If you’ve ever applied for a job with my employer, the University of Oxford, you’ll have come across recruit.ox.ac.uk, one of the most-frustrating websites in the world. Of its many problems, the biggest (in my mind) is that it makes it really hard to share or save the web address of a particular job listing. That’s because instead of using individual web addresses to correspond to individual jobs, like any sanely-designed system would, it uses Javascript hackery and black magic to undermine the way your web browser was designed to work (which is why, you’ll find, you can’t “open in new tab” properly either), and instead provides its own, inferior, interface.
Some day I might get around to writing e.g. a userscript and/or browser plugin that “fixes” the site – from a user’s perspective, at least. But for the time being, because this morning I needed to share via social media a link to a UX developer post we’ve just advertised, I’ve come up with a little bookmarklet to fix this single problem:
recruit.ox.ac.uk Permalink Generator
This tool makes it easy to get permalinks (web addresses you can save or share) for job listings on recruit.ox.ac.uk. It might be adaptable to make it work with other CoreHR-powered systems, if it turns out that this missing feature comes from the underlying software that powers the site: it could also form the basis of a future userscript that would automatically fix the site “on the fly”. Here’s how to use it:
- Drag the link below into your browser’s bookmarks (e.g. the bookmarks toolbar).
- When you’re on a recruit.ox.ac.uk job page, click on the bookmark. A permalink will appear at the top of the page, for your convenience. If you’re using a modern browser, the permalink will also appear in the address bar.
- Copy the permalink and use it wherever you need it, e.g. to share the link to a job listing.
If you have any difficulty with it or want help adapting it for use with other CoreHR systems, give me a shout.
