A Glossary of Key Terms in Make.com Platform Terminology for HR & Recruiting Professionals
In the rapidly evolving landscape of HR and recruiting, leveraging automation platforms like Make.com is no longer a luxury but a strategic imperative. To effectively design, implement, and manage sophisticated hiring workflows, talent acquisition leaders and HR professionals must understand the core terminology of these powerful tools. This glossary demystifies key Make.com concepts, translating technical jargon into practical insights specifically for optimizing your talent processes, from applicant tracking to onboarding.
Scenario
The fundamental building block of automation in Make.com. A scenario is a visual representation of an automated workflow, consisting of a series of modules connected in a specific sequence. For HR teams, a scenario might automate the entire candidate lifecycle: triggering when a new application is received, sending an automated screening email, updating the ATS, and even scheduling initial interviews. Understanding scenarios allows HR professionals to visualize and optimize complex recruitment processes, ensuring consistency and reducing manual intervention at every stage.
Module
An individual application or action within a Make.com scenario. Each module performs a specific task, such as fetching data from a CRM, sending an email, creating a record in an ATS, or interacting with a spreadsheet. In an HR context, modules could include “Get New Applicants from Indeed,” “Send Interview Confirmation Email via Gmail,” “Create Candidate Record in Greenhouse,” or “Update Employee Data in HRIS.” Mastering the use of diverse modules empowers HR professionals to integrate disparate systems and create highly customized, multi-step automations.
Connection
The authorized link between Make.com and an external service or application, such as your Applicant Tracking System (ATS), CRM, email provider, or HRIS. A connection stores the necessary authentication details (like API keys or OAuth tokens) to allow Make.com to interact securely with that service on your behalf. For HR and recruiting, establishing robust connections is crucial for seamless data flow between all your essential tools, ensuring candidate data, interview schedules, and onboarding documents are always in sync without manual data entry.
Webhook
A powerful tool that enables real-time data exchange between web applications. Instead of continuously asking a system for updates, a webhook allows the system to send an automated notification (or “callback”) to a specified URL in Make.com whenever a specific event occurs. In recruiting, a webhook can instantly trigger a Make.com scenario when a candidate submits an application on your career page, a status changes in your ATS, or a new lead signs up on your website, initiating immediate follow-up actions without delay.
API (Application Programming Interface)
A set of rules and protocols that allows different software applications to communicate with each other. Make.com leverages APIs to connect to thousands of online services, enabling it to send data to and receive data from your HR tech stack. For example, your ATS might expose an API that Make.com uses to create new candidate profiles or retrieve interview schedules. A fundamental understanding of APIs empowers HR teams to integrate previously siloed systems, creating a unified and automated talent management ecosystem.
Iterator
A module used in Make.com to process individual items from a collection (like a list of applicants or a set of survey responses). If you receive an array of 20 new resumes, an iterator would process each resume individually through subsequent modules in your scenario. This is invaluable for HR, allowing a single scenario to efficiently handle bulk operations, such as sending personalized follow-up emails to a list of candidates, parsing multiple resume attachments, or updating numerous employee records one by one.
Aggregator
The inverse of an iterator, an aggregator module combines multiple individual items into a single bundle or collection. For instance, after processing individual feedback forms from multiple interviewers using an iterator, an aggregator could combine all that feedback into a single summary document or email. In recruiting, this could mean compiling all candidate responses from a pre-screening questionnaire into one report, or gathering all onboarding document statuses into a single summary for a hiring manager.
Filter
A conditional rule placed between modules in a Make.com scenario that dictates whether data should pass through to the next step. Filters allow you to create dynamic workflows based on specific criteria. For HR, this means you can automatically route candidates based on their experience level, reject applications that don’t meet minimum qualifications, or send different follow-up emails based on a candidate’s preferred communication method. Filters are essential for building intelligent, decision-making automations that streamline recruitment pipelines.
Data Store
A feature within Make.com that allows you to store and retrieve persistent data directly within the platform, independent of your scenarios. Think of it as a small internal database for your automations. HR teams can use data stores to keep track of unique candidate IDs to prevent duplicates, store a running count of job applications received, or maintain a list of disqualified candidates across multiple scenarios. This ensures consistency and enables more complex, stateful automations that remember information over time.
Array
A fundamental data structure in programming, an array is an ordered list or collection of items. In Make.com, data often comes in arrays, such as a list of candidate names, a series of skills from a resume, or multiple email addresses. When working with HR data, understanding how to manipulate arrays (e.g., extracting specific elements or iterating through them) is crucial for processing bulk information efficiently, like parsing multiple job applications or managing groups of employees for a training program.
JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
A lightweight data-interchange format that is easy for humans to read and write, and easy for machines to parse and generate. Most web applications and APIs use JSON to send and receive data. For HR professionals integrating various systems, understanding basic JSON structure is beneficial as candidate profiles, job postings, and employee data are frequently transmitted in this format between Make.com and your HR tech stack. It’s the lingua franca for modern automation.
Scheduler
The component in Make.com that determines when and how frequently a scenario is triggered to run automatically. You can set scenarios to run at specific intervals (e.g., every 15 minutes, daily at 9 AM) or on specific days. For HR, schedulers are vital for automations that need to run periodically, such as daily reports on new applicants, weekly reminders for incomplete onboarding tasks, or monthly synchronization of employee data between an HRIS and a benefits platform, ensuring timely and consistent operations.
Operation
A single unit of work performed by a module within Make.com. Every time a module processes data or performs an action (like fetching records, sending an email, or creating a new entry), it consumes one or more operations. Make.com’s pricing is often based on the number of operations used. For HR teams, understanding operations helps in optimizing scenario design for cost-efficiency, ensuring automations are streamlined and avoid unnecessary steps, thus maximizing value from your Make.com subscription.
Error Handling
The systematic process within a Make.com scenario designed to anticipate, detect, and respond to errors or exceptions that may occur during execution. This includes mechanisms like “Break,” “Rollback,” “Commit,” and “Fallback” routes. Robust error handling is critical for HR automations, ensuring that if an ATS connection fails or a required data field is missing, the scenario doesn’t simply stop. Instead, it can notify an HR admin, log the issue, or attempt an alternative action, preventing data loss or process breakdown.
Incomplete Execution
Occurs when a Make.com scenario encounters an issue and cannot complete its designated workflow for a particular data bundle. This could be due to invalid data, a disconnected service, an API error, or a filter stopping the process unexpectedly. When an execution is incomplete, the data bundle often remains in a queue for manual review or re-processing. For HR, monitoring incomplete executions is vital to identify bottlenecks, correct underlying issues, and ensure no critical applicant data or HR process steps are missed.
If you would like to read more, we recommend this article: The Automated Recruiter: Architecting Strategic Talent with Make.com & API Integration
