Ask HN: Are MOOCs advantageous for job seeking? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Are MOOCs advantageous for job seeking?

9 pointsbiolurker16 comments

A few examples: Coursera and Udacity are offering career paths for Data Analysts. These are more than a simple course on Udemy and you get an optional certificate.

Are they a waste of time? Will a company hire a software developer turned AI specialist or Data Analyst just because of this? What are your experiences?

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"Data Science" and closely related "AI/ML" were hype cycles, and companies are realizing that now. You can throw 10 "Data Scientists" at "Big Data" and arrive at no interesting conclusion. The reality is that data is noisy, over-fitting is hard to avoid, and analysis takes too long to be truly useful. Traditional regressions seem to offer as much benefit as complex black-box ML models.

For that reason, people I know who jumped on the bandwagon and got certifications/degrees in Data Science are now having trouble finding work. "Analyst" is an entry-level job at most companies because it usually involves massaging spreadsheets more than anything else.

If you were to go to the MOOC route, you would be at the bottom of the hierarchy. There are tons of quantitative PhD graduates abandoning academia to do statistics in the corporate world; there are people with Masters degrees from big-name institutions, like Georgia Tech; and there are people who went to in-person boot camps.

Someone with a MOOC certification would be behind all of those people in line for jobs that are vanishing anyway.

I’m not a manager so take this with a grain of salt. But I think that the most important thing is not if you took a course or not. By all means, put it on your resume. But also try to explain how you can use your newfound knowledge. Maybe do a little project with it or write a blog post. I think that will make it more valuable.

If I was reviewing a resume, I personally would put little stock in anything that:

* was not "regionally accredited"

* resulted in a course completions that were not readily transferable to institutions that are "regionally accredited"

While I have heard some good things about Coursera, I would likely dismiss these courses as not meaningful on a resume.

I want to be clear, this is not about dismissing online education in general. For example, an online degree from a regionally accredited university provided through 2U would get my full support. Perhaps Coursera does a similar thing and I am not aware of it.

In any case (as far as education goes), the key part for me is who is the degree granting institution and are they regionally accredited and are those credits readily transferable.

Depends on how desperate they are to fill the role.

If it is just a single class with no real world experience I would be hesitant to list it. If it was a grouping of classes maybe. To get real experience, find a non-profit that could use it, develop it for them, then list it.

It is also useful if it is a non Primary requirement. i.e. "and driving a yakmo200 would be useful." In your cover letter you could then mention the yakmo2000 class you took.

No, I would not hire anyone "just because of" it. However, if I had 2 candidates that were fairly equal, and one was out self-educating on topics relevant to the work, they'd get the hire before the other candidate.

So it is not a complete waste of time. But neither is it a huge benefit. It would be one of many factors that go into a hiring decision.

I hire people. I will not hire because of MOOC or not. I will hire if you can demonstrate skills and ability required for the role. Whether you acquired those skills/ability due to MOOC is irrelevant to me.

So focus on improving your skills and if MOOCs help with that, go for it.

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