The web thrives on user-generated content, but users need to login before submitting content. This article is a brief look at the different approaches to user authentication taken by eight popular websites

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YouTube and Sign Up, Sign In

youTube uses a "Sign Up" and "Sign In" naming convention. On the surface, this seems OK because it provides consistency, but I'm worried that users might be accidentally clicking on the wrong link. Below, you can see my approach to addressing this potential problem.

While my solution sacrifices naming consistency, I think it provides faster access to what I presume are the two most common functions of that menu - sign up and login.

LinkedIn and Sign Out Completely

When you click the "Sign Out" button at LinkedIn, you are brought to a logout confirmation page of sorts, where you are presented with 66 words of instruction on how to sign out more completely.

Initially, I thought LinkedIn was just trying to reinvent the "Remember Me?" wheel. But then I took a step few users probably take - I actually read the instructions. The security gaps I found next were startling and worthy of their own article.

Are Login and Logout Too Technical

It could be that Yahoo! and Google think that Login and Logout are too technical and might hurt usability. Perhaps these internet giants can't get away with using the same language for authentication that sites Facebook with younger, more technically-savvy users can.

Combined, the Big 4 accounting firms employ over 564,000 people worldwide. To these giant firms, recruiting talented professionals is a top priority. As a result, the careers section is arguably the most important part of a Big 4 websites. So why are Big 4 career websites so bad?

I don't mean ugly. I mean non-functional. Think about that for a moment - an accounting firm with 125,000 employees and a constant demand for more has a non-functional career website. It's sort of mind-boggling.

I walked through each Big 4 career website and attempted to find SQL jobs in New York. That should be a relatively simple task. All four firms have New York offices and I would expect all to have SQL jobs open.

Results

The report card below shows the basic criteria I used to judge each website. There are many more elements involved in creating a usable career website, but I think these items are key. Below the report card, you will find a detailed script of each process along with some closing notes. Enjoy.

Now let's look at things in a little more detail. Here is a step-by-step of each use case. Keep in mind that I'm an expert user. That is, my computer skills are superior to the average user. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, just being realistic. I have also used all four systems prior doing this analysis, so I'm not making mistakes that even I made before. The duration of these use cases could easily jump 25% had I done this analysis without prior visits to each website.

Ernst & Young: D

1. ey.com, click Careers
2. Select location - United States
3. Choose between Experienced and Jobs Search. Pick search
4. Job search page - Click US Job Search
5. EY Taleo page, Enter State NY
6. Criteria disappears. US-OH-Columbus is the first listing. Search did not work. Click Show Search Criteria
7. Criteria reappears. Shows New York - All. Try Search for Jobs button.
8. US-OH-Columbus is still the first listing. Search Criteria disappeared again. Click Show Search Criteria again
9. Click New York city. Then Add Location. Nothing happened. Click Search for Jobs again.
10. Criteria disappeared. First jobs is US-NY-New York. Looks like the search worked. 177 jobs found. I want SQL, click Show Criteria again.
11. Enter SQL, click Search for Jobs again.
12. 6 Jobs found. Open the first in a new tab.
13. New tab just shows a blank search. Obviously did not work. Close this tab.
14. Click the first job - Data Analytics Senior (NYC)
15. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see what the qualifications are. I am qualified. Bookmark this page. Try to open bookmark in a new window, doesn't work. Click back button.
16. First job result is US-OH-Columbus. Looks like my search was deleted. Let's try to fix it by clicking Forward button.
17. Back to Data Analytics Senior (NYC). Notice tiny link near the top of the page saying Back to prior page. Click it.
18. My search results from Step 12 are showing again. Click another job listing
19. New job listing: Direct Marketing Data Quality & Management Senior Associate. Bookmarks don't work. Try clicking Send this job to a friend
20. Form asking for my email and friend's email. No fields are marked required. That's bizarre. Enter my email in both fields. Click send.
21. Back to job posting. Doesn't tell me if the message went through. Check my email.
22. Now I'm checking email and terribly distracted. Eventually I read the EY email.
23. The email is HTML format. Shows nothing in my plain-text email client. Try to view the HTML version.
24. The full job listing is contained in the email. No links the job posting online. Click Apply Online link
25. New tab opened showing a blank search at EY Taleo. The first result is US-OH-Cleveland. Ugh.
26. Go back to email, find the job code: 00J5W. I can't tell if those are zeros or capital o's. I'm guessing zeros. I'll just copy and paste to make sure it works.
27. Go back to EY Taleo tab. Paste job code into box.
28. Job posting is listed, Click Apply. In total, I've been at the E&Y website for nearly 40 minutes.
29. Notes: E&Y's career website is a complete mess. Taleo is utterly unusable. The Taleo JavaScript bloats the entire website. I can't believe they released a product this bad. I was being generous with at D.

