Monster.com, Are You Kidding? Fancybox? Really?

In business, there is a phrase.

"Eat Your Own Dog Food."

Monster.com doesn't seem to realize this in their roll out of new "features".

You see, Eat Your Own Dog Food really means that you're going to use your own product to make sure that it suits what you intend it to do, and that you aren't giving the competitors an unfair advantage.

In web development and Project Management, this means finding someone who becomes the "Subject Matter Expert" and "Product Owner" and takes on a very special role.   When I worked at the university, and in every position I have held back into the beginning days of my career, I've assumed this role.  It means that you are going to step back, listen to what the "Main User" of the system says about it, and champion that role within "Development" so that the Main User's need are best served.

It means that you have to anticipate how any person will use the system and make sure that problems do not occur, and that when they do, problems are dealt with gently and "Gracefully".

It also means that unintended consequences sometimes occur like in this picture above.

It is one of my least favorite features, the "Fancybox" or the "Lightbox".

It is also very very rarely used correctly.

This is an example of how badly monster.com used the fancybox.

I did this under "my signon" and on another browser with no signon and it repeats itself.

Simply put, go onto Monster.com and do a search for any position you like in what ever zipcode you prefer.  Monster will return a list of positions.  It may even give you more than one page.  When you go from page 1 to page 2, it will put a "fancybox" up on your browser asking you "Let These Jobs Come To You".

No, you blistering idiot, that is not what I wanted.

You see it will do that for this page, and any future page I want to look at. 

Every Blistering Page.

Ok, so I'm quoting the TV Sliders and Dr. Arturo with his wonderful rants and insults, but the point is still valid - Fancyboxes rarely serve a useful purpose For The User.

I went in immediately to my browser, clicked "Adblock Plus" and found a script.  I blocked it, and refreshed the page, and now I'm back to the old Fancybox Free behavior.

If I wanted an RSS Feed of the search parameters, it would not work because since I live in a major metropolitan area, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, there are thousands of jobs.  I have given up on RSS Feeds for this because they "max out" at 50.  I typically would need around 500 to be able to see the last two days worth of positions on this given search.

I have many searches, and have saved each individual page to save me a LOT of time that would be otherwise wasted clicking on "Next Page" buttons.   If I were not able to do the search the way I do, then I probably would have stopped using Monster.com a long time ago.

So all you need to do is go into your adblock plus and block the script called:

http://media.newjobs.com/nmy/usen/iperceptions506.js

It is badly written code, your QA, Development Department, and Project Managers have made a mistake.

It simply does not belong in a professional product like we have come to expect in Monster.com.  It only can have come from someone who has sat in too many Marketing Meetings and thought they could get more "buy-in" from their users.