I just came back from the Kennedy conference in Orlando, FL.  The most important thing I learned is that Broadlook needs to buy more headphones.  Anyone who has been to a conference and seen the Broadlook booth, knows that we get lines backed up to get a peek at our wares.  In order to reach more people, we created a 4 minute video, that concisely describes what Broadlook does.  So, even though we did not have enough headphones for everyone… I want to thank the great attendees at the Kennedy show for sharing.  Next time, we will have more headphones!

Among the groups of people at Kennedy, there was a contingent of professional resume writers.  One of them stopped by the Broadlook booth and I gave her a quick walk-through of Diver.

“Can you do a search for Chemical Engineer resumes?”  She asked

Sure, I said.

I let her then type a search string into Diver, to let her put it through the paces.   She pressed the SEARCH button.  As Diver started extracting resumes from across the web, she spoke out loudly  “There he is!” as she jumped up and down.   This was good for me, as it drew additional people to the Broadlook booth.

She was loud, proud and rather giddy.  One of her recent clients, for whom she wrote the resume,  was pulled up with a large group of other resumes.

Then I scared her.

She asked me to show her how the filter function worked in Diver.  In the filter box inside Diver, I typed in, at her request, “polymer clay”.   Her candidate, her work, her resume was filtered out.  Gone.

At first, she blamed Diver, telling me that she knew that she added “Polymer clay” into a skills list to help with search engine optimization (SEO).   I then explained to her that Diver filters based on the significant parts of the resume.   It was designed this way based on my years of being a recruiter.  During my recruiter years, most systems, like job boards would search on text anywhere within the resume.  A quasi-smart candidate could add a Über list of every tech skill imaginable to a resume.  The intent being that is it would turn up in every search.

Those days are over.  Diver ignores the skills section of a resume and applies it’s filter to the education and experience blocks of the resume.  This way, Diver is looking for skills listed within the language of the job history.  Basically, Diver is doing exactly what a smart recruiter does;  Ignore the big skill list and read through the job history and look for a direct correlation or inference for the desired skill set.

Keep in mind that most job boards still perform a “stupid” search.  If you are looking for a keyword it doesn’t matter if your first name is Java, you list a skill as Java, or you write about Java in your work history.  All keywords, at all places, are equivalent.  The same can be said for searching Job Postings.  Think about it… a job posting can have multiple sections, the actual job description, a section about what the company does, information on how to apply, benefits, etc.  Most Internet search is poor.

I didn’t really want to spend much time on Diver, but it is a glimpse of how things will be done in the future.  Eventually, the job boards will catch up.  A friend of mine, a CEO of search technology company points out that the job boards may never want to do this. Why?  “Because it will significantly reduce the resumes that match your query and people will realize how few candidates job boards really have”.   Interesting point.

So, for those resume writers out there,  personal or professional.  Here are some tips on how to develop your resume so that it will have greater impact within “search”.

Before doing this, I read up on many resume writing services. The fact that most of site (not all) that I visited reminded me of web 1.0 tells me that most of the writers have no conception of SEO.  They may be good writers, but they do not understand technology.  They are writing for the reader and that is the cardinal mistake.

1.   Write your final resume for the searcher, not the reader.

This is the biggest mistake made.  It is a frame of mind.  If you can “grok” this, you don’t need to read any further.   The searcher is not just a person.  The searcher is a person combined with the capabilities (or inabilities) of the search mechanism being used.

2.  Use permutations to your advantage.  Leverage it in work history, education and anywhere

Work history line:

BAD 2001-2008  CEO, Broadlook

GOOD 2001-2008 Chief Executive Officer / CEO,  Broadlook Technologies Inc. / BTI / Broadlook.com / Pewaukee, WI 53072

Broadlook has never been referred to as BTI, but think of the ways that IBM could be search for: IBM, IBM CORP, International Business Machines, etc.

3.  Put your most important skills within the description of the job history. As discussed earlier, technology will improve over the next few years. More and more search tools will allow the targeting of specific sections of a resume.

4.  Post your resume on your own site as well as the job boards.  Get a free hosted blog via wordpress.com and add a resume section to it.  This is something that resume writers could do for free, it does not cost anything.  It would even be the delivery mechanism vs. a WORD or PDF file.

