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Осторожно, двери закрываются: (не)готовность работодателей рассматривать соискателей после окончания онлайн-курсов в IT-сфере
Despite the high demand for IT specialists and online courses for their training, little is known about how a candidate's basic education and age affect their employment. This study addressed two questions: 1) what is the employers' willingness to hire graduates of online courses for junior positions, and 2) whether this willingness differs for candidates of different ages. These questions are examined within a theoretical framework combining signaling theory and labor market discrimination theory. Specifically, a formal diploma and online certificates are analyzed as signals of different strength regarding a candidate's competence, while age and type of education are considered potential grounds for "taste-based" or statistical discrimination under incomplete information. Using a quasi-experiment, we compared the employment prospects in the IT sector for two hypothetical candidates without a basic technical education who completed online programming courses but belonged to different age groups. The results revealed low demand for graduates of online courses without a technical background and a strong bias in favor of younger candidates.