Will it make a difference to employers of entry level developers if you have a MOOC certificate? Is it worth pursuing for this aim, or will they be interested only to see what a potential employee has built?
Don't pursue it for the credentials. Apply what you learn in the class to practical projects you're interested in. Build a GitHub profile of various repositories showcasing what you've learned and it will impress a future employer far more than credentials on paper ever will!
Agreed. Having both the intro to programming MOOC down and a GitHub is really the way to go. This way if you apply to somewhere where the primary business is not programming you will have something to show HR and also something to show whomever is interviewing you.
If I had a choice between an entry-level candidate with a MOOC certificate and an entry-level candidate with a Github repo with some interesting projects, I think the latter candidate would be in with a better chance.
Not all candidates are created equal however but the ones that I have hired (and ones I wish I could have hired) all had at least some sort of online coding portfolio which demonstrated a good working knowledge of data structures and algorithms.
As an engineer and an employer, I am more interested in what experience you have than your educational pedigree. I would see a MOOC certificate as neutral.
I'd say a MOOC certificate in Python is unlikely to impress professional programmers. It may impress ordinary business persons. So in terms of hiring, it might be useful in terms of working for a business whose primary business is not programming. It probably won't directly eliminate a candidate from a job in a business whose primary business is programming.
However, there are not vast numbers of "employers of entry level developers" relative to the vast number of potential entry level developers. A job as an entry level developer is most likely to be found by job hunting not taking a MOOC. More importantly, taking a MOOC is a lot easier for many people than actively job hunting because active job hunts are hard, involve a lot of rejection and being ignored, and often take much longer than a MOOC. The key to getting an entry level Python job is to find someone who is hiring entry level Python developers.
