A Glossary of Make.com Features and Functions for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In today’s fast-paced HR and recruiting landscape, leveraging automation is no longer a luxury but a necessity for efficiency, accuracy, and strategic impact. Make.com (formerly Integromat) stands out as a powerful visual platform for building intricate workflows that connect disparate systems, automating everything from candidate nurturing to onboarding tasks. To truly harness its potential, HR and recruiting leaders need a clear understanding of its core features and functions. This glossary provides essential definitions, tailored to help you envision and implement transformative automation strategies within your organization.

Make.com (formerly Integromat)

Make.com is a leading no-code/low-code integration platform designed to connect apps and automate workflows. It allows users to build complex scenarios visually, linking various online services (like your ATS, HRIS, CRM, or communication tools) to transfer and transform data automatically. For HR professionals, this means automating routine tasks such as candidate data entry, interview scheduling, offer letter generation, or syncing employee data across different systems without writing a single line of code, significantly reducing manual effort and human error.

Scenario

A scenario in Make.com is the fundamental building block of an automation. It represents a single, complete workflow that orchestrates the flow of data between different applications. Each scenario is composed of a series of modules, starting with a trigger and progressing through various actions and tools. In HR, a scenario might automate the entire process of receiving a new job application from a platform, parsing the resume, updating your ATS, sending a confirmation email to the candidate, and even initiating an internal notification to the hiring team.

Module

A module is an individual operation or step within a Make.com scenario. Each module performs a specific task, such as “Watch New Applicants” in your ATS, “Create a Row” in a Google Sheet, or “Send an Email” via Gmail. Modules are categorized as triggers (starting a scenario), actions (performing an operation), or search (finding data). HR teams leverage modules to perform granular tasks like extracting specific candidate information, updating status fields in an HRIS, or sending personalized messages based on candidate actions.

Connection

A connection is the authenticated link that allows Make.com to interact with a specific third-party application or service (e.g., Salesforce, Google Drive, your ATS, LinkedIn Recruiter). When you add a module for an app, Make.com prompts you to create or select a connection, typically involving API keys, OAuth, or username/password authentication. Secure connections are crucial for HR automation, ensuring that sensitive employee and candidate data can be safely and reliably transferred between systems without manual intervention.

Webhook

A webhook is a mechanism by which an application can send real-time data to Make.com when a specific event occurs. Unlike traditional polling, where Make.com repeatedly checks for updates, a webhook listener in Make.com waits for data to be “pushed” to it, making automations instant and efficient. HR professionals often use webhooks to immediately capture new job applications from career pages, form submissions (e.g., new hire surveys), or updates from recruiting platforms, triggering subsequent automated actions without delay.

Trigger

A trigger is the event that initiates a Make.com scenario. It’s the starting point of any automation, defined by a specific condition or occurrence in a connected application. Common triggers include “New record added” in an HRIS, “Email received with specific subject,” or “Form submitted.” For recruiting, a trigger could be a new candidate profile appearing in your ATS, which then sets off a chain of actions like skill assessment invitations, calendar invites, or data enrichment processes.

Action

An action is a specific task performed by a module within a Make.com scenario, usually in response to a trigger or a preceding action. Actions involve creating, updating, deleting, or searching for data in connected applications. Examples relevant to HR include “Create a new candidate profile” in an ATS, “Update employee status” in an HRIS, “Send a welcome email,” or “Add a task” in a project management tool for a hiring manager. Actions are the operational core of any automated workflow.

Filter

A filter is a conditional gate within a Make.com scenario that allows data to pass through only if specified criteria are met. Filters introduce logic into workflows, ensuring that subsequent modules only execute when necessary. For example, an HR scenario might use a filter to process only job applications from candidates with specific keywords in their resume, or to send onboarding documents only to new hires who have accepted their offer, streamlining processes and preventing irrelevant actions.

Router

A router is a special module in Make.com that enables a single stream of data to be split into multiple distinct paths, allowing different actions to occur based on various conditions. Each path originating from a router can have its own filters, leading to highly customized and branched workflows. In recruiting, a router could direct candidates with specific skills to one hiring manager, those for a different role to another, or even send a personalized rejection email to those who don’t meet initial criteria, all from a single trigger.

Iterator

An iterator is a module that processes each item within an array (a collection of items) individually, allowing subsequent modules to act upon each item separately. For instance, if a trigger provides a list of multiple new hires, an iterator can process each new hire’s data one by one through subsequent modules. HR teams can use iterators to automate tasks like creating individual onboarding checklists for each new employee from a batch import, or sending separate follow-up emails to a list of candidates from a single event.

Aggregator

An aggregator module in Make.com collects multiple bundles of data from previous modules and combines them into a single bundle or a structured array. This is useful for compiling summary reports or preparing data for a system that expects a single, consolidated input. An HR application might use an aggregator to collect all interview feedback forms for a single candidate into one comprehensive document before sending it to a hiring manager, or to compile a weekly summary of new applications received from various sources.

Data Store

A Data Store in Make.com acts as a simple, integrated database where you can temporarily or permanently store and retrieve information directly within your Make.com environment. This is particularly useful for maintaining state across scenario runs, tracking unique IDs, or storing configuration settings. HR professionals might use a Data Store to track unique candidate IDs to prevent duplicate entries, store temporary onboarding progress for each new hire, or manage a list of frequently used internal department codes for automation purposes.

Operations

Operations are the units of work consumed by your Make.com scenarios. Every time a module performs a task—whether it’s checking for new data (a trigger), creating a record, updating an item, or searching a database—it consumes one or more operations. Understanding operations is key for managing your Make.com subscription and optimizing scenarios for cost-efficiency. HR teams should design workflows that minimize unnecessary operations, focusing on efficient data handling and conditional processing to maximize their automation budget.

Bundle

A bundle in Make.com refers to a single unit of data that flows through a scenario. When a trigger module initiates, it generates one or more bundles, and these bundles are then processed sequentially by subsequent modules. For example, if your trigger is “Watch New Job Applications,” and three new applications come in, the trigger will output three separate bundles. Each bundle contains all the data associated with that specific application, flowing through the scenario independently. This allows for parallel processing of multiple data points.

Error Handling

Error handling in Make.com refers to the strategies and features within a scenario designed to manage and respond to unexpected issues or failures during execution. This includes mechanisms like “Break,” “Commit,” “Rollback,” and various error directives that can catch errors, attempt retries, send notifications, or divert data to an error log. For HR automation, robust error handling is critical to ensure data integrity and prevent disruption, for instance, by notifying an administrator if a candidate’s application fails to sync to the ATS, rather than losing the data silently.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Make.com: Strategic HR & Recruiting Automation at 1/8th Zapier’s Cost (Plus 10,000 Free Credits)