A Glossary of Key Terms in Data Management & Migration for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In today’s fast-paced HR and recruiting landscape, effective data management and seamless migration are not just technical tasks—they are strategic imperatives. Understanding the core concepts behind how candidate data, employee records, and operational information are handled within systems like Keap can dramatically impact efficiency, compliance, and decision-making. This glossary provides HR and recruiting professionals with essential definitions to navigate the complexities of data, ensuring your automation efforts are built on a solid foundation.

Data Management

The practice of organizing, storing, and maintaining data throughout its lifecycle to ensure its accuracy, accessibility, and security. For HR and recruiting, this involves everything from collecting initial applicant information and managing employee records to tracking performance metrics and ensuring compliance with data retention policies. Effective data management within Keap ensures that your talent pipeline is always up-to-date and reliable, preventing lost leads or compliance issues. It’s about having the right information, at the right time, for the right purpose.

Data Migration

The process of transferring data from one system to another, from one format to another, or from one location to another. In HR and recruiting, this often occurs when adopting a new ATS, CRM (like Keap), or upgrading existing systems. A successful data migration ensures that all historical candidate interactions, employee data, and recruiting process stages are accurately moved without loss or corruption, preserving critical insights and avoiding disruptions to ongoing operations. This is especially vital when consolidating disparate HR tools into a single source of truth for your talent acquisition efforts.

Keap CRM

A comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) and sales and marketing automation platform. For HR and recruiting, Keap can serve as a powerful tool for managing candidate pipelines, automating communication with applicants, tracking recruitment stages, and even automating aspects of new hire onboarding. Its robust tagging and campaign features allow for segmented communication and personalized candidate experiences, transforming how HR teams engage with talent and manage their recruitment funnel from initial contact to post-hire follow-up.

Sandbox Environment

A safe, isolated, and non-production testing environment used to experiment with new features, test changes, or train users without affecting live data or operations. For HR and recruiting professionals leveraging platforms like Keap, a sandbox is invaluable for testing new automation workflows, integrating third-party tools, or practicing complex data migrations before deploying them to the live production environment. This minimizes risk, prevents errors, and ensures that any new system or process is fully functional and optimized before impacting real candidates or employees.

Production Environment

The live, operational system where real business processes occur and actual data is stored and processed. In the context of HR and recruiting, the production environment in Keap is where candidate applications are actively received, communications are sent to real prospects, and employee data is stored. Any changes or new features developed and tested in a sandbox environment are ultimately deployed here, impacting daily operations and the live talent acquisition and management process. Maintaining its stability and data integrity is paramount for uninterrupted HR operations.

Data Integrity

Refers to the overall accuracy, completeness, consistency, and reliability of data. In HR and recruiting, maintaining data integrity means ensuring that candidate profiles are free from duplicate entries, contact information is current, and hiring statuses accurately reflect reality. Poor data integrity can lead to miscommunication, inefficient processes, and non-compliance with data regulations. Robust data management practices, including regular validation and cleanup, are essential to uphold data integrity within your Keap system, ensuring trustworthy insights for strategic decisions.

Data Validation

The process of ensuring that data is accurate, clean, and useful for its intended purpose. For HR and recruiting, data validation checks might include verifying email formats, ensuring phone numbers are legitimate, confirming that required fields in a candidate profile are completed, or cross-referencing data points. Implementing automated data validation rules within Keap or through integration tools can prevent erroneous or incomplete information from entering the system, streamlining downstream processes and improving the quality of your talent data dramatically.

Data Redundancy

The unnecessary duplication of data within a system or across multiple systems. While some redundancy (like backups) is beneficial, excessive or uncontrolled data redundancy can lead to inconsistencies, increased storage costs, and confusion, particularly when different versions of the same data exist. In HR, this could mean having a candidate’s record in both an ATS and a Keap CRM with conflicting information. Identifying and eliminating unnecessary redundancy is a key aspect of efficient data management and helps maintain a single source of truth for all HR data.

Data Governance

The overarching framework of policies, procedures, and responsibilities that ensures the effective and ethical management of an organization’s data assets. For HR and recruiting, data governance dictates how candidate privacy (e.g., GDPR, CCPA), data retention, access controls, and data quality standards are implemented and enforced within systems like Keap. Strong data governance protects sensitive information, ensures compliance with legal requirements, and fosters trust in the data used for critical HR decisions, mitigating legal and reputational risks.

Schema Mapping

The process of matching and transforming data fields from a source system to corresponding fields in a target system during a data migration or integration. When moving candidate data from an old ATS to Keap, for example, schema mapping ensures that fields like “Applicant Name” in the source system correctly map to “First Name” and “Last Name” in Keap. Accurate schema mapping is critical to prevent data loss, ensure data integrity, and enable proper reporting and automation functionality in the new system, making data usable from day one.

ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

A three-phase data integration process used to gather data from various sources, prepare it for its intended use, and then load it into a target system or data warehouse. In HR, ETL could involve extracting candidate data from job boards, transforming it by standardizing formats or enriching it with additional information, and then loading it into Keap for pipeline management. This methodical approach ensures that data is cleaned, consistent, and structured appropriately for analysis and automation, providing a reliable foundation for HR insights.

API (Application Programming Interface)

A set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate with each other. APIs enable systems like Keap to integrate seamlessly with other HR tools, such as applicant tracking systems, assessment platforms, or payroll software. For recruiting, an API might allow automatic creation of a contact in Keap when a candidate applies via your career page, or synchronize interview schedules. Leveraging APIs is fundamental to building a connected, automated HR tech stack, reducing manual data entry and errors.

Webhook

An automated message sent from one application to another when a specific event occurs, essentially providing real-time data notifications. In HR and recruiting, a webhook could trigger an action in Keap whenever a candidate status changes in your ATS, or when a new application is submitted on your website. This allows for instant automation, such as sending a personalized follow-up email to a candidate immediately after they complete an interview, eliminating delays and improving responsiveness, crucial for a positive candidate experience.

CRM Backup

The process of creating copies of data within your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, like Keap, to ensure data recovery in case of loss, corruption, or system failure. For HR and recruiting, backing up critical candidate profiles, communication histories, and hiring stage data is paramount. A robust CRM backup strategy safeguards against accidental deletions, malicious attacks, or unforeseen technical issues, providing peace of mind and ensuring business continuity for your talent acquisition efforts and preserving valuable historical data.

Automation Workflow

A sequence of automated steps designed to complete a specific task or process without manual intervention. In HR and recruiting, automation workflows in Keap can manage everything from initial candidate screening and interview scheduling to onboarding reminders and post-hire engagement. By automating repetitive tasks, HR professionals can save significant time, reduce human error, and deliver a more consistent and engaging experience for candidates and new hires, allowing them to focus on strategic initiatives rather than administrative burdens.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Unlock Risk-Free Innovation: Keap One-Click Restore to Sandbox for HR & Recruiting