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A Glossary of Make.com Terminology for HR & Recruiting Professionals

In today’s competitive talent landscape, HR and recruiting professionals are constantly seeking innovative ways to streamline operations, enhance candidate experiences, and reduce administrative burdens. Low-code automation platforms like Make.com are powerful tools in this endeavor, enabling teams to connect disparate systems and automate complex workflows without extensive coding knowledge. To fully leverage the potential of Make.com for your HR applications, understanding its core terminology is crucial. This comprehensive glossary provides clear, practical definitions of key Make.com concepts, specifically tailored to help HR and recruiting leaders navigate and implement effective automation strategies.

Make.com

Make.com, formerly Integromat, is a visual platform designed for building, designing, and automating workflows between various applications and services. It acts as a central nervous system for your digital operations, allowing you to integrate hundreds of popular apps like applicant tracking systems (ATS), HRIS platforms, communication tools, and databases. For HR and recruiting teams, Make.com is invaluable for automating tasks such as resume parsing, candidate onboarding, interview scheduling, data synchronization between HR systems, and generating personalized communication. Its intuitive drag-and-drop interface empowers non-technical users to create sophisticated automations that save significant time and reduce human error, freeing up HR professionals to focus on strategic initiatives and candidate engagement.

Scenario

In Make.com, a Scenario is the core automation workflow you design. It represents a single, complete process, starting with a trigger and comprising a series of modules that perform specific actions. Think of it as a flowchart or a sequence of steps that your data will follow. For HR, a scenario might be “Automate new hire onboarding” or “Sync new applicant data from an ATS to a CRM.” Each scenario is built visually, allowing you to see the entire flow of data and logic at a glance. Developing well-structured scenarios is key to building robust and efficient automation solutions that cater to specific HR operational needs, from talent acquisition to employee management.

Module

A Module is the fundamental building block within a Make.com scenario. Each module represents an interaction with an application or a specific function. For instance, there are modules to “Watch new candidates” in your ATS, “Create a record” in Google Sheets, “Send an email” via Gmail, or “Parse a document” with an AI tool. Modules are highly specialized, performing one distinct task within a scenario. When you connect modules, you’re instructing Make.com on the sequence of operations. For HR, choosing the right modules is critical for integrating your tech stack, ensuring seamless data flow between systems like your HRIS, payroll, and recruiting platforms, and executing precise actions at each stage of the talent lifecycle.

Connection

A Connection in Make.com refers to the authenticated link between your Make.com account and a third-party application (e.g., Salesforce, Workday, Greenhouse). Before you can use modules from a specific app, you must establish a connection, typically by providing API keys, login credentials, or OAuth authorization. This secure link allows Make.com to interact with the connected application on your behalf, fetching data or performing actions. For HR professionals, managing connections is vital for maintaining data security and ensuring uninterrupted automation. A secure and stable connection is the foundation for any successful HR automation, enabling Make.com to reliably access and manipulate sensitive employee and candidate data across your integrated systems.

Trigger

A Trigger is the starting point of any Make.com scenario. It’s an event that, when it occurs, initiates the execution of your automation. Triggers can be various types: a “Watch new records” trigger that fires when a new candidate applies in your ATS, a “Webhook” trigger that responds to an external event, or a scheduled trigger that runs at specific intervals. The trigger effectively “listens” for a predefined event, and once that event happens, it passes the relevant data to the subsequent modules in the scenario. For HR, choosing the correct trigger ensures that automations run precisely when needed, such as initiating an onboarding workflow the moment a new offer is accepted or notifying a recruiter when a candidate updates their profile.

Action

An Action module in Make.com performs a specific operation within a connected application after a trigger has fired or a previous module has processed data. Unlike a trigger which starts a scenario, an action does something. Examples in an HR context include “Create a candidate record” in your CRM, “Send an letter” via a document generation tool, “Update employee status” in your HRIS, or “Add a row” to a Google Sheet. Actions are the workhorses of your scenario, transforming data and orchestrating processes across your integrated systems. Careful selection and configuration of action modules are crucial for building automations that precisely execute the desired HR tasks, from administrative duties to complex data manipulations.

Iterator

An Iterator is a special type of module that processes an array of items one by one. If a previous module outputs a collection of data – for example, a list of 10 new job applications from your ATS, or a batch of candidate skills from a resume parser – an iterator will break this bundle of data into individual items. It then passes each item sequentially to the subsequent modules in the scenario. This is incredibly useful in HR for processing multiple similar records: iterating through a list of interviewees to send personalized confirmations, processing a bulk upload of employee data, or reviewing multiple attachments from a single email. Iterators ensure that each individual piece of data receives the necessary attention and processing within your automated workflow.