5.  If you do post on the job boards, include a link back to your own resume site.

6.  Post your resume now, even if you are not looking for a job.  Why?  The longer something is online, the more chance that it will get indexed.  Make it an anonymous resume if you don’t want your contact information out there right now.

7.  Make sure that some part of your resume page has dynamic content.  Search engines like pages and sites that change.  It is easy to find free plug-ins to add content and feeds.

8.  Lastly, do make sure that you have a well-written resume.  Having all the SEO in the world with a bunch of spelling mistakes won’t endear you to a recruiter or employer.

There is a tremendous GAP in what could be done as a service for job seekers and what is being done.  What this means is that some entrepreneur is working on that problem already or someone should.  I surely don’t have the time for it.

Resume Writing Resources

National Resume Writers‘ Association

Professional Association of Resume Writers and Career Coaches

AORCP - Association of Online Career and Resume Professionals

Resume Writers Association of America, LLC

Donato Diorio is the Chief Executive Officer for Broadlook Technologies, an award winning blogger and a contributing author for the upcoming Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0

Companies and the minds within them evolve over time.  I have experienced it firsthand in founding Broadlook Technologies and steering its growth over the last 6 years.   Core competencies change, competitive landscapes change, opportunities come and go and through all this there is your corporate identity and messaging.   There is internal messaging, external messaging and…

THE ELEVATOR PITCH

While internal messaging may be something like “don’t complain about the 150 lbs slobbering behemoth of a dog the CEO brings in with him” (if they do, I bring in her soon to be 200 lb offspring), I am not focusing on that here.    Today I am concerned (sometimes, up at night) about external messaging; that which is projected outwards to the marketplace.  What brought this to my attention was my wandering around the booths at the recent Onrec conference in Chicago.  Innately, I a very curious person; I want to understand.  So I made the rounds to each vendor booth and simply asked them.

“So what do you do”?

For the most part, I was horrified with the experience.

Why?  It was NOT because what I heard was awful.  In fact, many pitches were excellent.  I was horrified because it made me question and run to the Broadlook booth.  Was my team excellent, or not so excellent?

Let me digress…Understand this is an area of pride for me, Dan Hughes (one of Broadlook’s co-founders) and I rock at the trade shows.   People line up to get a peek at our latest solutions.  We have well crafted pitches, regardless if we are talking to a recruiter, recruiting manager, sales rep or CEO.

How did my team at Broadlook Technologies do with their pitches?

Mixed results.  Some were very good and some were poor.  Next step, I called each of my reps that were not attending the show.

“This is Donato, I want you to call my cell phone back ASAP. I won’t pick up my cell phone.   Leave me a message as if I was a prospect at a trade show and I asked you.”

“So what do you do?”

Armed with a larger sample size, it was hard for me to accept that Broadlook Technologies was, as it relates to elevator pitches…average.   We filled out all sectors of the bell curve. That hurt.   The blame was solely mine and I needed to do something about it.  Average sucks.

Fast forward.  Today Broadlook Technologies rocks the pitch.

How did Broadlook get there?

I did a deep dive into researching elevator pitch.  Most of the research, materials and advice I found was related to making a pitch to get financing.  In reality, this type of elevator pitch is 2-3 minutes long and is too lengthy for a trade show pitch.  I needed techniques for a 20-30 second pitch, not 2-3 minutes.
Most of what I learned is that people have mastered copying each other.  Like almost all writing in all industries, industry “experts” are copying 5 of the top 10 something’s from one place or another to build their top 10 list of something else.

I’ve never been good at that.

So it was time for fieldwork.  Thus, for those that saw me in October conferences with my camera, I was learning.  At the first conference, I was in not helping with the pitches; I recorded them as-is.  The camera was cheap, and the audio quality was lack-luster.  At the second conference, I had a new Sony HD camera.  Video was great but the audio was poor with all the background noise.  By the 3rd conference, I added directional microphone.  By the 4th conference in October, I learned what made a great pitch and I was able to coach the people I was recording.   After the 4th conference, I was confident enough to put together a 60-minute webinar:  “The Art of the Elevator Pitch”.  It went over very well for the vendors attending the Kennedy conference.   In the webinar, I talked about elements of a good pitch as well as how to measure and coach a pitch.  Info on measuring and coaching was absolutely void, so I feel I made a break-through contribution.  What good is teaching something if you don’t have the tools to measure effectiveness and coach the topic?

