A Glossary of Key Keap Terms for HR & Recruiting Professionals

Understanding the core terminology within Keap is fundamental for HR and recruiting professionals looking to optimize their workflows, enhance candidate experiences, and drive efficiency through automation. Keap, a robust CRM and marketing automation platform, offers a suite of features that, when understood and applied strategically, can transform how talent is acquired and managed. This glossary provides clear, authoritative definitions tailored to your specific needs, emphasizing the practical applications within your daily operations. Mastering these terms is the first step toward leveraging Keap to build more intelligent, automated HR and recruiting processes, freeing up valuable time for high-impact work.

Contact Record

In Keap, a Contact Record is the central repository for all information related to an individual, whether they are a candidate, a hiring manager, an employee, or a client. Each contact has a unique record that stores their personal details (name, email, phone), communication history, tags, custom field data, and engagement activities. For HR and recruiting, this record is invaluable for tracking a candidate’s journey from initial application to onboarding, ensuring all interactions, notes, and status updates are centralized and easily accessible. Automation often triggers based on contact-level data or actions, making a well-maintained contact record the bedrock of intelligent recruiting systems.

Company Record

The Company Record in Keap allows you to organize and store information about organizations. This is particularly useful in recruiting for associating multiple contacts (e.g., different hiring managers, employees, or even multiple candidates from the same corporate client) with a single entity. It helps to maintain a holistic view of your relationships with client companies or internal departments, providing insights into past engagements, hiring patterns, and key stakeholders. By linking contacts to companies, HR professionals can streamline client communication, manage vendor relationships, and gain a clearer picture of organizational interactions within Keap.

Tags

Tags are arguably one of the most powerful and versatile features in Keap, used for segmenting, categorizing, and triggering automation. For HR and recruiting, tags are essential for labeling candidates based on skills (“Skill: Java,” “Skill: Project Management”), status (“Active Candidate,” “Interview Scheduled,” “Onboarding”), source (“LinkedIn Applicant,” “Referral”), or any other custom attribute. They enable precise targeting for communication campaigns and serve as critical triggers for automation, such as sending follow-up emails to candidates with a specific skill set or moving a candidate to the next stage of the hiring pipeline. Effective tag management is key to scalable and efficient recruiting automation.

Campaigns

A Keap Campaign is a strategic, multi-step automated process designed to achieve a specific objective, often spanning a series of interactions. In HR and recruiting, campaigns are invaluable for automating entire workflows, such as a “New Applicant Campaign” that sends an initial acknowledgement, schedules an automated screening, and assigns follow-up tasks. Other examples include “Onboarding Workflow Campaigns” or “Talent Nurturing Campaigns.” Campaigns orchestrate emails, tasks, tag applications, and conditional logic, providing a structured way to manage candidate engagement and progression without manual intervention, saving significant time and ensuring consistency.

Sequences

A Sequence is a specific series of automated actions within a larger Keap Campaign. While a campaign provides the overarching structure and goals, sequences deliver the step-by-step execution. For instance, within a “New Applicant Campaign,” you might have a “Welcome Email Sequence,” followed by a “Skills Assessment Sequence,” and then an “Interview Scheduling Sequence.” Sequences can include emails, tasks, delays, and applying/removing tags. They are the building blocks that allow you to construct intricate, time-sensitive candidate journeys, ensuring timely communication and progression through the recruiting funnel.

Automation

Automation in Keap refers to the ability to set up rules and triggers that automatically perform actions based on predefined criteria or events. For HR and recruiting, this is transformative. Examples include automatically sending a confirmation email when a candidate submits an application via a web form, assigning a task to a recruiter when a candidate reaches a certain stage, or updating a candidate’s status based on an email open. Beyond internal Keap automation, integration platforms like Make.com can connect Keap to external tools (e.g., parsing resumes, syncing with ATS, scheduling interviews), creating end-to-end automated recruiting pipelines that eliminate manual bottlenecks and reduce human error.