Aggregator

An Aggregator module performs the opposite function of an Iterator; it combines multiple individual bundles of data into a single bundle. For instance, after an Iterator has processed individual candidate applications, an Aggregator might collect specific parsed data (like names, emails, and skills) from each application and combine them into a single report, a formatted email, or a new spreadsheet row. In HR, aggregators are essential for tasks like compiling summary reports from multiple sources, generating a single onboarding document from various data points, or creating a consolidated list of candidates for a specific role. They help condense and organize fragmented data into a unified, actionable format, enhancing data management and reporting capabilities.

Filter

A Filter module in Make.com allows you to control the flow of data within your scenario based on specific conditions. It acts as a gatekeeper, letting data bundles pass through only if they meet the criteria you define. For example, you might set a filter to only process job applications where the candidate’s experience level is “Senior,” or only send follow-up emails to candidates who have completed a specific assessment. Filters are crucial for building intelligent and efficient HR automations, ensuring that only relevant data triggers subsequent actions and preventing unnecessary processing or irrelevant communications. They help refine workflows, making them more targeted and responsive to specific business rules and exceptions in talent acquisition and management.

Router

A Router module enables you to send a single incoming bundle of data to multiple different paths or branches within a scenario, based on distinct conditions. It’s like a traffic controller for your data. For example, a new job application might enter a router, and then based on the role (e.g., “Sales,” “Marketing,” “Engineering”), the data is directed down a specific path to trigger different actions, such as notifying a specific hiring manager, adding the candidate to a role-specific talent pool, or initiating a tailored skill assessment. Routers are fundamental for creating complex, multi-branching HR workflows that dynamically adapt to various inputs, ensuring that each piece of data is processed through the appropriate sequence of actions.

Webhooks

A Webhook in Make.com acts as a real-time communication method that allows an external application to send data directly to your Make.com scenario as soon as an event occurs. Instead of Make.com constantly checking an application for new data (polling), a webhook provides an instant notification. For HR, this is incredibly powerful for triggers: when a candidate submits an application on your career page, when an external assessment is completed, or when an e-signature document is signed, the external system can immediately “ping” your Make.com webhook. This enables immediate, event-driven automations, such as triggering an instant confirmation email to the candidate or updating their status in your ATS, significantly improving responsiveness and efficiency in recruiting workflows.

Data Store

A Data Store in Make.com is an internal, persistent storage mechanism that allows you to save and retrieve small amounts of data directly within Make.com, independent of your external applications. It functions like a simple database embedded within your Make.com account. This is particularly useful for storing configuration settings, lookup tables, counters, or temporary data that needs to be accessed across different scenario runs or by various scenarios. For HR, a data store could hold a list of standard interview questions, frequently used email templates, or dynamic counters for tracking specific metrics. While not a replacement for a full database, it provides a handy way to manage dynamic data directly within your automation environment, enhancing flexibility and reusability.

Bundles

In Make.com, data is passed between modules in discrete units called “bundles.” A bundle is essentially a package of information related to a single operation or event. For instance, when a trigger fires for a new job applicant, all the data associated with that applicant (name, email, resume, job ID, etc.) is encapsulated in a single bundle. This bundle then flows through the scenario, with each subsequent module processing or transforming the data within it. Understanding bundles is key to designing effective scenarios, as it dictates how data is structured and made available to downstream modules. Managing bundles efficiently ensures data integrity and smooth progression through your HR automation workflows.

Error Handling

Error Handling refers to the mechanisms within Make.com that allow scenarios to gracefully manage unexpected issues or failures during execution. Instead of simply failing and stopping, robust error handling allows you to define specific actions to take when an error occurs, such as sending a notification email to an administrator, retrying a failed operation, logging the error to a spreadsheet, or moving the problematic data to a quarantine folder. For HR automations, which often deal with critical and sensitive data, effective error handling is paramount. It ensures that even if an external system is temporarily down or data is malformed, your processes don’t completely break, minimizing disruption and ensuring data integrity for candidate and employee information.

Scheduling

Scheduling in Make.com defines when a scenario will run. While some scenarios are triggered by real-time events (like webhooks), many others are designed to execute at predefined intervals. Make.com offers flexible scheduling options, allowing you to set scenarios to run every few minutes, hourly, daily, weekly, or at specific times. For HR, scheduling is vital for routine tasks such as daily data synchronization between an ATS and HRIS, weekly report generation, or monthly reminders for performance reviews. Proper scheduling ensures that your recurring HR operations are automated consistently and efficiently, reducing manual oversight and ensuring that critical tasks are never missed.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: N8n vs Make.com: Mastering HR & Recruiting Automation

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