This was a fun experience.  In total I did about 60 recordings.  38 of the recordings made it into this blog entry.  The ones I cut out were either very bad, or the video/audio quality was poor.   I am not a videographer, some pitches were fantastic, but my camera skills were not and the end result was unusable.  My end goal was to (1) share what I learned about pitches and (2) give the vendors that spent time with me a venue to get them some exposure.

If anyone that I excluded wants to be included, contact me and we can record your pitch via Skype and I will post it on a future blog.  I’ll be adding an “elevator pitch” section to my blog, as I intend on continuing my research.

Much of the existing literature on the Internet about elevator pitches included 8-10 points to remember.  Trying to remember 8-10 concepts at the same time can be paralyzing.  I wanted to bring the whole process down a few, simple, memorable steps that anyone can implement.  After my research and fieldwork I can up with a three-step process to build your elevator pitch.   Enjoy the videos!

1.    Talk about a problem.  What is the problem in the market that caused you to create your product or service?

Sales reps spend 30% of their time prospecting.  They use the Internet inefficiently.  They manually picking through web sites… cutting & pasting contact information.  They do this because the leads they are getting are stale and overused.

2.    How do you solve that problem?  Be concise and clear.

Broadlook provides solutions that harness names, titles, emails, phone numbers and bio’s from the Internet.  You choose the sectors or companies to target.  The data is fresh.  The data is actionable.  Think about it:  The most powerful list is the one no-one else has.   We can help you build that list.

3.    What makes you unique?  Don’t use generic terms like the “best”, craft a something that truly differentiates you in the market.

We automate the entire process of Internet research from finding the data to moving it seamlessly into your CRM.   We can change 8 hours of research into 15 minutes.
Lastly, for those interested in the powerpoint for the Art of the Elevator Pitch webinar.  Get it here.

Elevator pitches - part 1

Elevator pitches - part 2

Elevator pitches - part 3

I was recently speaking with my friend Ami Givertz and he asked me about technology that excites me. With this question, I realized that technology does not excite me; its the changes and possibilities that technology brings that excites me. In addition, I’m less excited the day I release a new product, than the day it was conceived. The discovery, the chase, the debate; this is bliss. By the time it is realized, I’m already building something else.

So what is on the next peak? What is just far enough over the horizon that people aren’t really talking about yet? What is going to shake the world and transform it like the Internet did?

Seamless voice recognition (SVR).

Now for those critics out there. I am not picking a date, but I am drafting out a vision of some things that will be reality, once this goal is attained.

I am not a speech recognition expert, however, I do attend the conferences and am a recipient of Speech Technology Magazine.  I’ve been using speech recognition for about 10 years now.  So what I do have, is some perspective and I am planning products to take advantage of the Speech Recognition technology backbone.

What I mean by seamless voice recognition is simply that it works. Right now, it is rather kludgy. I bought a Lexus a few years back. Press the voice control button and say “Tune to 90.7 FM” (National public radio in Wisconsin) and I have an equal chance of burning my ass by the seat heater, turning the radio off, or navigating to the nearest 7-11 convenient store via the GPS. Not seamless.

Fast forward to 2008.

I have a TomTom GPS that I can talk to.  Looks silly having a $200 GPS sitting on the dashboard of a Luxury sedan that has a built in GPS. But it works. Nearly seamless.

Fast forward … a few years.

Based on standard advances in technology, everything we will need for SVR will be on a single chip. Then that chip will get smaller and smaller. Does this trend sound familiar? Eventually that chip will be so small and so cheap that it will be as ubiquitous as chips that power USB ports or basic video displays. This is where the fun starts. Had a great conversation with some people at Intel Corporation today…made me think of chips.

Ever see a 20 year old come face to face with a rotary phone? It’s comical; they press the buttons. The inefficient action of dialing is not intuitive. Our children may look at keyboards in the same way.

