Worth paying for the certificate when course is available for free?

August 23, 2022 1:13 PM

I’m brushing up on some tech and data skills (SQL, Excel w/ Power Query, etc) in the hopes of re-entering the job market soon after a multi year absence due to child rearing. In this context, are the paid versions of Coursera etc. worth it?

I have free access to LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, maybe one or two other similar educational service through my library. Taking the exam and getting a certificate at the end would involve payment (looks like the amount varies from ~$50 a month to $150 per course depending on the service). Is that actually worth obtaining? Do hiring managers care about the certificate? I was planning on mentioning courses taken in my cover letters eventually.

If paid/certificate is the way to go, would courses taken at the local university or community college be a better ROI in terms of job hunting? That would be more expensive, but not by much.

posted by Wavelet to Work & Money (3 answers total)

Hiring manager here, maybe farther on the software engineering side than you're aiming, so grain of salt: I suspect most tech hiring managers will place zero (or even negative) value on a Coursera or LinkedIn certificate -- outside of a few specialist niches, tech certifications aren't generally considered meaningful. (Outside of a few specialist niches, most of them aren't meaningful, and it can backfire by implying that you're not self-motivated enough to learn on your own.)

CS degrees or (certain) bootcamps are valued; other than that it's all about demonstrated skill or work experience.

I've never seen anyone list individual college courses on their resume; I suspect it would also stand out as unusual and probably not helpful unless it was directly related to the role, or was clearly positioned as "I have real world experience, was out of the market for a while, then used this course to get back up to date".
posted by ook at 2:10 PM on August 23, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've never seen anyone list individual college courses on their resume;

I've seen this on entry level, right out of college resumes and it's fine there but I'd agree that it's a bit odd once you have some experience.

A certificate program that bundles a few college level courses together into a program is what I more commonly see for mid-level people making a career shift.

Do hiring managers care about the certificate?

A tiny amount but not much. It shows a little bit of ambition and followthrough and gives me something to ask an applicant about during the interview but I'm not going to give a huge preference to someone because of it.

As a similar example, when I shifted into my current career path, I did reference a kind of similar certificate. That I had it didn't really matter to the people I interviewed with but they could ask questions based on it and that let me demonstrate my actual knowledge on the subject by talking about it.
posted by Candleman at 3:48 PM on August 23, 2022 [1 favorite]

Better than a certificate is completed work. "I wanted to move my career in direction x. I learned y. I used my new skills to write applications A and B, which may be small compared to commercial apps, but which used my new skills."
posted by SemiSalt at 5:03 AM on August 24, 2022