The world of HR is changing quickly. More and more People Ops professionals are enhancing their understanding of marketing tactics. And, that means starting to learn the basics around website building and management.
Anyone who reads this blog knows that we firmly believe HR should own the careers site. Part of this ownership is understanding how to Embed various tools into your site – like chatbots, talent communities, Instagram feeds, etc.
It’s Not That Complicated
I remember when I first started messing around with websites. Enough of it seemed like a foreign language to make everything seem extremely complex. For whatever reason, I stuck with it. And, now it all looks like English to me. Each individual piece of the puzzle is quite simple.
Realistically, the various parts of building and updating a career site aren’t that complex. Embed Codes are no different. They’re just one line of Code that then pulls in the functionality you want from another website – like a Twitter Feed, or the jobs from your ATS.
Here’s How Embed Codes Work
Embed codes come in two flavors. One is an
Iframes work by creating a mini-window within the web page that points to another website. For example, I can create an iFrame that points to Google (although most of the time it’s something more useful – like an Instagram feed that pulls in some photos and shows off your culture):
The other implementation of an embed code is Javascript. When a page is loaded, the Javascript code runs. This code usually translates to something like “ping XYZ server.” When the server is pinged, it knows to return code, usually the HTML needed to add something like a chatbot to the website. This HTML code comes back from the server, is added to the page, and boom your chatbot is live.
Key Considerations
When thinking about adding an embed code, it’s important to think about:
- Security – This is especially for Javascript where the code on the site can run all sorts of malicious attacks. Make sure you trust the source of the code!
- Speed – These codes have the potential to really slow down your site and hurt user experience.
- Style – Just be aware that many times it’s hard or impossible to style the content that is created by the embed code. My advice: don’t be overly concerned about your “brand” if the added functionality makes up for it.
- Function – Obviously make sure this is something that will be useful. The more interesting point here is that embed codes are so easy to get up and running that they make for great A/B tests. Want to see how a chatbot or talent community performs? Get one live this afternoon and see what happens!
Here’s more on how this works and how you can use this knowledge to have a better careers site:
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