Ask HN: Which of the major MOOCs provide better credentials for my resume?

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.

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?

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.

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...

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.

>>(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.

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

Those things aren't mutually exclusive though.

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.

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.

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.

None of them carry any weight.

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".

I can confirm, as a professor who hires PhD students and postdocs, I do give MOOCs some positive weight. Of course there are not one of the most important points in the CV, but they can and do help.

If a candidate already has experience or "traditional" qualifications in the subject of interest, a MOOC is not needed and probably will be worth approximately zero.

But for example, I have sometimes got CVs from candidates that had a formal education focused into topic X and are applying for a position to do a PhD in topic Y. Having taken a MOOC in topic Y tells me that they have a real interest in that subject and motivation to pursue it. They were not just applying because they saw the offer and they liked the location or the salary so why not.

For young candidates that are straight out of their Master's and don't have much more to show apart from their academic record, a bunch of MOOCs also shows me that they are people who really have an interest in learning, and are not just focused in ticking the minimum marks needed for their career goals.

So yes, definitely several times the presence of one or several MOOCs has had an influence in hiring processes I have conducted, and I know I'm not the only one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

This. Your skillset matters more than any MOOC cert.

Your skillset matters more than any MOOC cert.

Agreed, but that's far from the same thing as saying that MOOCs carry no weight at all. Especially since it can be hard to demonstrate exactly what your skillset is.

Really?