboard) Skills on Your Resume
4. SCORM/AICC
SCORM and AICC define how learning content talks to an LMS—launch, track, score, complete. AICC is largely legacy now; SCORM remains common. Modern stacks often add xAPI and cmi5 for richer data.
Why It's Important
Standards prevent compatibility chaos. Your content runs across platforms, your data is consistent, and migration headaches shrink.
How to Improve SCORM/AICC Skills
Package cleanly: Validate manifests, compression, and metadata. Keep versions tidy.
Test widely: Check behavior across multiple LMS environments before rollout. Verify resume states, scoring, and completion logic.
Design responsively: Content must behave on phones, tablets, and desktops.
Boost interactivity: Quizzes, drag-and-drops, scenarios—engagement drives retention.
Adopt modern signals: Use xAPI and cmi5 when you need granular, out-of-LMS tracking or offline capture.
Watch accessibility: Keyboard control, screen-reader structure, transcripts, and captions.
Review data: Use LMS reports to spot drop-offs and fix content flow.
How to Display SCORM/AICC Skills on Your Resume
5. Talent Management
Talent management aligns hiring, development, mobility, and retention to the skills the business needs—today and next quarter.
Why It's Important
It keeps critical roles filled, skills current, and high-potential employees growing. That lowers risk and powers execution.
How to Improve Talent Management Skills
Map skills to strategy: Build a skills taxonomy tied to business priorities. Identify gaps by role and level.
Personalize development: Learning paths, mentoring, projects, and stretch assignments that fit ambitions and needs.
Connect systems: LMS, HRIS, and performance data should speak the same language. One view of skills and progress.
Move talent internally: Post opportunities, promote gigs and cross-functional stints. Mobility beats attrition.
Measure what matters: Track time-to-productivity, internal fill rates, retention, and diversity across pipelines.
Build a learning culture: Recognition for growth, time for practice, leaders who model curiosity.
How to Display Talent Management Skills on Your Resume
6. Performance Consulting
Performance consulting finds the root cause of performance gaps and selects the right intervention—often beyond training—so results move in the right direction.
Why It's Important
It prevents needless courses, targets real barriers, and raises ROI. You fix systems, tools, and incentives as well as skills.
How to Improve Performance Consulting Skills
Diagnose first: Use interviews, workflow observation, and data. Is it knowledge, environment, process, or motivation?
Define outcomes: Clear, measurable performance targets with owners and timelines.
Choose interventions: Job aids, process tweaks, coaching, systems changes, or learning—often a mix.
Pilot and iterate: Start small, gather evidence, scale what works.
Measure impact: Use models like Kirkpatrick or ROI/ROE frameworks. Tie metrics to business results.
Close the loop: Share findings, retire what underperforms, and codify playbooks.
How to Display Performance Consulting Skills on Your Resume
7. Leadership Development
Leadership development strengthens the behaviors that move teams—communication, decision-making, coaching, accountability, and vision—at every level.
Why It's Important
Stronger leaders build healthier teams, handle change with less drama, and execute strategy faster. The ripple effect is real.
How to Improve Leadership Development Skills
Align to context: Tie capabilities to strategy, culture, and the realities of hybrid work.
Customize paths: Different needs for new managers, mid-level leaders, and executives. One-size programs miss the mark.
Use experience: On-the-job projects, rotations, shadowing, and coaching outrun classroom-only approaches.
Build feedback muscles: 360s, regular check-ins, and reflection. Practice hard conversations.
Scale with tech: Blended learning, nudges, and spaced reinforcement to keep habits alive.
Track outcomes: Engagement, promotion rates, bench strength, and performance of leader-led teams.
How to Display Leadership Development Skills on Your Resume
8. Succession Planning
Succession planning identifies critical roles, builds ready talent, and reduces the risk of vacant seats derailing momentum.
Why It's Important
Roles change hands. Plans keep knowledge intact, preserve culture, and speed handoffs. Business continuity depends on it.
How to Improve Succession Planning Skills
Identify critical roles: Impact, scarcity, and risk drive the list. Be honest about vulnerabilities.
Define success profiles: Skills, experiences, and mindsets—not just tenure.
