Why Voiceflow Chose Bloom to Help Scale Their Team and People Operations
As the voice-tech space boomed, Voiceflow needed to expand its team to keep up with customer needs. Used to hiring solely within their own networks, Voiceflow chose Bloom to help them find amazing talent and provide advice to the leadership team on building inclusive recruiting practices. In the end, Voiceflow not only got a fantastic new team member and better internal processes, they even got employer branding benefits they weren’t expecting.
Looking back, Head of Growth Emily Lonetto explained why the company chose Bloom — and why they are so happy they did.
Huge growth and ready to hire
Voiceflow grew to over 20 people based largely on the team’s networks. Whenever there was a need, someone from the team would ask around for introductions. This worked to a point, but Emily was concerned it wouldn’t scale; she wanted to expand Voiceflow’s hiring capabilities without relying entirely on previous connections.
“Eventually, we want to manage hiring in-house,” said Emily. “But we needed to build a strong foundation to find and develop talent that an in-house talent lead would take over.”
After speaking with numerous HR leaders in the tech industry, Emily kept hearing Bloom — along with Bloom founder Avery Francis — coming up time and again. Having heard Avery speak at numerous events in the past, Emily reached out to see if Bloom would be a good fit.
Why Voiceflow chose Bloom
Voiceflow had a lot of boxes to check when it came to selecting a third-party consultancy. Emily said they ultimately chose Bloom because of five key factors:
1. Identifying new talent pools
“We wanted to deliver a great candidate experience and hire from outside of our immediate networks,” said Emily. “Bloom came highly recommended as a company that could help expand our talent search.”
2. Embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion throughout the process
“I loved that Bloom embedded diversity, equity, and inclusion into all of their work,” said Emily. “It wasn’t some siloed ‘offering,’ but a key element to all their work, which really resonated with us.”
3. Additional support beyond just placing a candidate
“Bloom acted almost like an internal team member from the first conversation,” said Emily. “They didn’t just talk about how they would send us candidates. The conversation focused on our goals and challenges — then they offered their perspectives on which approach to take.”
4. Values alignment and growing values-first
“Voiceflow is a values-driven company, so we resonated with the fact that Avery and Bloom have been unapologetic about living their values,” said Emily.
5. Local expertise with global reach
“We wanted to support a local company since our head office is in Toronto,” said Emily. “But we also operate in multiple countries, and love that Bloom’s network is truly global.”
How Bloom helped Voiceflow
Bloom started by helping Emily hire a Growth Manager for her team, covering all aspects of the search:
- Designing the job description
- Recruiting and vetting candidates
- Coaching the Voiceflow team on interview techniques
- Managing candidate admin, including planning follow up interviews and handling rejections with care
“It’s scary to hand over your employer brand to a third-party,” said Emily. “But we felt we could trust Bloom from day one to provide a great candidate experience.”
Concurrently, Bloom worked with Voiceflow’s leadership team on designing HR and recruiting processes so the team could eventually handle everything in-house. This included work-back plans with realistic hiring timelines, setting up job description templates to make them easier to design, and creating a candidate experience workbook so Voiceflow could ensure a consistent, inclusive experience for all candidates.
Bloom even helped Voiceflow with employer branding by helping them craft their story internally, then creating content to share the Voiceflow story externally.
The result: a happy, growing team
“Bloom was amazing,” said Emily. “They not only brought in fantastic talent and helped us build processes but helped us craft our employer story. We didn’t plan for Bloom to help us with our employer story — they simply did, and it was such a great value-add.”
The entire Voiceflow team loves the new Growth Manager that Bloom found them. Emily also loves that the company has an HR process in place for a consistent and inclusive candidate experience. This comes at just the right time since Voiceflow is continuing to expand the team.
Emily said hiring can be a tense and difficult process sometimes, but she loved the experience of working with Bloom.
“Bloom really invested in getting to know us as a brand and as a team,” said Emily. “They were transparent, focused on building relationships, and it was so great to know we have Bloom in our corner.”
