One of the essential features of education in the modern world is that its significant part is implemented through online courses. Either I’m getting my school education or pursuing a college degree or switching my career and taking courses of my interest – all these levels of education are represented by online classes a lot. I welcome this opportunity since it gives people a possibility for life-long education, myself personally took a dozen if not more courses on different online platforms. And I want to say for those who are going to enroll to an online course especially a paid one: do that only after you clearly realize that course is what you want and need. I’ll give you an example.
Several years ago I was diligently applying for Android developer positions having some applications developed and some of them published at Google Play Market. I didn’t want to stay a freelance developer preferring to work for an employer. To master the skills I was missing and to stay up-to-date with software development technology I was looking for a good online course. And I was lucky – I won free access to the course created by developers of one of the largest and famous IT companies. The regular price of that course was around $3000, but I and other lucky ones got it for free. My thoughts were: after finishing this course I’ll have much more skills valuable for Android developer career and – another thought – it will be much more easy to me to find an Android developer job if employers will see what course I finished and what company stands behind it. The organizer actively advertised and touted the course focusing on how much money developers earned and how many open positions were on the job market.
So, I finished that course and had a pretty good app as my final project, but all my expectations were never met. No employers and recruiters cared about courses I finished and what companies conducted those courses, my skills and projects were not interesting to them. What 99% of them asked me about was whether I had experience of software development in a team and working in Agile environment. Period.
Before enrolling to a course, it would be great if you know whether it is important for the position you going to pursue to have previous experience of working in a corporate environment, not freelance projects only. This not an important – this is a crucial condition for most of companies that hire developers and not only them. If you hear success stories from programmers at large and famous corporations about how they were able to get that position without having any previous corporate experience – I assure you those stories do not reflect a whole picture because such cases are one in a thousand and there is no guarantee you’ll be that lucky case. You need to know the job market and the actual and real requirements to the position besides of those published in the job description or announced by a course creator.
Advertising their courses, organizers may use different tricks to get you enrolled, and one of them – not to tell all the truth, just that part of it they benefit from the most. This approach is used in many industries. Some time ago I took a 3D modeling course, later I was going to take a photography course – they all advertised their courses to make me feel they are exactly what I needed:
– You photos are not as beautiful as those taken by pros? Purchase the course on photography composition for only $299 and after the first week you’ll be able to take high quality photos of pro level.
But if that does not happen – the course organizers never tell you perhaps that course was not something you really needed – most likely they’d say you didn’t do your best and thus failed.
I bet you are familiar with this: you participate in a free webinar about something that is interesting to you and the organizer – a professional in that specific field – offers to pay for their exceptionally great online course where you will learn a lot more. And, of course, there is a huge discount: the basic price is $1000 and you get it for just $499, which ends the next day at 12am. You don’t purchase it, and the day after tomorrow you receive an email from the course organizer that a lot of people are asking them to extend the sale since they had no time to purchase the course. Sure, the sale is extended for two more days. This is how those professionals try to manipulate you to get your money. Ask yourself – are those pros really so successful in their businesses if they are so persistent in convincing you to pay for their courses? To avoid this trap, you need to know a lot about profession you are mastering, including the market, the competitors, the salaries, the expenses, etc. Knowledge is always power.
So, you need to clearly understand what you want and what you need to achieve your goal which is also clearly seen. What I could recommend is not to listen for all those pros advertising their courses – better read books instead. Seriously, the course may not give you deep knowledge but will provide you superficial facts about a subject, so instead of paying for a course on composition in photography better read a book on composition in visual art – it will give you deeper knowledge and comprehensive information which you’ll be able to apply to much more situations in your creativity.
Online courses are good for keeping your skills up-to-date. In most cases they are not a good fit for you if you are switching your profession to something you have no experience in. In this case I’d recommend to get a college degree in the corresponding field. A lot of companies search for talented students and interns among those who study in colleges they partner with. Or take a comprehensive course at a school that guarantees employment after successful graduation.