Seamless voice recognition will let us talk to our computers, or cars, yes, even the Microsoft Windows powered toaster may be voice controlled. This is the stuff that is commonly thought of.

However, I like the uncommon. Think implantable sub-audible interfaces. Replace a tooth to a microphone embedded denture. Talk in sub-audible levels and control your car, iPhone, toaster, etc with voice commands that no one else can hear. No one will hear you doing it. Query wikipedia while having a beer with a friend…find out who really won the 1986 world series (Go Mets!) and have the answer delivered directly to your bluetooth (or whatever replaces it) earpiece.

Forget facebook and myspace. With seamless voice recognition, you will see websites that will store every living word a person speaks. A diary from first word to death. This is for the voyeurs and historians. Pick a good hobby, there will be so much media in the future that most people will be watchers and not doers.

Web 3.0 will have living history sites that will be data-mined for all those words. Based on laws of processing, disk storage, and memory, storing this stuff will be easy. Search engines like Google (or whatever replaces it) will index these sites. Recruiting software like Broadlook’s tools will mine it, extract it, and dump it in your ATS or terabyte thumdrive, whichever you prefer.

Recruiters will have a field day. Data mining sites with the text of a software engineers heated debates may give you insight into the logical nature of their mind and how well they solve problems. To make this happen, you would need to index and search conceptually versus a mob-rule index like google. Perhaps Dave Copps company, Pure Discovery, will replace google.

Lastly, no matter what recruiting technology is created, I’ve always known that the best way to pick a great software engineer is to have a beer with them.

Recently I’ve been diving into social networks with an interest in automation.  Don’t get me wrong, I get a good deal of business from LinkedIN, but I worry about it’s future.

I have to thank Dave Mendoza and Jason Davis as being great examples of leveraging networks.  I’ve used LinkedIn from early days, but only recently have I started adding connections en mass.

In the past few weeks, I’ve been adding 1000+ LinkedIN connections per week.  Ok, I do have an unfair advantage.  Not only do I have Broadlook’s recruiting software tools, but I have all the fun stuff coming out of Broadlook’s skunkworks.   Profiler 4 is close.  nuff said.

Adding 1000 connections per week does take time and resources.  So I find myself building value in my LinkedIN account.   I am invested in LinkedIN.   One questions is:  What do I do with the invites I am getting to all these new social networks?   I’m getting so many, it’s getting ugly.  Right now, I use LinkedIN and RecruitingBlogs.com.  Any more than that and I would be spending my day inviting people and accepting invitations.   I prefer to have a life.

There are two concepts to track here.

(1)  A social network like LinkedIN was created to leverage a chain of trusted relationships in order to get to a target contact.   In reality, open networkers, such as myself have ruined that level of trust.  I fully admit it.  For me, I only need a person’s name and I can take it from there.  So now it’s all about getting numbers. Most members of the recruiting industry don’t care to get connected via social network speeds.  Social networks are sloth like to a type-A, impatient recruiter…like me.  Therefore, open networking was born. Combine a tool like LinkedIN with Broadlook’s Profiler tool and you can get to the people you are looking for… fast.

(2) Once you start adding every open networker under the sun into your network, there is NO WAY you can give every one of them a vote of confidence.  Without confidence, I personally, am not going to put my reputation behind someone I don’t know well.  To make matters worse, I am getting connection requests from people I don’t know to people I know very well.  Guess what?  Again, I am not going to forward most of these requests because they are not appropriate.

Where does this leave us?   I say “us” because I am looking for help & feedback from the community

I have a solution.   LinkedIN may not like it, but I think that it is inevitable.  Here it is.

At the last ERE conference, I was chatting with reps at the LinkedIN booth.  I told them about my 2 points.    The catch 22; you must make your LinkedIN network bigger in order for it to be better, but bigger ruins it.  Then I shared my solution to the problem and they really liked it.  Said they would pass it on… not sure if they did…So here it is.

Add a single setting to each LinkedIN connection.  I am talking about a single bit of information.  Very boolean for those techies out there.   Call this setting “inner circle”.

