What are cookies?
Cookies are small text files that are placed in your browser by a website in order to save a small amount of data. They are used for many different reasons, for example, to keep you logged in to an application such as Homerun, to remember your settings or to perform certain security checks. They can also be used to register which websites or pages you have visited, to make statistics or in order to enhance advertisements. When we use the term “cookies” in our documentation, we mean standard browser cookies, but also Local Storage, Session Storage and other ways of storing data in the visitor’s browser.
What cookies does Homerun use?
When someone visits your career page, job posts or apply forms, Homerun places cookies in their browser on your behalf. There are three types of cookies that may be used on your public pages: necessary, functional, and analytics. For a more detailed overview of how the different types of cookies work, have a look at the bottom of this article.
Necessary cookies: These cookies are required for the public pages to work properly. This is why they are always enabled and cannot be turned off. They are needed to protect the site, to remember the candidate’s responses during the job application process, and to remember their cookie preferences. They are set by Homerun, not by third parties, and they are not used for tracking or analytics. They do not require consent.
Functional cookies: You may choose to enrich your career pages and job posts with maps, video, audio, images, chat or social media content, which is provided by third-party platforms (such as Instagram, Google Maps, Spotify, etc). If you choose to use these elements on your pages, the third-party platforms may set their own cookies. If you do not use these elements, no such cookies will be set.
Analytics cookies: The optional Analytics cookies can be used to measure how visitors interact with your public pages. This allows you to see how many people visit your career pages, how they found the pages, etc. This information is shown in your Insights section of Homerun and can help you to improve your hiring process. Homerun uses a combination of its own cookies and Google Analytics to achieve this.
How do I manage Analytics cookies?
Analytics cookies are optional: you can configure them through the Privacy settings whether you want to enable Analytics cookies or not. If Analytics cookies are not enabled, no Analytics cookies will be set. Without Analytics cookies, we are not able to measure page visits and sources, and some features in Insights will be disabled. This also applies to your own Google Analytics tracking IDs configured via Integrations.
You can also configure whether you want to ask for visitors’ consent for the Analytics cookies. When this setting is enabled, Analytics cookies will only be set after a visitor has provided consent. Note that if you require consent for Analytics cookies, we can only measure page visits and sources for those visitors who have consented which means the statistics in Insights may be incomplete.
You are solely responsible for configuring the cookie and tracking settings that will be applied to your pages. If you are not sure which settings are appropriate for you, we advise you to consult a privacy specialist or lawyer. Homerun is not in a position to provide you with (legal) advice about which settings are appropriate for you.
Configuring Analytics cookies and consent
Via the left-hand sidebar, click 'Settings'.
Next, click 'Privacy' in the sidebar, under 'Company'.
Scroll down to 'Cookies and Tracking'.
Set the toggle for 'Analytics' (Track views and sources using Google Analytics) to your desired setting.
Set the toggle for 'Consent' (Ask for user consent for tracking in cookie banner) to your desired setting.
Click 'Save changes' at the bottom of the section.
For new customers, Analytics cookies are disabled by default. When they are enabled, the default setting is to require consent. It is up to you to select the right settings for your company.
Note: If you disable analytics, or enable consent where it was previously disabled, your browser may still have existing analytics cookies from before you changed the settings. If you remove the existing cookies from your browser and refresh the page, only the correct cookies will be set.
How does the cookie banner work?
When a visitor first lands on one of your public pages, we always show a banner at the bottom of the page informing them that cookies are used on the page. The visitor can expand the banner to show more details about the different cookies in a user-friendly way. Homerun wants to be transparent about the use of cookies, so this banner cannot be disabled through configuration.
The exact display of the banner depends on your configuration: whether you have enabled Analytics, and whether you require consent for Analytics. If you have set a Privacy Statement URL in your Privacy Settings then that will also be shown in the expanded banner. This way you can show your visitors any additional information you may want to share about your specific use of cookies.
Overview of cookies
Necessary cookies
Name | Placed by | Expiration | Purpose |
Cookie: laravel_session | Homerun | 2 hours | Technical: to maintain the state of the user session. This is not used for tracking or analytics. |
Cookie: XSRF-TOKEN | Homerun | 2 hours | Security: to protect against Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF / XSRF) when users submit forms. |
Local Storage: homerun-cookie-consent | Homerun | Does not expire | Cookie consent: to remember that a user has been shown the cookie information and, where relevant, whether consent has been given for placing certain kinds of cookies. |
Local Storage: homerun-cookie-consent | Homerun | After submitting the job application | To store the input provided during the job application process, so the user can go back and resume the application later. Candidates often interrupt the application process or take a while to complete the application; this ensures they can continue at any time. |
Functional cookies
Content provider | More information about how they use cookies |
Intercom | |
YouTube | |
Google Maps | |
Soundcloud | |
Spotify | |
Vimeo |
Analytics cookies
Name | Placed by | Expiration | Purpose |
initial_referrer & initial_params | Homerun | Browser session | To store the source and the URL parameters of the first page visit of this visitor |
_ga | 26 months | These cookies contain randomly generated numbers to recognize unique visitors without knowing how they are, and additional data in order to calculate statistics about visitors, sessions, page views, etc. | |
_gid | 24 hours | See _ga above | |
_gat_UA-53906462-1 | 1 minute | This cookie restrains the request rate and thus limits the collection of data on high-traffic sites. |
More information about how Google Analytics cookies work can be found here and here. The Google Analytics cookies set by Homerun use IP Anonymization (see https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en). They are not used to track visitors across multiple websites, only on your career pages.
Want to know more about GDPR and how you can become compliant?
Check out The GDPR ready to roll hiring guide.