Planning Your L&D Hiring for Next Year? Start With Skills, Salary Ranges, and Realistic Expectations

As organizations head into annual planning, L&D teams are mapping out ambitious initiatives—new programs, system migrations, compliance overhauls, content development pipelines, AI upskilling, and everything in between. With those goals comes the obvious question: who do you need on your team to deliver on all of this?

It’s the right time to think about roles, skill needs, and yes—the cost of new hires.

Salary transparency laws across many states now require organizations to publish compensation ranges. While this can feel like a burden, the truth is: transparency can dramatically speed up hiring. Candidates self-select, mismatches decrease, and teams save time.

But transparency only works when the salary range itself is grounded in reality. And that’s where many organizations struggle.

The Real Challenge: Defining a Fair Salary Range

Posting a salary range is the easy part.
Determining a fair, defensible range is where the work happens.

In the L&D and ID fields, salary expectations often swing wildly—especially as titles vary across industries. An “Instructional Designer” can mean anything from a content creator to a senior learning strategist with technical depth. A “Learning Experience Designer” at one organization might map to an “eLearning Developer” at another. And roles like LMS Administrator, Learning Technologist, or L&D Project Manager may sit in totally different job families depending on the company.

So, how do you determine a fair range?

You start with:

The actual skills required
The complexity of the work
The scope of ownership
The market value for the role
And the level structure inside your existing team

Once you have the range, the next step is managing expectations—from the first job posting all the way through final negotiations.

Candidates Go Straight to the Top of the Range (Of Course They Do)

This is human nature. When candidates see a range—$85–$115K—they imagine themselves at $115K.

The problem?
Most people, especially new hires, should not start at the top third. And most organizations don’t want them to.

You want room for growth.
You want salary progression to reflect skill development and results.
And you want to maintain internal equity across your team.

Hiring someone at the top of the range often removes that flexibility.

A Better Approach: Set Expectations Early

One organization that handles this exceptionally well is Bezos Academy. Their job descriptions show the full salary range, and they clearly state in the job description what range new hires should expect. For example:

Montessori Teacher

Full range: $52,000 – $83,200
Upper third is reserved for long-tenured high performers
Starting salaries vary by experience and qualifications

Chief Learning Officer

Full range: $271,000 – $462,000
Executive ranges are intentionally wide for long-term growth
New hires estimated to start between $271,000 – $366,000

Senior Quality Assurance Engineer

Full range: $136,000 – $218,000
Upper third reserved for employees in role for multiple years
Starting salary depends on experience and qualifications

This structure communicates three things clearly:

Transparency: candidates know the role’s true potential
Fairness: new hires don’t leapfrog long-term employees
Growth: performance and tenure open the door to advancement

The lesson?
Define your full market-aligned salary range, then establish where new hires realistically start. Applicants understand how they can grow, and you prevent negotiation surprises late in the process.

Why This Matters for L&D Teams

L&D functions are often lean, and every hire is strategic. Setting realistic expectations early helps you:

Attract candidates who align with your budget
Maintain equity and morale within your team
Prevent late-stage negotiation breakdowns
Hire people who are motivated by growth—not inflated expectations
Set employees up for long-term success

When your salary ranges are grounded in skills, expectations, and market norms, you end up building a stronger, more stable team.

Plan Ahead With Better Talent Insights

If you’re preparing to hire in instructional design, learning technology, or L&D this year, explore the roles and salary benchmarks on Teamed’s Job Board and skill-building resources on our Career Board. These tools make it easier to anticipate talent costs and continue to upskill your team and new hires.

The best hiring decisions start with clarity.
And clarity starts with knowing the skills you need—and the salary range that makes sense for them.