Think about it.  In real “social networks”  (not cyber ones),  you have your close circle of friends and then you have your acquaintances.  What are acquaintances but potential friends.

LinkedIN is too Boolean and it is time to grow up.  Cyber reality needs to mirror social reality.

Add a setting to differentiate friends from acquaintances.

What would this mean?  Open networkers could continue to add those aquaintances, but also have a sub group of their “inner circle”.   Best of both worlds.

I understand the purist idea Reid Hoffman had in creating the trusted social network, but reality has set in.  I’ll repeat.

Cyber reality needs to mirror social reality.  Social reality has been evolving for millions of years.  Lessons can be learned from it.

after thoughts

For me, I might have 20-25 people in my inner circle; people I would unconditionally pass on a recommendation for.  Why not automate the inner circle connections?   That would take care of the speed issue of using social networks.  Protection against abusing the automated, inner circle?  Limit the inner circle connections.   25 max and then a buck a month for more.  If I am getting charged for a connection

I’ve been asked for a real-world example of what can be done with data mining.

Here it is.

Here is the ROI:

I’ve seen several speakers recently comment on the fact that it is coming to a world where everyone has access to ALL the contact data.  The concept was furthered in  saying that since everyone will have all the data, the playing field will be leveled as everyone will have total access, ergo, it will come down to the ability to network as the sole determiner of success. 

The second part of this concept, (ability to network)  has always has been dead on.  A poor salesperson or recruiter will not do well even if given a great list.  A great networker can do wonders starting with one point of contact.

However, the idea about everyone having access to ALL the data…   This is a pipe dream of the uninformed.   It may be a great material to pontificate on, but it is pure fiction.  The science and trends behind information and going the opposite direction.   I don’t know where this concept was started, but it’s taken off with all the indications of mob mentality (great conviction, but little facts to back it up).

Some facts:

• The Internet and information in general is growing faster than our ability to index it.
• Corporations are starting to silo their own data, vs. use public databases.  These are closed systems that are not being shared and the are diverging like mammals and marsupials.
• A UC Berkeley study from 2007 details that search engines like Google index less than 1% of the Internet.  (when I find this link, I’ll post it..too late right now)

Who are these people that have access to ALL the information?   Methinks it’s the great Oz.

1984 is not here yet.  Good networking starts with your own unique knowledge of where to start your research.   Dig in and roll up the sleaves.  Being given a great database does not make you a great recruiter,  being able to create a great database makes you a great recruiter.

I have been ask to write more and more about the recruiting software company I founded, Broadlook Technologies in this blog.  I do mention Broadlook quite often in my postings, I can’t help it, it is a big piece of my day and it’s a source of daily inspiration.  However, the mission of my blog was to touch on many topics, therefore I would like to announce a place where I will be gratuitously promoting all things Broadlook: The Official Broadlook Blog.  I, Donato will remain what it was meant to be.  A safety valve for an overactive mind.

For recruiting animal, I am doing this for you…here is a repost of the first Official Broadlook Blog article.  I plagiarized it from myself and I challenge you to a donut eating contest or oreo cookies or whatever you are calling me these days. Peace.  Donato

This is my first and hopefully only repost.   

The history behind the Broadlook logo

March 6th, 2008,  By Donato Diorio,   Reprinted without permission.

The Broadlook Technologies logo has meaning.  For the 5 of us that started in a single 400 sq ft office, it has a special place with us.   When it was time to create the image/logo/icon that would come to be our stamp to the outside world, we stopped everything for 2 full days. No sales, no development, no marketing.   It was white boards and debate; define our mark or die trying.

Here is how it came to be.

The original vision behind the company was building recruiting software products that were the right mix between automation and human interaction.  We wanted to create a company logo that somehow communicated that concept.   One of the ideas tossed around was 2 hands, one machine and one human…intertwined.  Neither myself (Donato) Igor, Kevin or Dan (working remote from Portland) were artists of any sort, however, Andy had experience with some photoshop so he was elected to sit at the computer while the rest of us tested his design skills.   The machine-human hand thing was too complicated; it did not scale down to logo size image.   A bunch of ideas were tossed around when I suggested doing something with carbon, denoting human and silicon for meaning the machine.  We then started working with the atomic numbers of carbon (6) and silicon (14).  We tried to create a large “B” using a series of dots for our logo.  14 Dots were the background, 6 formed the B.   I remember showing the first iteration to Dan, our first sales rep working remote out of Portland, OR.

