A Glossary of Technical & Integration Terms for HR Tech
In the rapidly evolving landscape of human resources, technology is no longer just a support function—it’s a strategic imperative. From streamlining recruitment to enhancing employee experience, HR tech solutions are revolutionizing how organizations attract, manage, and retain talent. However, navigating the intricate world of HR technology often means encountering a specialized vocabulary that can be daunting. This glossary aims to demystify key technical and integration terms, providing HR and recruiting professionals with the clear, authoritative understanding needed to leverage these tools effectively and drive measurable business outcomes. Understanding these concepts is crucial for making informed decisions, optimizing automation strategies, and building a truly connected HR ecosystem.
API (Application Programming Interface)
An API acts as a digital messenger, allowing different software applications to communicate and exchange data securely and efficiently. In HR tech, APIs are fundamental for creating integrated systems, enabling your Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to seamlessly share candidate data with your Human Resources Information System (HRIS), or for a background check service to feed results directly into a candidate’s profile. For HR and recruiting professionals, understanding APIs means recognizing the potential for powerful, automated workflows that eliminate manual data entry, reduce errors, and ensure a single source of truth across various platforms, from payroll to performance management. This interoperability is key to building a cohesive and efficient talent management ecosystem.
Webhook
A webhook is an automated message sent from one application to another when a specific event occurs, essentially providing real-time information. Unlike traditional APIs that require constant polling for updates, webhooks “push” data immediately, making them highly efficient for event-driven automation. In recruiting, a webhook might trigger an automated email sequence to a candidate once their application status changes in the ATS, or initiate an onboarding process in the HRIS the moment a job offer is accepted. For HR teams, leveraging webhooks means instant reactions to critical events, enabling agile responses, personalized candidate experiences, and the ability to automate time-sensitive tasks without delay, significantly reducing manual oversight and response times.
CRM (Candidate Relationship Management)
CRM in the HR context refers to systems and strategies used to manage and nurture relationships with potential candidates, similar to how sales teams manage customer leads. A robust HR CRM helps recruiters build talent pipelines, engage passive candidates, track interactions, and automate communication throughout the recruitment lifecycle. For HR and recruiting professionals, a CRM is invaluable for maintaining a robust pool of qualified candidates, ensuring continuous engagement, and shortening time-to-hire. It allows for personalized outreach, tracks candidate sentiment, and provides valuable insights into recruitment effectiveness, ultimately creating a more proactive and strategic approach to talent acquisition rather than just reactive hiring.
ATS (Applicant Tracking System)
An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is a software application designed to help recruiters and employers manage the recruitment process efficiently from beginning to end. This includes tasks such as posting job openings, collecting and organizing resumes, screening candidates, scheduling interviews, and tracking the entire application lifecycle. For HR and recruiting professionals, an ATS is a cornerstone of modern hiring, centralizing candidate data, automating repetitive tasks, and ensuring compliance. When integrated with other HR tech tools, it streamlines workflows, reduces administrative burden, and provides valuable analytics to optimize recruitment strategies, allowing recruiters to focus more on strategic engagement and less on manual data handling.
HRIS (Human Resources Information System)
An HRIS is a comprehensive software solution that centralizes and manages all employee-related data and HR functions, offering a single platform for human resources tasks. This typically includes core HR functions like employee records, payroll, benefits administration, time and attendance, and performance management. For HR and recruiting professionals, an HRIS is critical for operational efficiency, ensuring compliance, and providing a unified view of the workforce. When integrated with an ATS, it facilitates smooth transitions from candidate to employee, automating onboarding processes and maintaining accurate, up-to-date employee data across the entire employee lifecycle, significantly reducing administrative overhead and improving data accuracy.
Data Integration
Data integration is the process of combining data from various disparate sources into a unified, coherent, and valuable view. In HR tech, this means connecting data from your ATS, HRIS, payroll system, learning management system (LMS), and other platforms to create a holistic understanding of your workforce and talent pipeline. For HR and recruiting professionals, effective data integration eliminates data silos, reduces manual data entry, and ensures data consistency across systems. This leads to more accurate reporting, better decision-making capabilities, and the ability to automate complex cross-system workflows, such as onboarding new hires by automatically populating their details across all relevant HR systems from a single entry point.
Automation Workflow
An automation workflow is a sequence of automated steps designed to complete a specific task or process without manual intervention. In HR and recruiting, these workflows can transform repetitive, time-consuming activities into efficient, hands-free operations. Examples include automatically sending rejection emails after a candidate is marked “not qualified” in the ATS, initiating background checks upon offer acceptance, or triggering onboarding tasks for new hires. For HR teams, implementing automation workflows through platforms like Make.com drastically reduces administrative burden, minimizes human error, ensures consistency, and allows professionals to redirect their focus from routine tasks to strategic initiatives that drive talent acquisition and employee engagement.
RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
RPA involves using software robots (“bots”) to mimic human interactions with digital systems and applications, automating repetitive, rule-based tasks. Unlike APIs that require direct system integration, RPA bots operate at the user interface level, essentially “sitting” at a virtual desktop and performing actions like opening applications, clicking buttons, extracting data, and entering information. In HR, RPA can automate tasks such as mass data entry, generating standard reports, processing high volumes of forms, or reconciling data across legacy systems that lack modern APIs. For HR and recruiting professionals, RPA offers a way to automate tedious, high-volume transactional work, freeing up staff for more strategic, human-centric activities and ensuring greater accuracy in routine operations.
AI Parsing
AI parsing refers to the use of artificial intelligence, particularly natural language processing (NLP), to extract, interpret, and structure information from unstructured text documents, most commonly resumes and job descriptions. An AI parser can automatically identify and categorize details such as skills, experience, education, contact information, and job titles, transforming raw text into structured data points. For HR and recruiting professionals, AI parsing significantly speeds up the screening process, improves data accuracy in candidate profiles within an ATS or CRM, and enhances searchability. This allows recruiters to quickly identify best-fit candidates, reduce manual data entry, and focus on qualitative assessment rather than administrative tasks.
Machine Learning (ML)
Machine Learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence that enables systems to learn from data, identify patterns, and make predictions or decisions with minimal human intervention. Instead of being explicitly programmed, ML algorithms improve their performance over time as they are exposed to more data. In HR, ML is used for predictive hiring analytics (e.g., predicting candidate success or employee churn), enhancing candidate matching by learning from successful hires, personalizing learning and development recommendations, and identifying biases in hiring processes. For HR and recruiting professionals, ML offers powerful insights and automation capabilities, transforming data into actionable intelligence for more strategic and effective talent management.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of AI that equips computers with the ability to understand, interpret, and generate human language in a valuable way. This allows machines to process and make sense of large volumes of text and speech data. In HR tech, NLP is crucial for tasks like resume parsing (extracting key information from resumes), sentiment analysis of employee feedback, powering chatbots for candidate and employee queries, and analyzing job descriptions to ensure inclusive language. For HR and recruiting professionals, NLP enhances the ability to derive insights from unstructured textual data, automates communication, and supports the creation of more effective and unbiased content and interactions within the HR landscape.
SSO (Single Sign-On)
Single Sign-On (SSO) is an authentication scheme that allows a user to log in with a single ID and password to gain access to multiple related, yet independent, software systems or applications. Instead of needing separate credentials for each platform, SSO simplifies the login process, enhancing user convenience and security. In an HR environment, this means employees and candidates can use one set of credentials to access their HRIS, ATS, learning management system, and other internal tools. For HR and recruiting professionals, SSO improves the user experience, reduces help desk tickets related to forgotten passwords, and strengthens security by centralizing authentication management and reducing the risk associated with multiple passwords.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is centrally hosted by a third-party provider and made available to users over the internet on a subscription basis. Instead of purchasing and installing software, users simply access it via a web browser. Most modern HR tech solutions, including ATS, HRIS, and CRMs, operate on a SaaS model. For HR and recruiting professionals, SaaS offers numerous advantages: lower upfront costs, automatic updates and maintenance by the vendor, scalability to meet changing organizational needs, and accessibility from anywhere with an internet connection, allowing for greater flexibility and reducing reliance on internal IT resources.
Low-Code/No-Code Platform
Low-code/no-code platforms are development environments that allow users to create applications, workflows, and integrations with minimal (low-code) or no (no-code) traditional programming knowledge. They achieve this by using visual interfaces, drag-and-drop functionalities, and pre-built components. In HR, platforms like Make.com empower HR and recruiting professionals to build custom automation workflows, integrate disparate systems, create bespoke dashboards, or even develop simple internal tools without requiring IT support. This significantly democratizes technology creation, enabling HR teams to rapidly prototype and implement solutions to specific pain points, reducing dependence on technical developers and accelerating digital transformation within the department.
Data Silo
A data silo refers to a collection of data that is isolated and inaccessible to other parts of an organization, much like grain stored in separate silos. These silos typically arise when different departments or systems collect and manage their own data independently, without effective integration or sharing mechanisms. In HR, this can mean candidate data resides only in the ATS, employee data in the HRIS, and payroll information in another system, with no automatic way for these systems to communicate. For HR and recruiting professionals, data silos lead to inefficiencies, manual data entry, inconsistent information, a lack of holistic insights into talent, and hindered automation, making a unified “single source of truth” difficult to achieve and impacting strategic decision-making.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Essential Guide to CRM Data Protection for HR & Recruiting with CRM-Backup
