Click, Approve, Store: The New Age of Structured HR Approvals

How a Process, a Problem, and Some People (plus Coffee) Gave Birth to an Automated Offer Approval System that Nobody Saw Coming.

Scene 1: The Grumbling Hiring Manager & the HR

Email Loop of Doom It all started, as most heroic tales do, with frustration. “Why do I have to send a separate email just to say ‘approved’? Can’t I just reply ‘Looks good’?”

This innocent question from a mildly irritated hiring manager sent shivers down the HR spine. Because as an HR person trying to bring order to chaos, nothing is scarier than vague approvals like: – “Go ahead.” – “Good to roll.” – “+1.” Were these approvals? Opinions? Cryptic affirmations?

Thus began my (Divya’s) journey — the HR professional determined to stop interpreting emojis and one liner and build a clear, trackable, simple offer approval process.

Scene 2: DIY HR Enters Developer Territory

“How hard can it be? Just a form, a trigger, a little script…” I bravely opened Google Apps Script and typed code with the determination of someone who had seen a YouTube tutorial once. But soon, errors popped up faster than weekend weddings in May.

Enter: Nikhil — developer, unsuspecting colleague, and now, accidental co-pilot on my automation quest.

Scene 3: The Subtle Judgement & Relentless Debugging

Nikhil’s friends Kruthik and Sumanth joined the debugging saga. Silent glances were exchanged — a gentle mix of “aww, she tried” and “what did she do to this script?”

But they didn’t mock. Oh no — they helped. They explained. They rewrote my code like archaeologists restoring ancient ruins, and Nikhil became the go-to brain I chewed on for every bug.

Every. Single. Bug.

Scene 4: Bugs, Buttons & Brilliance

We hit roadblocks: – Buttons not working? – Emails going to the wrong people? – Scripts thinking the approver is the janitor?

Each time, Nikhil — with the patience of a monk and the curiosity of Sherlock — solved it. We added HTML formatting to emails. Approval buttons with conditions. Comment boxes for feedback. Dynamic routing based on approver name. Even got the email of the person submitting the form automatically.

Somewhere in this mess, something beautiful happened: We learnt. We collaborated. We actually had fun.

Scene 5: HR Meets Dev. Dev Meets HR. AI Watches Confused.

I (the HR person) realized I could automate processes using the tools we already had — Sheets, Forms, Scripts. Nikhil (the Dev) realized Google Apps Script wasn’t just for nerdy workflows, but could solve very real, very annoying HR problems.

We both learned: – What one knows, the other doesn’t. – What one can’t do, the other probably can. – And what AI helps with… still needs humans to stitch it all together.

Scene 6: The WFO Win — People Started Noticing Other colleagues dropped by.

“What are you guys building?” “This looks cool!” It became a mini hackathon — right from the office. Collaboration, curiosity, creativity — everything that WFO (Work From Office) promises but rarely delivers, happened here.

We took a dull, frustrating task — chasing approvals — and turned it into a smart, trackable, one-click workflow.

In Conclusion: The Big HR x Tech Crossover Event

This isn’t a story about code. It’s a story about what happens when you: –

Take initiative – Ask for help – Mix different skills – And laugh (a lot) along the way.

Today, our offer approvals are smooth. Clear. Trackable.

No more “go aheads” and “+1s”. And all because one HR person had a dream… and one dev had just enough time between tasks to make it come true.