Step-by-Step: Integrating Your ATS with a Custom HR Onboarding Form Using Zapier Webhooks

In today’s fast-paced recruitment landscape, efficiency is not just a luxury—it’s a necessity. Manual data entry between a custom HR onboarding form and your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a significant bottleneck, prone to errors, and a drain on valuable HR resources. This guide will walk you through leveraging Zapier webhooks to seamlessly automate this process, ensuring data consistency, reducing administrative overhead, and freeing up your team to focus on strategic initiatives rather than repetitive tasks. By connecting these critical systems, you can create a streamlined onboarding experience that benefits both your new hires and your HR department, making the transition from candidate to employee smoother and more efficient.

Step 1: Define Your Integration Objectives and Data Points

Before diving into the technical setup, clearly define what success looks like for this integration. What specific data points from your custom HR onboarding form need to be transferred to your ATS? Consider fields such as candidate name, contact information, start date, department, manager, and any unique identifiers. Understanding the purpose of each data point and its corresponding field in the ATS is crucial for accurate mapping. Documenting these requirements will serve as your blueprint, preventing misconfigurations and ensuring all essential information flows correctly. This initial strategic step saves significant time during the build and testing phases, aligning the automation with your operational needs.

Step 2: Prepare Your Custom HR Onboarding Form for Webhooks

Your custom HR onboarding form needs to be capable of sending data via webhooks. Many modern form builders (e.g., Typeform, Jotform, Google Forms via add-ons, or custom-built solutions) offer webhook functionality. Ensure that your form is configured to send a POST request with the form submission data to a specified URL. Each field in your form should have a clear, distinct label or “name” attribute that you can easily identify within the webhook payload. Test the form submission independently to verify that it correctly captures and formats all necessary data points, making sure the information is ready to be caught by Zapier in the next step.

Step 3: Set Up the Zapier Webhook Trigger

Log into your Zapier account and create a new Zap. For the trigger, search for and select “Webhooks by Zapier,” then choose “Catch Hook” as the trigger event. Zapier will provide a unique webhook URL. Copy this URL and paste it into the webhook configuration section of your custom HR onboarding form (from Step 2). Once configured, submit a test entry through your HR onboarding form. Go back to Zapier and click “Test trigger.” Zapier should successfully “catch” the data from your test submission, allowing you to see the structure and content of the payload. This step confirms that your form is properly communicating with Zapier.

Step 4: Map Data Fields from Webhook to ATS

With the webhook data successfully caught, the next step in Zapier is to map these fields to the corresponding fields in your ATS. Add an action step to your Zap, searching for your specific ATS (e.g., Greenhouse, Workday, BambooHR, etc.). Select the appropriate action, such as “Create Candidate” or “Update Employee.” Zapier will then present you with the available fields from your ATS. Carefully match each piece of data from your webhook trigger (the fields Zapier “caught”) to the relevant fields in your ATS action. This is the core of your automation, ensuring that “First Name” from your form populates the “First Name” field in your ATS, and so on.

Step 5: Configure and Test the ATS Action

After mapping the fields, it’s time to configure and test the ATS action within Zapier. Review all the mapped fields to ensure accuracy. Pay close attention to any required fields in your ATS that may not have a direct equivalent in your onboarding form, and determine if default values or conditional logic are needed. Once satisfied, perform a test of the ATS action within Zapier. This will attempt to create or update a record in your ATS using the data from your initial test submission. Verify directly in your ATS that the new record was created or updated correctly and that all data points have been accurately transferred.

Step 6: Refine, Add Conditional Logic, and Activate

Thorough testing is paramount. Run several more test submissions through your HR form, using different data scenarios to ensure the Zap handles all possibilities robustly. Consider adding conditional logic (using Zapier’s “Filter” or “Paths” steps) if certain data should only flow under specific circumstances—for example, if a “contractor” type needs different data points than a “full-time employee.” Once confident in the integration’s reliability and accuracy, activate your Zap. Continuously monitor the Zap history in Zapier for any errors, especially during the initial deployment, to quickly address any issues that may arise, ensuring a consistently smooth onboarding workflow.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Make.com vs. Zapier: The Automated Recruiter’s Blueprint for AI-Powered HR