I continue to search for work, and Monster.ca is one of many sites I visit. Lately I have noticed that almost all of the jobs posted on Monster are from headhunters. It’s not that headhunters are bad per se, but that some of their advertised job descriptions are close to: “Wanted: Live animal. Able to stand up and breath without keeling over. Please send your resume to ima @ headhunter.com”. Would it kill the recruiter to provide a little more position-related information? Often times there are three headhunters from the same agency posting essentially the same cut and paste effort to the same job board. Do you think that possible candidates do not notice this?
___But this did not happen today on Monster. The reason is that their new login widget was so cool and looked so great that it locked me out of my account. Along the same lines of excellent customer service, when I logged a service ticket with Monster, I received simple instructions on how to log in. Hmm. I’ve been with Monster.ca now for more than a couple of years. You started up a new login widget just a short while ago, and now I cannot login. Do you think there is some correlation? I know my login ID and password, so I know I am not the problem.
___Here’s what happens. You bring up the Monster.ca site. There’s a prominent green “Sign in” button on the mid top right. Hit this and the screen greys, a popup window appears with boxes for your ID and password. I put in both and am told my password is incorrect. A couple more attempts and they lock me out of my account. I click the “forgot your password” link, and a temporary password is immediately sent to my mailbox.
___Ok, maybe I wasn’t awake enough this morning. The email arrives promptly with my temporary password. I cut and I go back to the Monster login screen, type my ID in, paste the temporary password in and, the drum roll please…my password was incorrect.
___Life is too short to waste time on apps that don’t work, and I bail. A couple of hours later I return and try again, with the same result. I try my original password. I try the new temporary password, and they both don’t open the castle door.
___Fast forward another 6 hours and tonight I try to login, just for fun. This time after one attempt I quickly get a “Too many attempts” message. A message will be sent to my email. I open my email and I’m asked to click a link to create a new password. This link launches me straight into Monster and I am asked to type in a new password. I type in my original password and hit the tab key to get to the next box to retype and confirm my new password. Something’s tugging my ear telling me the user interface is not right. After I typed in my ID, I hit the tab key and the cursor, which I expected to jump down 1 cm to the confirm password box, within the popup window, has disappeared. Where did it go? I had to use my mouse to reposition the cursor at the second password box and confirm my password. I’m then logged in.
___Or so I thought. I’m unsure if I actually AM logged in. I try to ensure that my stored resume is still intact. I click the profile button, and am prompted for login. This will be the third login I’ve done in under 2 minutes. You would think that if I can change my password successfully that the very act would be enough to grant me access to the site. At least they didn’t let the new widget programmers mess up my stored resume.
___A couple of issues ruined my Monster experience today.
- The site login did not work: If you’re going to make a change to the production site, please thoroughly test it. Please test it in a development environment with test ID. Do not test your code on me.
- Unexpected feedback to the user: When you grey my screen and present a popup window with 2 input boxes, once one input box is filled in and the user hits the tab key, the expected outcome is to position the cursor at the beginning of the next input box. Unexpected outcomes such as having the cursor disappear into Never Never Land really throw people off. You also get incorrect input into your second input box.
- After your user has changed his password and properly confirmed it, do not force him to login again. Why do this? You have already confirmed the user’s identity, and they have already offered sufficient proof. It is 1) pointless and will anger or perplex your user, and 2) You will not obtain any more or better security information about your user. In other words, there is no benefit to this action.
___Throwing users off with an illogical, unexpected or untested user interface puts significant doubt into the user’s mind about the the site’s credibility. Though I’ve been in IT for quite a while, am no different. I wonder if the same widget programmer that did the login code is also responsible for keeping my resume and personal information secure and confidential? Cool widgets can really make a site look nice, but one wardrobe malfunction and your site will look like a boob.
___I think I’ll not visit Monster.ca for a while until they work out the bugs. There’s no point in playing guinea pig two days in a row.
I was curious as to why logging onto a web page — something that is pretty ubiquitous — would be so difficult. So, I surfed over to monster.ca , and looked the source code.
This may or may not have anything to do with the problem, but I noticed something I’ve never seen before: “X-UA-Compatible”. A search brought me to What Does X-UA-Compatible Mean For Me?, where it looks like either the web page developer or his/her tools provider is trying to achieve compatibility with IE7 and possibly the upcoming IE8.
This post linked to another article on Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8. Thus, the problem is not only incompatibilities on browser standards looking backwards, but potentially incompatibilities going forwards.
In the face of an emerging standard, I can see the case for software developer possibly using a leading-edge/bleeding-edge component for uncommon or specific functionality not immediately available. After the standards have been established, however, sometimes it’s time to throw in the towel and just conform.
I wonder if you would have had the same problems logging into monster.ca is you were using IE. The popularity of Internet Explorer is in decline in comparison to Firefox, but IE has a large installed base of users (e.g. at IE6) who haven’t necessarily been motivated to change behaviour.