Opportunity (Sales Pipeline)

While traditionally named “Opportunity” and used for sales pipelines, this feature in Keap can be creatively repurposed by HR and recruiting professionals to manage their candidate pipelines. Instead of tracking sales deals, you track candidate progression through hiring stages, such as “Application Received,” “Screening,” “Interview Stage,” “Offer Extended,” and “Hired.” Each candidate can be assigned an opportunity record, allowing recruiters to visually track their journey, manage status updates, and forecast hiring needs. This adapts Keap’s robust pipeline management capabilities to serve the unique needs of talent acquisition, providing a clear overview of all active recruiting efforts.

Lead Score

Lead Score in Keap is a numerical value assigned to a contact based on their engagement and demographic data, indicating their level of interest or qualification. For HR and recruiting, this can be adapted to a “Candidate Score” or “Fit Score.” Points can be assigned for actions like opening recruitment emails, clicking on job links, completing assessments, or possessing specific skills indicated by tags. A higher candidate score can signal a more engaged or suitable candidate, allowing recruiters to prioritize their efforts and focus on those most likely to be a good fit, thereby increasing efficiency and improving hiring outcomes.

Web Forms

Keap Web Forms are customizable online forms that can be embedded on your website or used as standalone pages to capture information from visitors. For HR and recruiting, web forms are indispensable for collecting job applications, sign-ups for talent pools, event registrations (e.g., career fairs), or candidate surveys. They are highly customizable, allowing you to collect specific data points and can be directly linked to automation campaigns. When a form is submitted, it can automatically create a new contact record, apply tags, trigger an initial email sequence, or even assign tasks, making the initial intake process seamless and automated.

Landing Pages

Keap Landing Pages are standalone web pages designed to capture leads or drive specific actions, distinct from your main website. In recruiting, these are powerful tools for creating dedicated pages for job postings, recruitment campaigns, talent pool registrations, or specific event sign-ups. They can feature compelling content about your company culture, benefits, and job specifics, with a clear call to action leading to a web form submission. Landing pages are vital for focused recruitment marketing efforts, helping to attract and convert passive and active candidates by providing a streamlined, branded experience, and seamlessly integrating with Keap’s automation capabilities.

Tasks

Tasks in Keap are internal action items that can be assigned to specific users (e.g., recruiters, hiring managers) and given due dates. They serve as critical reminders and organizational tools within the recruiting process. Examples include “Call Candidate X for a preliminary screen,” “Review Resume for Position Y,” “Send Offer Letter to Jane Doe,” or “Follow up with Hiring Manager Z.” Tasks can be manually created or automatically generated by campaigns and automation rules, ensuring that no critical action is missed and keeping the hiring process moving forward efficiently. This reduces oversight and improves accountability within the recruiting team.

Notes

Notes in Keap allow users to record internal comments, observations, and updates directly within a contact or company record. For HR and recruiting, notes are essential for documenting interview feedback, summarizing phone calls, detailing candidate preferences, tracking progress on specific applications, or logging any other pertinent qualitative information. Unlike structured custom fields, notes provide a free-form space for critical context that might not fit into a predefined category. They ensure that all team members have access to the latest insights and history of a candidate or client interaction, fostering better collaboration and informed decision-making.

Users

Users in Keap refer to the individuals within your organization who have their own login credentials and access to the Keap platform. These typically include recruiters, HR managers, talent acquisition specialists, and potentially hiring managers. Each user can have different access levels and permissions, ensuring data security and role-appropriate functionality. Managing users effectively allows for seamless collaboration within the recruiting team, assigning tasks, sharing candidate information, and ensuring that everyone involved in the hiring process has the necessary tools and information to perform their roles efficiently within the Keap environment.

Custom Fields

Custom Fields in Keap allow you to extend the standard contact and company records by adding specific data fields tailored to your unique HR and recruiting needs. Beyond the default fields like name and email, you might create custom fields for “Desired Salary,” “Notice Period,” “Last Interview Date,” “Visa Status,” “Preferred Start Date,” or “Referral Source.” These fields enable you to store and segment highly specific candidate data that is crucial for filtering, reporting, and personalizing communications. Custom fields are indispensable for capturing comprehensive applicant information and driving targeted automation based on unique hiring criteria, providing unparalleled flexibility in data management.

If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: Architecting Intelligent HR & Recruiting: Dynamic Tagging in Keap with AI for Precision Engagement

By Published On: January 9, 2026

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