How to hire an e-learning voice actor (and what to send them)

I get a lot of e-learning scripts, and the projects that go smoothly almost always start the same way. The team knew what they wanted to hear, they sent everything in one email, and we agreed on the small stuff before I pressed record. This guide walks you through that, step by step, so your next course narration is easy on both ends.

1. Start with the e-learning demo

A commercial demo tells you if someone can sell. It doesn’t tell you if they can teach. Course narration is a different job. Your learner might listen for twenty minutes, often at a desk, sometimes on their first day at a new company. So ask for, or find, a demo made for training and e-learning.

When you listen, ask yourself three questions:

• Does it sound like explaining, or like selling? You want someone talking to one person, not announcing to a room.
• Could I listen to this for a whole module? Warm and steady beats big and exciting over twenty minutes.
• Do the technical words land? Listen to how they handle product names, steps and numbers. Clear is the whole point.

2. What to send a voice actor

This is where most of the back-and-forth comes from. If you send these up front, you’ll get a faster quote and fewer surprises.

If you don’t have all of this yet, send what you have. I’ll read the script and tell you what I’d need before we start.

3. How long will the narration run?

Here’s a rough planning number. E-learning narration often lands somewhere around 130 to 150 words per minute. That’s slower than a commercial, because learners need a beat to take things in. So a 1,500-word module usually runs about 10 to 12 minutes of finished audio.

Treat that as a guide, not a promise. Pauses for on-screen clicks, lists and tricky terms all add time. One tip that saves a lot of rework: record the narration first, then time your slide builds and animations to the audio. It’s much easier than asking a narrator to hit exact timings blind.

4. Questions to ask before you book

These five questions tell you most of what you need to know about working with someone. Here are my own answers, so you can see what a straight answer looks like.

1. Are you a real person? Yes. Every word is recorded by me, in my booth in Gloucester, Virginia. No synthetic voices, no clones.
2. How fast can you deliver? Most projects are delivered in under 24 hours. Faster if you need it. For long courses we agree a schedule up front.
3. What happens if something needs changing? You get one free revision of up to 50 words, plus pickups to get it exactly right. Script changes after delivery are quoted separately.
4. Can I direct the session live? Yes. We can do a directed session over Source-Connect, or a video call if you’d rather direct that way, so you can see and hear me record and give notes as we go.
5. Will the files work in my course? I edit, master and format the audio to work with your e-learning software, split and named the way you ask.

5. Why a teaching background helps

Before I stepped up to a microphone, I spent 21 years in theatre as a stage actor, teacher, director and acting coach. I also have a graduate degree in Educational Leadership from Old Dominion University.

That shapes how I read a course. I’m not thinking about how my voice sounds. I’m thinking about the person on the other end, and where they might get lost. Where does a new idea start? Which word in this sentence is the one they need to remember? Where do they need a breath before the next step? A narrator who thinks like a teacher gives you that without being asked.

6. Mistakes that slow a project down

• Sending a draft script. If legal or a subject expert hasn’t signed off yet, wait. Re-recording whole sections is the biggest time sink there is.
• Skipping the pronunciation list. Your team says that acronym every day. A narrator is seeing it for the first time.
• Asking for one giant file. Unless you want to cut it up yourself, ask for one file per screen.
• Choosing on price alone. The cheapest read can turn into the most expensive one if it needs to be redone.
• Leaving out the learner. “Friendly and professional” fits almost anything. “Warehouse staff on a tablet during a break” tells me exactly how to read it.

7. What about AI voices?

Some teams use a synthetic voice for early drafts so they can test timing. That can make sense. For the finished course, a person brings things a text-to-speech tool doesn’t. I can spot a typo in your script, ask what a term means, and notice when a sentence will confuse a learner. And if you want a different feel on one line, we just try it. That’s the whole reason I’m in the booth.

Quick questions

More on how I work: E-learning voice over · All demos · More guides for buyers