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Re:Ask HN: Did Online Course Lead into a Job for Anyone? by JulesRosser on Friday February 03, 2017 @08:21PM (#13564996)
I completed a couple of courses offered by Coursera and Udacity on Android development and managed to get a great role in a decent company a few months later with no previous professional experience. The courses are mostly entry level, but they gave me just enough motivation and knowledge to create my own apps, which I feel is the real reason I was hired.

The difficulty come from having no prior professional experience, so showing that you can design, build and ship a project in your own time really helps you to stand out.

The only thing about the course that you linked is that its not specific to a certain field. I would suggest that you try a couple of different courses and find a subject / stack which really interests you, then build small but increasingly more complex projects using what you've learnt.

I list the courses I've completed along with links to any verified certificates on my resume, but not once have they been referenced in interviews.. It's always the projects that make me stand out.

I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have! Also, the forums are also great place to meet like minded people!

Re:Ask HN: Did Online Course Lead into a Job for Anyone? by urahara on Friday February 03, 2017 @09:36PM (#13565312)
Is it possible to see what projects you had on your portfolio when you were hired and what courses you took? Just to have a better idea about your story and the possibilities.
Re:Ask HN: Did Online Course Lead into a Job for Anyone? by JulesRosser on Sunday February 05, 2017 @10:21AM (#13572704)
Sure, sorry for the delay. I built an extremely basic portfolio website to show all the apps and describe them, however it's no longer online and I've lost the assets unfortunately.

Projects Listed: Birthday Reminder App (https://github.com/Julesssss/BirthdayReminder) & Podcast Player (https://github.com/Julesssss/PodcastPlayer)

Followed by all the apps I created as part of the courses below. They were all basic apps, I just listed what I learnt and added a few screenshots. At the end of the courses you'll have a nice amount of projects to show off.

Courses: https://www.mooc-list.com/course/creative-serious-and-playfu... (No longer available), https://www.coursera.org/learn/android-programming, https://www.coursera.org/learn/android-programming-2, Followed by a couple of these beginner courses: https://www.udacity.com/courses/android