
Ask HN: Which of the major MOOCs provide better credentials for my resume? - soneca
Hey HN,<p>I would like to know what&#x27;s your opinion on which of the major MOOCs (Udacity, Udemy, EdX, and Coursera) is better as a credential to add to my resume and impress future employees.<p>Context:<p>I&#x27;m a 37 yo, recently self-taught web developer on my first job as a junior developer.<p>So far I learned only through online, free resources (freeCodeCamp, documentation and tutorials). But now I think it is a good strategy for me to improve my resume with some credentials mostly for purposes of employability.<p>Taking into account my budget, schedule and knowledge needs I narrowed my options to any of the major MOOCs. I want to choose the one that potential employees will take most seriously as a &quot;formal education&quot; on the field.<p>On top of that I already decided to read a few proper books to learn what I currently lack in CS. Namely &quot;<i>The Algorithm Design Manual</i>&quot; by Steven Skiena and &quot;<i>How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing</i>&quot; by Felleisen, Findler, Flatt, and  Krishnamurthi.<p>Of course, I&#x27;m open to suggestions if this decision at all makes no sense or better ways to achieve my goals of career development.
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AdamSC1
I'm not a developer but I do serve as an adjunct professor for some technical
courses at a local college.

I had some students ask me the same thing this semester and so I tried to
really dig in to the different offerings and these are the points I made to
the class:

1) I believe you will learn the most from EdX _IF_ the institution putting the
course on is reputable (MITx, HavardX etc)

2) The credential I think carries the most weight is Udacity, because they
have the most rigorous testing. It's not an honor code.

3) I'd put Udacity's weight on par with most online colleges in Canada or the
US (Walden, Athabasca, etc).

4) This credential won't matter to other colleges, or to large workplaces
(thousands of employees) who have HR departments who want to just "have a
checkbox"

Lastly, it's important to be able to sell the value of the credential. I have
a degree from an online college that I got part time. The college isn't all
that reputable. But, I have that degree because I was working full-time and
still wanted to validate my skills in a different field.

So I worked evenings and weekends to make that happen, and to many employers
that shows commitment and work ethic.

I personally think the best path forward is to learn what you can, and create
a good portfolio. Shop it around, if you can't get anywhere with that try a
Udacity nanodegree (watch the videos for free first, then pay the monthly fee
and speed through the tests).

Finally if that doesn't work get an EdX honor certificate from one of the big
name schools like MIT, they don't have much weight, but it may give a hiring
manager cause to take a second glance.

------
mindcrime
_I would like to know what 's your opinion on which of the major MOOCs
(Udacity, Udemy, EdX, and Coursera) is better as a credential to add to my
resume and impress future employees._

Speaking only for myself, I would weight the presence of courses from
Coursera, EdX and/or Udacity about the same. Udemy courses I would give less
weight too. I wouldn't say it would be 0 for Udemy, but from what I've seen
there's a really wide variance in terms of the quality of content there. That
makes it harder to assign a lot of weight to those, since I don't have time to
go review each of those courses myself.

OTOH, I've taken Coursera, Udacity and EdX courses myself, so I feel like I
know a little more about how to weight them.

Again, this is only one person's perspective. Take that for what it's worth.
Also, as others have alluded to, having a portfolio of projects you can show
of is probably even more valuable. And a portfolio project doesn't necessarily
need to be super fancy / involved, just something (or things) that can
demonstrate that you have the skills that are on your resume. Bonus points if
the code is open source and shared on bitbucket, github, etc. Note that at
least when I look at code, a couple of things I care about are:

1\. Is there any documentation? If so, how clear / complete is it?

2\. Is the project simple to download, deploy/install and get running?

3\. Is the code clear / understandable / maintainable?

------
mbzi
I lead a small team of developers (~12-14) and just hired 2 people without any
formal qualifications for junior web roles. I will only do this for Web roles,
not machine learning, etc, which does - imo - require a more learned academic
mind.

I used to go down the usual expensive (in time and money) recruiter / Computer
Science grad route however the market is flooded by people who are expensive
and generally rubbish programmers, not what I would call Software Engineers
but half arsed Programmers.

To solve this, for my junior roles, I am now working directly with several
programming bootcamps to make sure I can fill these places. MOOCs are
something I look for in someone from one of these or someone self taught. It
shows they don't want to be a "hacker"/script kiddy but someone who has
passion and really wants to understand the theory behind what they are coding,
which in my mind is the difference between a Software Engineer and a simple
programmer.

Focus on the theoretical courses, data structures, maths, algorithms, etc.

Then support these course certificates with: \- A good GitHub which showed
practical examples of what you have just learned (possibly with new
technologies such as RxJS/Angular 4) \- A LinkedIn/Website with the certs on
their with projects describing what they achieved, linking to above \-
Blog/Medium posts posts detailing their progress/findings \- Great code
commenting, which includes not commenting too much. Show the big O notation of
an algorithm you made, detail how it works, but don't tell me what a for loop
is, etc.

