If managers resist hiring tech, is it about change… or control?

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the brand new Solving the People Puzzle podcast studio. And I'm recording another solo episode today. And this episode specifically is not for hr. It is not for business owners. It is in fact for hiring managers. Now of course, anybody can listen to this and if you are in hr, maybe this inspires you to have a conversation with your hiring managers. This is Solving the People Puzzle where we discuss all things talent acquisition and human resource management. I want to start by making if managers resist hiring technology, is it about change or is it about control? Now I have a very comfortable explanation to that question and that is change fatigue. I speak about it often. I spoke about it this year at our 2026 HR and hiring trends. It is a global trend at the moment, change fatigue. This concept that hiring managers and many of us are completely inundated and overwhelmed with specifically TEC technology and AI. You see, the more technology we add in our businesses, in our lives, yes, there's a massive business case and a use case for efficiency, but it inevitably is creating fatigue. Now the reality is that these hiring managers, your hiring managers, you, Mr. Uh, the hiring manager, the line manager, are already inundated. You are extremely busy. And if you think hiring, adding more processes, adding more technology can at times lead to this concept of change fatigue. And let's be honest, all of that is real. But I want to challenge us today by asking an uncomfortable question. Is the change fatigue really because of the technology or is it what the technology exposes? Let me unpack. I'm going to start off with some empathy. Let's be honest, HR isn't line and line isn't hr. And most HR practices are seen as administrative, mundane, repetitive, service related tasks and specifically hiring can't come at the most worst times where you, the line manager, already inundated, you're struggling to find talent, your team is stretched very thin, and guess what, you still have your real job to do. But now you're being asked to sit in job analysis sessions, you being asked to sit in panel conversations, interview after interview, giving your opinion, giving your judgment, and at the end of the day, it's just adding to your diary, it's adding to your calendar. So I deeply want to express deep empathy towards the current situation. Adding technology into the process, the change fatigue that potentially can come with this is hard. It stretches you. So when HR then announces, hey, we're rolling out a new system, I can imagine the first responses. We, we don't need this, we don't need more technology, we don't need to change Our current way of hiring, our process works. We've always done it in this way and I get it. Especially if the new rollout of the technology was managed poorly. What do I mean by that? A, uh, 45 minute webinar training session, a PDF that nobody reads, support focus groups that no one attends. All of this I see often, unfortunately in my career I've seen technology being rolled out poorly. I'm going to be vulnerable and radically honest with you. You. Here at wamly, we've also missed the mark at times in terms of rolling our technology. It is a big deal. There is change management involved, proper communication, creating buy in, ensuring that the uh, why is clearly communicated and that in fact HR is addressing a real problem by replacing a current system. There is another version of this one that I believe doesn't get spoken about often enough and that is that for the longest of time in many organizations hiring has been the line manager's private domain. Huh? Uh, private domain. What do I mean? Well, you are the subject matter expert from the word get go. You are consulted around knowledge, qualification, experience, skills, what this person needs to look like that you are looking for, what is good look like in the role. And that's correct. Job analysis is incredibly important. But then the application journey and the hiring journey starts and you get involved in shortlisting and interviews. You make up your own mind around what you're looking for. And very seldomly I have met HR really challenging line managers on their decisions that they make. And then when you get asked, why did I pick person A over person B? Often the answer is my gut feel or it felt right, or when Franco walked in, I just knew. Now here's the reality. Nobody pushes back on that because there is nothing to push back on. Especially if it's an unstructured, um, non technological process. What do I mean? Very little recording of data, very little recording of structured interviews, zero scorecards, no evidence. And so at the end of the day, all HR can do is rely on your decision and your input. A decision that might haunt you for many years to come because you are adding this individual to your team with not much evidence in terms of understanding what good looks like and how to marry, your very good understanding of what the job requires with your shortlist of candidates. Now back to introducing a new platform. All of a sudden we have scorecards, we have merit lists, we've got a structured process, we've got evidence gathered of all the candidates. The system can help you with the criteria that you're looking for. It can match the candidates against this criter criteria and all of a sudden the information is surfaced to the top. There is no more room for just judgment. And for many line managers, that could feel like an attack. And in a way it is. But it's not an attack on you, it's attack, it's an attack on the process. Because all of a sudden we are not just left with discretion anymore. The information about the candidates that applied for your role is visible in technology that is helping you and HR make fair and effective based on what the job requires. So basically what the organization is now saying, your judgment