Spot and diversify potential: Use data and multiple perspectives to avoid bias and widen the bench.
Develop deliberately: Mentoring, targeted assignments, leadership labs, and exposure to real stakes.
Review often: Calibrate readiness twice a year. Update plans when strategy shifts.
Communicate smartly: Set expectations, avoid promises, and keep pathways transparent.
How to Display Succession Planning Skills on Your Resume
9. Employee Engagement
Engagement is the energy employees bring to work—commitment, enthusiasm, and a sense that the work matters.
Why It's Important
Engaged people learn faster, stay longer, and deliver more. L&D is a lever: growth drives meaning; meaning drives performance.
How to Improve Employee Engagement Skills
Personalize development: Map learning to career goals and current projects. Show the “why” and the “what’s next.”
Build learning rhythms: Microlearning, coaching, and communities of practice. Make growth a habit, not a one-off.
Recognize progress: Celebrate skill milestones and business impact, not just completions.
Listen often: Pulse surveys, open forums, and action on feedback. Close the loop visibly.
Strengthen managers: Equip leaders to coach, unblock, and clarify priorities. Manager quality multiplies engagement.
Show pathways: Clear internal mobility and skill-based opportunities reduce churn.
How to Display Employee Engagement Skills on Your Resume
10. Diversity Training
Diversity training raises awareness, builds inclusive behaviors, and supports equity. On its own, it’s not a silver bullet—paired with fair processes and accountable leadership, it changes outcomes.
Why It's Important
Inclusive teams collaborate better, solve faster, and innovate more. People stay where they feel seen and safe.
How to Improve Diversity Training Skills
Start with data: Understand representation, experience gaps, and key pain points. Target the right problems.
Make it practical: Role-play scenarios, decision checklists, and bias interrupters people can use immediately.
Embed, don’t bolt on: Tie training to hiring, performance, promotion, and everyday rituals.
Keep learning ongoing: Communities, mentorship, resource libraries, and regular refreshers.
Measure change: Track behavior shifts, participation, and sentiment—then adapt content and processes.
How to Display Diversity Training Skills on Your Resume
11. Data Analysis (e.g., Tableau, Excel)
Data analysis turns learning signals into decisions. With tools like Excel and Tableau (and often Power BI or an LRS for xAPI), you find patterns, test hypotheses, and show impact.
Why It's Important
Without data, you’re guessing. With it, you prioritize ruthlessly, prove value, and fix what’s not working.
How to Improve Data Analysis (e.g., Tableau, Excel) Skills
Master the basics: Cleaning data, pivots, lookups, date math, and structured tables. Boring, critical, powerful.
Visualize with purpose: Choose charts that fit the question. Remove clutter. Tell a story in three views or fewer.
Build a metrics stack: Leading indicators (activity, confidence), lagging indicators (behavior, results), and benchmarks.
Instrument learning: Add xAPI events for practice, errors, retries, and time-to-completion where granularity matters.
Protect privacy: Role-based access, anonymization where needed, and clear data-retention rules.
Iterate: Use insights to tweak design, sequencing, and support. Then measure again.
How to Display Data Analysis (e.g., Tableau, Excel) Skills on Your Resume
12. Project Management (e.g., Asana, Trello)
Project management is how L&D ships—scope, plan, build, launch, and learn—on time and with no drama.
Why It's Important
Clear goals, crisp timelines, and visible ownership keep initiatives moving, stakeholders aligned, and rework down.
How to Improve Project Management (e.g., Asana, Trello) Skills
Define outcomes: Problem, scope, success metrics, and guardrails—written and agreed.
Use repeatable patterns: Templates for ILT, eLearning, and blended builds. Save time, reduce misses.
Plan in the open: Kanban boards, milestones, dependencies, and RACI. Everyone knows who does what, by when.
Automate the boring: Recurring tasks, status updates, and QA checklists.
Meet with intent: Short stand-ups, focused reviews, decisions documented.
Manage risk: Identify blockers early, keep a RAID log, and line up contingencies.
Close well: Post-mortems, lessons learned, and artifact libraries for the next project.
How to Display Project Management (e.g., Asana, Trello) Skills on Your Resume
