Power User Spotlight: KPMG’s Monica Sridaran

A seasoned middleware web services developer with more than eight years of experience, Monica is now a Senior Unqork Configurator working for a wide variety of KPMG clients. Most recently, her entry in the 2022 Unqork Creator Hackathon—a creative solution for automating and digitizing HR feedback—was selected as a finalist and eventually took second prize. 

Monica: I built a solution that digitizes the process of setting up job interviews, coordinating hiring committee members, and managing feedback on candidates. It is all automated through a dashboard. The idea definitely came out of a real-world need. I have to conduct interviews on a regular basis and send feedback to multiple team members, a process that can involve a lot of hassles. 

How did the Unqork platform enable you to build this solution so quickly?  

Unqork’s dynamic grid made a big difference. It is a very powerful component that gives you editability on the view grid on the screen. It’s like an Excel spreadsheet, but with a lot more functionality and flexibility.  

Unqork also made it really easy to put role-based access controls in place. For example, with my solution, an HR employee or hiring manager can access everyone’s feedback, track the skills they possess,  and see whether a candidate has been rejected or selected. But an individual interviewer can only access information about their own interview processes. 

It would definitely have taken much longer to build this solution using a traditional approach!

Did the capabilities in the platform or in Unqork Marketplace help you think more creatively about your Hackathon project? 

Yes, definitely. For example, I was thinking about how interviewers could record the skills of different candidates. It could be two or three skills, or it could be 10. I thought of using a traditional form, but then I came across the uniform grid component, which made it a snap. You just drag and drop that uniform grid, and you can add any number of components, as many times as you want. That helped me add a capability I wouldn’t even have considered using.  

I thought of using a traditional form, but then I came across the uniform grid component, which made it a snap. You just drag and drop that uniform grid, and you can add any number of components, as many times as you want. That helped me add a capability I wouldn’t even have considered using.

How long have you been an Unqork Creator, and how quickly were you able to start creating? 

I have been using Unqork for the last two and a half years. Before that, I was developing middleware applications that did not have any UI elements, so the first time I really got to work on front-end development was when I started on Unqork. 

The initial training on Unqork got me up and running very quickly. You learn about each of the components, the rules, the initializers, the data workflow, etc. After that, there is more of a learning curve, as you learn how to configure things more carefully. But getting to know the basics is a very quick process.  

What is your favorite thing about creating with the Unqork platform? 

That would definitely have to be the speed at which we can build things out. You can drag and drop a few components, and, bam, you have a full-on website up and running. 

I also love how easy it is to learn, even for a person without any technical background. I’ve seen everyone from business analysts to testers come into Unqork and create configurations without any technical background at all. 

 I’ve seen everyone from business analysts to testers come into Unqork and create configurations without any technical background at all. 

How has Unqork changed the way you and your team work collaborate? 

It definitely makes it easier to collaborate more with our business partners. With Unqork, they can visualize how the configuration is going to work without any problem. And if the client is confused about anything, we can just whip up a POC quickly, show them how it’s going to work, and make sure we are aligned. 

Do you have any best practices to share with your fellow Unqork Creators? 

Most Creators probably already know how important naming conventions are for the components they create. But many may not be as familiar with Notes, which is a really cool feature available in Unqork. It is really helpful, even if you only use it for yourself. Like, when you come back to the module, you may not remember why you wrote a rule a certain way, and it may not be visible straight away if you’re looking at the configuration. So, using Notes definitely increases readability and reusability.

Also, the Notes feature is much easier to use than creating documentation in the old way, in a separate document that may live elsewhere. The information you need is sitting right there alongside the component.