PricewaterhouseCoopers: E

1. pwc.com, click Careers
2. There's a big listing of locations. The first says Africa along with a bunch of countries. Look for North America. Nope. United States? Nope. Ah, there it is under "Americas." Click United States.
3. All about me. Click Experienced.
4. Four images. Links are all labeled "Learn More." Click Find Your Position image.
5. Find your position page. Wow, that is a terrible photo obviously taken from a video screenshot. Awful, awful quality. I'm literally laughing out loud. Click job search.
6. It's going really slow. Other pages are loading just fine - so it's probably PWC's server. Now I'm distracted and reading things in other tabs. Two minutes later, the PWC tab is still loading. I close it and plan on coming back to it later. I checked two hours later, website is still broken.
7. I return the next day to pwc.com and navigate my way to the careers section. The US job search loaded this time - yay. I don't see a normal job search form. Instead, I'm presented with a text box and "e.g. Dallas & Audit". I'm pretty sure this won't work. I enter "new york sql"
8. No results. It says, "Searched for: *". What happened to "new york sql"? Hit the back button.
9. Enter "new york & sql".
10. One result. The Search For part was definitely designed by a developer. There's only a job title. No location. No description. No date. Just a job title. How unhelpful. Click it.
11. There is a long job description, but it's not actually a job description at all - it's a company description. Scroll to the bottom and look for qualifications. 6 yrs +, I'm not qualified. Hit the back button to refind the search page.
12. Go back to the search page, see if there's an advanced search option that isn't obvious.
13. Ah, there is a "Need help with search?" link. Let's try that.
14. There's a tiny popup and an Error 404 message. Great.
15. Just enter "sql"
16. There are a handful of nondescript results. No way to sort the results.
17. Notes: If you think an E isn't fair, think again. Even when the server is running, I'm asked to search with just straight text. I have no idea whether or not the search was working. The search results are awful and don't tell me anything. The only redeeming qualities are that bookmarks work and the back button isn't broken.

Deloitte: B-

1. deloitte.com homepage. Click Careers
2. Pick Experience hires. It pre-filled United States. That makes things easy. Click Enter.
3. Job search form. Enter location New York
4. 363 results. Scroll down and enter SQL. It retained my location - Nice.
5. 6 jobs. the last one looks promising. Click it.
6. Full job posting. I'm qualified. Bookmark.
7. Go to bookmarks, click the bookmarked job posting.
8. 363 search results. Bookmark didn't work.
9. Notes: Overall it's not bad. If bookmarks worked, Deloitte would have received an A-.

KPMG: B+

1. kpmg.com homepage. They got redesigned. Looks nice. Look for Careers link. No luck. Ah, it's labeled "Join us." Hmm. [Note: If you Google "kpmg", it shows two sublinks for jobs. The first says "Careers" but that links to the KPMG India site. But it's not really obvious. The second says "Join us" and links to the regular Careers website.]
2. Join us page. Ooh, Careers in your location. Pick United States.
3. KPMG Careers. Website looks broken and/or old. Click Experienced Hire - launch site.
4. New tab opened. Looks exactly like the Step 2 page. I'm not sure what happened. Click search current openings
5. New tab opened. Pick my location from search form.
6. 125 Search results. Click back button so I can enter SQL.
7. Enter SQL and New York.
8. One search result. Click it.
9. I'm qualified. Bookmark it.
10. Open bookmarks, link works. After the epic failures of E&Y's Taleo system, I'm impressed with even the most basic web functionality.
11. I close all 3 KPMG tabs
12. Notes: Tabs get opened unnecessarily, but the search feels comprehensive and relatively transparent. Bookmarks work and so does the back button. Overall, it's functional enough.

Here are 7 must-read blog posts for developers turned entrepreneurs:

1. How to Start a Startup
   I encourage reading all of Paul Graham's articles if you haven't already. This just happens to be my favorite
   
2. Sometimes it is Just Time to Pull the Trigger
   Cornwall's a professor at Belmont and the guy knows his stuff. I've been linking to him for awhile.
   
3. James Hong: On Having Balls, Part II: Staying Hungry
   Co-Founder of Hot or Not writes: "We stopped all dividending of profits. This money is now better used being reinvested into the company. What this basically means is that my income for the year just dropped from 'x million' to 'ZERO'."
   
4. Creating Passionate Users: Don't ask employees to be passionate about the company!
   My favorite line: "...support people in doing what they're trying to do, and stay the hell out of their way."
   
5. Ian Landsmans Weblog v2.0 - 10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur
   
6. Why You Have To Work For A Startup
   Follow-up: Why You Have To Work As A Consultant
   
7. Pull! 10 Signs You are Shooting Down Good Ideas.
   Numbers 2 and 4 are particularly noteworthy:
   2) Your competition is your main source of ideas.
   4) You only want BIG ideas.