How Taleo, and other job application/listing sites, suck. A place of retreat for the job hunter. Got a tip? Send it to taleosucks@gmail.com.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

more password suckyness: the sequel, or trequel. meh. sometimes there aren' t words

Well now we're back to using Chase and its job application system. If you recall from the original entry on this topic, their password requirements are a bit on the heavy side, so I did indeed forget my password, and had to revisit the issue all over again.

But let's start off with this:



I show that image because I'm amused by their language for what happens when you put in the wrong username. Having said that, I was using Firefox there, so kudos for making the site actually look normal and readable in Firefox. *golf clap*

Eventually I figure out and remember the username I used, but now we have the password issue. As indicated earlier, Chase has an enormously complex password requirement. Since I forgot the password set, I needed to go through some procedure to indicate to Taleo that it's ok to allow me to reset my password.



Obviously this is something I setup at some point in time. Since my favorite animal is not the man-eating B$5#a3etyQ of Vanuatu, the strength of the password is not exactly being supported by their password reset function.

Which actually, at some level, I'm thankful for. This password reset function is a lot better and easier than it was previously.

But still, the password requirements are still unnecessary:



You know, there may actually be some reason for these password requirements I'm not aware of. Like all banking activities are required by law to have weirdly complex password.

But if you compare the password requirements from what they were when I last wrote about this issue:



They've actually become *worse.* The new requirements add a prohibition of characters being repeated more than twice.

And now that I think about it...why does the character set have to be spelled out to me? Is that because this site is not allowing me to use the full character set in some way? Are there people protecting the sacred privacy of their resume with the character from ALT+0234? I dunno, I find the spelling out of the character set to be "awkward."

Oh, I was able to answer the question from previously. The language says that you have to have at least 4 lowercase letters. I wondered, at the time, if that means that a password like "abc12XYQ5&" would be rejected.



The answer to that is, yes. And I said that is lame, and I still believe that. Even more lame (or is that "lamer"?) the error message rejecting my password doesn't tell me what's wrong with it. I consider that a big issue given the fact that these password requirements are so complex that any one of a number of things could be wrong with an attempted password.

Eventually I do get in, and I'm greeted with a screen showing me previously uploaded resumes/cover letters.



And you know, that's nice, less work for me...oh wait. It says I can only have 3 attachments and I already have 3, so one of them has to be deleted if I want to put in a new resume/cover letter for this position.

Alas, there is no way to remove a file. To be fair, other Taleo sites do allow that, so maybe this is a problem with Chase and the way it's set up its Taleo. (Perhaps this site should be called "Chase HR sucks." Actually, now that I think about it, I have been burned by Chase HR a lot more than I care to think about.)

Taleo uses this odd way of allowing you to go back and forth within a job application session.



Basically, each little box represents an entry page in the session, and the left/right arrows at the end (the left one isn't there because I'm seeing all the way to the left) allow me to scroll beyond other pages in the session. Pages I've "completed" or are next to be completed are in purple so I can switch back and forth between those. (Blech--not consistent, except from the perspective that those are the ones I have "access to." This would be remedied by having a different color on the page I'm working on or I'm supposed to be working on.)

But either way, it's making things more complex. What I want to be able to do is use the forward and back buttons. That doesn't work in Taleo's world and my attempts to do so this day...



Well, at least it looks good in Firefox.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Amazing! in 2016 and the problems remains..... why the Companies use this? Do they get for free from Oracle?