This Tech CEO Raised a $10M Round Lead By Sequoia — Learn How He Hired & Scaled His Team, Fast!
One of the best problems a founder can have is that business is recently raising a round of funding and you having to hire — quickly! That was the situation Gui Laliberté, founder and CEO at Setter, was in. He knew that if he didn’t create a scalable hiring system from the beginning, though, he’d have extra work down the line to make up for the ad-hoc start. For Gui, this meant building a system that solved his immediate hiring needs that would also scale well over time without him needing to put in extra effort and time. This is where Bloom came in, offering deep expertise to solve immediate pain points and build a system for the future.
Identifying a need
Gui’s main challenge, like many founders, was time. He not only had a lot on his plate to service existing and incoming clients, but also had a variety of roles he needed to hire for.
Since HR and hiring was not his forte, it became clear that he needed an expert to help him find talent. He started thinking about outsourcing recruiting, helping him alleviate his immediate pain point of hiring the right people for his growing company. He thought he’d solve the immediate need now with outsourced recruiting then focus on building thriving a culture around the key roles they were hiring for and their existing team.
Once he got talking with Bloom, though, he learned that Avery could help on the strategic side simultaneously with talent sourcing. The two aligned on keeping Gui’s vision and values but leveraging Avery’s expertise to build an inclusive, data-driven recruiting process.
A holistic system
Building a new hiring system, integrating the founder’s vision, and sourcing talent at the same time is a tall order, but Gui and Avery created a plan of attack together. In their conversations, it became clear that the strategy wouldn’t succeed without a single source of truth.
With Avery’s advice, Gui identified the applicant tracking system (ATS) as the best source of truth for the hiring process. Every candidate went through the ATS and it could be a home for educational documents about the new hiring process. The only problem was that Setter was using an outdated ATS that couldn’t handle the company’s future needs.
The strategy would start with implementing a new ATS platform in order to fulfill a three-pronged strategy:
- Culture
- Process
- Sourcing
The first thing Avery did was to implement Lever as Setter’s new ATS and train the team on how to use it. The platform was more powerful and versatile compared to Setter’s previous ATS, meaning all changes could live on the platform.
Culture
Gui knew he wanted to build an inclusive, welcoming culture at Setter. But he also knew that he had his own style of interviewing and hiring that matched with the values he founded the company with. A big part of Avery’s work in developing a culture that was inclusive but also respected Gui’s vision was to reorient ‘culture fit’ to become ‘culture-add.’
“Avery helped us identify people that didn’t just align with our values, but also add to our culture and bring something new.”
Process
Avery helped Gui develop an inclusive recruiting process, in particular standardizing candidate questions and developing training documents for interviewers on unconscious bias. Since Gui had been involved in every hiring decision to date and wanted his vision to continue, Avery included some of Gui’s value-alignment questions in the process so that Gui could be confident every candidate was aligned to Setter’s values.
After that, Avery was on-hand to train staff on how to use Lever, answer questions, and provide overall hiring process support.
“Avery came in and was helpful in getting us exactly what we needed. She also made herself available to answer questions and help train people so they could be successful.”
Sourcing
While Avery was helping to develop an inclusive recruiting process with a powerful ATS, the Bloom team was also passively sourcing candidates. This led to Setter filling over 10 roles in less than four months, covering all of Gui’s immediate hiring needs and implementing a new process that was better for candidates and the company in the long-run.
Now that the project is done, what Gui likes best is that he won’t have to hire consultants to run his system. Avery set up a scalable, sustainable hiring foundation that will carry Setter well into the future and require less of Gui’s time in the future, not more.
“It’s pretty amazing that with the ATS and new hiring process working, I can remove myself from most of the interviews and the team has been consistently great at delivering great hires, meaning I can focus on other areas where the business needs me.”
PS: At Bloom, we support companies who aren’t ready for a full-time Head of Talent but need the leadership on an interim basis. We do the nitty-gritty foundational work like implementing the best tech, tools and processes that are infused with your org’s values. Just looking to hire for some key roles? We can assess, attract and hire top talent for your key roles giving you a competitive edge in this tight talent market — If you’re looking to up your talent game but aren’t ready for a full-time hire, connect with our Founder, Avery!