“What in the hell is that?”, said Dan.   “It looks like one of those darn eye tests they give  blind people”  (Dan’s comments are famous around Broadlook and often repeated years later, we all knew he meant color-blind).

We couldn’t find any of the “B” logos in the company archives (trust me, it was horrid). 

Back to the drawing board we went.

Kevin had a brainstorm.  Why not use the ratio of carbon to silicon?  It was one of those ideas the didn’t need any discussion.   Rare for our meetings.   So we went back to the dots.  here are the iterations.

The blue and the charcole are the proportions of 6:14; carbon to silicon.  If I can find it, we even have a math equation that defines the graphic (I’ll find it and post it to this article later).

The most important thing that I learned when looking back at the experience is the team effort required.  My contribution was the spark, but without the operational know-how, the out-of the box thinking, the strong logic and the feedback from the outside, we wouldn’t have our logo.   To the outsider, it is a box with a slash through it.  To us, it was the genesis that grew into the company we are today.  The world leader in Internet research technology.

For those expecting a technology blog today, you can skip this posting.

The most common comment I get from people reading my blog is “thanks for the original content”.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.  Many of us are tired of “me too” postings.  Reposting Youtube, reposting of this, reposting of that.   Why is this?  Why is there essentially a culture of copy out there?  What can we do to fix it?   Many of my readers are recruiters.  Well, if you are a recruiter then you must recruit or better yet, adopt a blogger.

What stops someone who has much to say… from saying it?  As easy as setting up a Wordpress blog is, it will stop most non-technical people in their tracks.  

I was having a discussion with Dan Hughes, one of the people who helped build and grow Broadlook Technologies with me.  Dan wants to blog.  Dan did not know where to start.  We even thought of a name for his site (The Sales Trench).   Weeks later, no blog.   So I’m adopting Dan.  I registered SalesTrench.com,  installed Wordpress for him and configured it.

Adoption is not a one time event.

I will be pestering the heck out of Dan to get some of his great ideas down.  Right now, the site is empty, so, Dan, you are out there, the world is waiting, now you have to write.   

Dan and I talk almost every day, he can’t escape.  I’ll be a blog-parent until he flies from the nest.  Dan, happy birthday.  Have fun with the site! 

Call to bloggers  

Who will you adopt?  Can you think of someone with great ideas that really should be writing them down?   Adopt them, help them, encourage them, pester them if you must.   More unique content will lift us all.  Send me a note about your adoption.
  

I am in Disney World.  My 4 year old daughter crashed in the hotel room after a non-stop day of fun.  It’s a happy place. I’m happy.   I quickly check my email and what do I get?  Blog spam.  Lots of it.  Ok, good, I’m happy I’ve got a bunch of readers now.  For those of you who leave comments email me directly, thank you.  I enjoy the feedback, positive and otherwise, as long as it is thought out.  

But 50 blog spams?  Ouch, I didn’t sign up to be an administrator and a human spam filter.  (please oh experienced bloggers out there, tell me what you do to avoid this.)

The blog spam gave me an idea.   It is a cool one.  I have often received spam at my private email address even though it is one I never have given anyone.  This private email I use to register for sites that I never intend on using again.  (newspapers, register for white papers, etc). The strange thing is that the spam I get in this email account has nothing to do with sites I registered for.  Someone is selling my information.  Are they breaking the terms of service for their site?  I don’t know.

 A discovery process. Here is what I am going to do:

Step 1:  Setup

-create a fictitious company
-register a new domain. 
-not use my real name & make whois information private
-add phony names, titles & emails to the site.  VP of sales, Director of Marketing, etc
-add some basic content to the site and make sure the search engines can find it. 

