Udemy etc - has anyone ever used one to change/advance their career?

[evilharpy]

I’ve done a few of these courses. Some languages to brush up my rusty skills, but mostly maths type stuff from the OU. I’m now working my way through a life coaching course on Udemy that I think I paid about £10 for and has something like 50 hours of lectures. I might follow it with something about NLP or hypnosis.

Mine is purely for interest and hopefully to improve my communication skills a bit so I can get my point across better in meetings, but there’s so much out there for not much cost and I wondered if anyone has actually used MOOCs to kick start a new career? Do employers actually give a shit about them?

In my experience, Udemy courses are very mixed in quality and I've never taken them into account when hiring. I've taken a few but I don't list them on my CV. That's purely anecdotal, though... you'd have to list them properly because they aren't certified or quality controlled by anyone.

If there's specific course types you are interested in, you could do Udemy courses to gauge your interest and build background knowledge and then take a certified course?

Ah I’m only curious! I don’t actually want to change career. I just keep seeing ones that say “certified X practitioner” or similar wild claims and wondered if it’s actually worked for anyone.

The life coaching one I’m doing is quite good really, I’m not that far in but have picked up a few things I want to try to apply to my own job.