matters, but it cannot be the only thing that matters. And so now I want to bring something into this conversation again that I believe isn't spoken about enough. And that is that an unstructured undocumented process is not just an inefficiency, but it is also a reputational and legal risk for you as an organization. You see, when your hiring decisions aren't documented, when there is no way for you to showcase the evidence of how you made your decisions, there is no room for you to prove that your decision was fair and that you did not therefore discriminate against the wrong group or the wrong set of candidates. And so in 2026, candidates are consumers. I've said this many, many times. They will take you on, they will ask for feedback, they will ensure that they understand why they were not hired. And it is absolutely critical for organizations to be able to prove fairly that the differentiation or the discretion that you applied was based off the requirements of the role and that you can fairly prove your decision of who you hired and who you didn't hire, both from a reputation perspective. Because social media is so, so crazy at the moment. I see on a daily, weekly basis on LinkedIn, candidates, individuals, consumers, go at organizations, they will tag them, they will tag the marketing department, the legal department, the IT department, the actual hiring manager that was in the conversation and they will call them out. And this is not a, ah, nobody, this is someone with 5 or 10,000 followers on LinkedIn. Same with TikTok, same with Instagram. The social media landscape has given a tremendous voice to everybody. And you do not want to be at the receiving end of a post and then have no evidence to prove why you made the decision that you made. And so what I'm really saying is that a tool, the right tool, is not optional anymore. It is a protection and efficiency and many other gains that you can add to your hiring process. What do I mean by protection? Firstly, it protects the candidate from being Biased if you run a proper piece of technology in your hiring process that starts by identifying and helping you identify the requirements of the role and then straight through the application process. How you filter, how you screen, the video interview, psychometric assessments, um, skills and job knowledge tests, these are all methods instruments you can think of them that can help remove the bias, remove the faking, the cheating from a candidate perspective and present you then secondly with an opportunity to fairly screen and navigate through your pool, allowing you to then make that decision and then prove that decision and if need be to the public. Now let's get back to the resistance for a second because I believe not all resistance is a bad thing. Often line managers are not consulted, you aren't consulted when new technology is brought in, your opinion isn't asked, you aren't in a focus group brainstorming with the other share and stakeholders around what is working and what isn't working. Where it might be pure resistance is a one liner, uh, like we don't need this or let's not change the process. It's worked for us in the past there. HR and line managers really need to deep dive into the why and truly uncover whether it is time for a change in your organization. Do you need new technology? Are you able to screen effectively? Are you able to save time? Are you able to increase the quality of your candidates as you make your hiring decision? Is it easy to navigate for both the candidate and HR and the line managers? Because here's the reality. User experience in our day and age now is not optional. It is non negotiable. People who do not enjoy any sort of application or piece of software will simply just ignore it. They will not return. I've seen it, you know, it's your phone proves it. How often have you downloaded an app and then deleted it within a minute? Because the UI user interface and ux, the experience is terrible. So yes, resistance can be good and it can be negative. So if you are resisting technology right now, or rather let me say this, if what I'm saying right now resonates with you, if you have gone through a process and you've fairly made a hiring decision and you've had your structured data, your documented data, your evidence in front of you and you are satisfied with that, well done, you're on the right path. But if anything of what I just said creates some sort of hesitation, if somewhere in listening to this episode you go, hm, maybe there's something that Fran is saying here that I should look into, that's an opportunity for you to explore that. Because at the end of the day, making the right hiring decision benefits you. It serves you. Yes, it protects you, protects your organization's reputation. But at the end of the day, you are going to be managing that candidate, not hr. Yes, once there is a problem, you're going to call your HR business partner, but they're going to ask you for the evidence. They're going to ask you, where did you provide coaching, training, onboarding, mentoring? What resources were given to this candidate? How quickly were they able to onboard and get up to speed? Because the quicker the and the faster your employees can get going. We all know this. The better they serve you, your objectives and ultimately your business. The goal was never to catch anybody out. The goal was to create awareness around how important it is to make a fair, unbiased, defensible hiring decision. One that allows you to be more productive and gets your team going faster and quicker. Thank you so much for listening. See you in the next episode. Thanks so much for listening to Solving the People Puzzle. If you enjoyed today's episode, can you please go and like subscribe and even leave us a five star rating? If you have any questions around how to create the ultimate end to end hiring solution, head over to Wamly IO so that we can help you hire better people faster. Catch you next.