Step 2:  Seeding

-Register for as many sites as I can.  For each site, I will use a unique email and name that is not printed or listed anywhere for the fictitious company domain.  In addition, I am going to save the privacy terms of each site in a database.
-Save every email for each unique email address.  Each email should only be getting email from one source.
-Let the experiment run for a period, it might be 6 months to a year.
-I will make sure to include all the major email services (Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc) and I will always select “NO” to share my information with partner companies (when that option is available)

Step 3: Publish

-all sites registered for
-dates & sources which each unique email received email from

Who is breaking terms of service?  What is the implication of registering on various dot com sites?   It should be an interesting experiment.   If something like this has been done already.  I would like to see the research.

hmm, on second thought, this seems like a darn good deal of work. 

Now  I think I’m looking for an intern who wants to do a research project.  Anybody have a referral?  I’ll give them full access to the Broadlook set of Internet research tools.

To many ideas, too little time.  Daughters awake, back to the magic kingdom. Time for fireworks!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been asking every new prospect and client, how many Internet passwords they have to remember.   The question has several levels.

“How many places on the Internet do you log into on a regular basis”, I ask

Usually the answer is 4-8.

“What about associations, alumni sites,  facebook, myspace, LinkedIN…sites that you may not access every day?”

Usually the answer is “another 10 sites”

“Ok, what about sites that you have signed up for, but may only need to log into once in a blue moon.  Examples,  account management for your cell phone provider, your 401K account,   sites like classmates.com, etc”?

Usually the answer is “10 or more”

“Lastly, what about sites you signed up for and you do not expect to return to in the next year.  Althought you still may need to access the it in the future to update account, billing or contact information?”

Typically I get 20, 50, no idea, or “lost count” 

This is when the average sales rep or recruiter realizes they have anywhere from 25-100 (or more) places they have have passwords to.  (Personally, I have well over 200 and I’ve lost count).

Then it gets fun. 

“Do you use the same password?”  I ask

95% of the time I get a …….YES.

This is a security nightmare.  What happens if facebook or myspace or one of these well trafficed sites gets comprised?   Then someone has YOUR password to all the other sites you use.  

Yes, there are password managers.  I am not a fan of them.  You can’t take them everywhere and computers do crash.  Today, I present a humanistic solution to password management.

It’s a simple concept I call password schemas.  It starts with picking a core password and then modifying it based on the attibutes of the place you are using.  I am going to use my dog’s name as an example of a core password.  Her name is Captain Janeway, so the core password is CaptJane (for those of you thinking it…no, I don’t use my dog’s name).

Password schemas, used badly, can be dangerous.  You could expose all your passwords should someone figure it out.   However,  using a schema is far superior to using the same password everywhere.   The more creative you get with the schemas, the better your protection is.

Here are some schemas:  (I just made up names for these). For each schema I am going to use mail.yahoo.com as the site example 

Alpha front/end:  using the first letters of a site in front or end of your core

            yaCaptJane            CaptJaneya       ( “ya” comes from first letters in “yahoo”)

Syllable front/end:  use syllables of the site in front or end of your core

            yhCaptJane              CaptJaneyh     (”yh” from first two syllables in “yahoo”)

Keyboard replacement:  In the password below, I used the key above each of the letters “CaptJane” on the keyboard.   Example:  the “D” key is above the “C” and the “q” key is above the “a”, etc.     Downfall here is that may need the keyboard in front of you to remember your password.

           DqmbUqhc

Alpha front/end + keyboard replacement.    Combining schemas

          yaDqmbUqhc          

Vowel replacement:  replace  O with 0, replace A with @, replace E with &

         C@pJ@n&

Keyboard wrap:  if the site name starts with a “y”, start with y and use the next 7 additional characters to the right.   If you hit the last letter, wrap around to the other side of the keyboard.

       yuiopqwe    (yahoo)
       ghjklasd       (google)
       hjklasdf        (hotmail)

These are just a few ideas of password schemas.   One of my favorites is to replace vowels with full words:  example  A=Alpha, B=Bravo, C=Charley.    The key thing is to sit down with a paper and pen and create your own.   Be creative, have fun and come up with something that you will remember.  Make sure it would be hard for someone to guess your password by looking at a few examples.  The combinations are endless. 

Captain Janeway & Donato
(she thinks she is a lap dog)