Change is Scary: Tech Adoption with Saumya Chopra

Has your hiring system begun to atrophy while you’ve been lost in the minutia of the day-to-day? Perhaps it’s time to take the broad view of your recruiting process and press update on your people function.

Change is scary. Anyone who’s updated their iPhone knows this.

One day you’re merrily swiping between apps when a notification pops up asking if you’d like to upgrade your OS and ‘yes’ of course you would and then, with one blithe tap of your finger, everything falls apart.

Your touch-unlock no longer works, in fact, the whole screen seems to be unaware of your desperate tapping – you feel ignored –  which only increases the speed and pressure of your frustrated jabs. The battery now dies at 50 percent and for some reason half your contacts are gone.

Something that was supposed to make your phone better and more functional has actually made it impossible to use. We can expand this scenario to when we try and overhaul the structure of a department within a company, these revolutionary revampings often leave teams more confused and less efficient than before.

That’s where people like Saumya Chopra come in. As People Technology Product Manager for Square, she’s been leading teams through system changes for seven years. And one thing she’s learned after all that time in the HR Tech sector is that it’s not just about finding the right tech solution but getting everyone else on board.

Saumya will be returning to  Hiring Success 19 – Americas, February 26-27 in San Francisco. Check out her session from last year and learn how hiring teams are using technology all wrong.

What’s the role of technology in hiring?

Technology helps make our people more efficient and reduces the administrative burden of hiring, leaving time for the more human elements of the hiring process.

What are three ways people wrongly use technology in hiring?

• Implementing technology without understanding the true need of the end user and the business.
• Using technology for the sake of it. There are lots of new tools available today, but being selective in investing time in the tools that solve the real problems is extremely important.
• Not using the right technology where available.

How do you convince nervous clients that change is good?

Show them what change can bring, and stress that it’s inevitable. Also show them that resistance to change will eventually cause more issues than adapting to change.

What does the concept of Hiring Success mean to you?

Hiring Success is being able to make a great hire through a smooth and efficient process, that results in a great experience for the candidate/hire and the recruiting team. It means ensuring costs are at a minimum and we are leveraging our technology to its maximum potential to support this hiring process.

Where on their list of priorities is “recruitment” for most companies? And where should it be?

Recruitment is undoubtedly one of the most important functions of an organization. It’s critical to get the right people in to make a great organization. Unfortunately, a lot of people consider it a cost instead of an investment, and it is not always top-priority for most companies.

I think recruitment should be at the core of every employee’s job, whether or not they’re on a hiring team. It’s important to be on the lookout for people you want to work with, and to encourage them to apply to roles at the company. That’s the best way to leverage employee networks, and it is possible to make it part of an organization’s core culture, but it requires effort and vision.

Tell us your favorite interview questions.

A question that has become my favorite is “What are you not?”, and I like it because it opens up the realm of possible responses and really helps gauge the candidate’s thought process.

When you started out in HR, what is one mistake you made and what did you learn from it?

I made many mistakes when I started my career. It was a time of learning and a time when making mistakes was expected. All mistakes are learning experiences and it would be an even bigger mistake if there was no learning or action plan to address the issue if it ever came up again.