I don't really mind which course you do, or who hosts it. I want to see you
taking this knowledge and turning it into a different practical example. For
me that shows you are potentially a good coder wanting to be a Software
Engineer. For me that gives me the confidence to hire.

Another note: My CTO, senior engineers and myself also do an online course a
month to just keep on top of our skills. Self learning - imo - should always
be encouraged and I go out of my way to make sure anyone at my company has
paid online subscriptions to do this.

------
danblick
I think this is an interesting topic, really.

Credentials are all about signaling. But what is it exactly credentials
communicate? Is it, "person X learned about topic Y"? I'd argue it's a lot
more than that. If you have a degree from Stanford, then the information "this
is a person who was admitted to Stanford" has a lot of value in addition to
just "this is a person who took Stanford classes". (How much would you care if
someone told you they'd sat in on Stanford classes without enrolling? Not very
much, right?)

There was an Econtalk episode on this:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/04/bryan_caplan_on.html)

I think MOOCs are _not_ particularly good as credentials in their own, but the
projects you do in them can be very useful in getting a job. (This is kind of
the "human capital" model discussed in the podcast.) Maybe their lack of
exclusivity is part of the reason they're not more positive signals on their
own.

Think about the projects you'll do and what you'll be able to say you did
after the course is done.

Don't count on the credential itself to say too much.

~~~
pmulv
>>(How much would you care if someone told you they'd sat in on Stanford
classes without enrolling? Not very much, right?)

Although this person didn't get accepted into an elite college, I think
they're showing an immense amount of initiative and drive. They are aware of
the quality of the education that Stanford students receive, and they want
that same learning opportunities as those students even though they cannot
attend for one reason or another. I think this signals a really strong desire
to learn, which is something I imagine some people in recruiting "care" about.

------
chaostheory
It's more important to show projects that you've worked on.

~~~
mindcrime
Those things aren't mutually exclusive though.

~~~
chaostheory
If you're a self-taught dev like the OP, you don't need to pay for a course to
show your work. It's most likely something you can just pull from either your
work experience or github.

~~~
mindcrime
_If you 're a self-taught dev like the OP, you don't need to pay for a course
to show your work._

True, but let me add this: taking a course is still a positive signal in and
of itself (albeit just one signal among many) and, perhaps more to the point,
I should be clear in saying that I advocate MOOCs (or an other kind of class)
_mainly_ if taking it actually helps you add useful skills to your repertoire.
I wouldn't necessarily advocate paying a lot of money for classes _solely_ for
the signaling effect.

~~~
chaostheory
MOOCS can be useful and I'm not saying they're bad. OP was asking if they're
very useful for signaling. Imo compared to projects from professional work or
open source with traction; or even traditional education - most MOOCS aren't
very good for signalling. The only exception I can think of is special classes
like those involving building autonomous cars.

------
user5994461
None of them carry any weight.

~~~
mindcrime
Nonsense. They aren't a "be all end all" by ANY means, but they absolutely
carry _some_ weight, at least with some people who might be reviewing your
resume. For example, if your resume comes across my desk for review, I would
take the presence of relevant Coursera classes as a positive sign. Now,
there's no one class (or even combination of classes) which _by itself_ is
going to "get you hired" in and of itself. But they are signals which, at
least to this reviewer, make you more interesting.

And to be honest, more than the content of the class itself, what I am looking
for in a candidate is _interest_ and _drive_. If I see somebody who is willing
to spend the time and effort to sign up for, and complete, a MOOC, then I see
that as a sign of somebody who's a self-starter, who's proactive, and somebody
who is more likely to continue to work to sharpen their skills and broaden
their base of knowledge.

Think of it in Bayesian updating terms... the presence of a MOOC is just one
more thing to change the posterior probability towards "this is a desirable
candidate".

~~~
user5994461
We both agree that it will not get you employed.

You may give a positive sign, there are other reviewers who will give it a
negative sign. I'd argue the average weight is negative overall, because of
the traditional HR screening most resume have have to go through.

~~~
mindcrime
_You may give a positive sign, there are other reviewers who will give it a
negative sign._

Interesting. What would be the rational behind assigning a negative weight to
that? I have a hard time seeing that point of view. I'd think that, at worst,
the presence of MOOC(s) on a resume would be neutral.

~~~
user5994461
See the MOOC as "a noteworthy achievement from this candidate was to watch a
video on the internet".

One of the first things HR screen for is a formal education. You wouldn't
believe the amount of people who try to put a MOOC as one, HR is trained to
detect and reject them right away.

~~~
mindcrime
_One of the first things HR screen for is a formal education. You wouldn 't
believe the amount of people who try to put a MOOC as one, HR is trained to
detect and reject them right away._

Sounds like somebody needs to fire whoever is in charge of HR.

~~~
user5994461
Of course not. You filter what you can when there are hundreds of candidate
applying. It's perfectly normal.

