How Decagon’s partnership with Paraform evolved from early hires to specialized searches

Decagon builds AI agents for customer experience, helping companies handle complex customer interactions at scale.

Perry Ha joined Decagon just before the company announced its Seed and Series A, when the team was still just a handful of people. A little over two years later, Decagon has more than 500 employees across offices around the world and has raised its Series D. Perry now serves as VP of Operations and People.

Decagon’s rapid growth has made hiring one of the company’s most important operating priorities: moving quickly enough to support the business without lowering a high talent and culture bar.

“We look for people who are extremely smart, work very hard, and are very collaborative. Very few companies are able to build a workforce that actually exhibits all three.”

From the first hires to an extension of a 30+ person talent team

Decagon started working with Paraform in March 2024, before it had a single internal recruiter. Within its first month on the platform, Decagon hired its Founding AE and Founding Software Engineer.

What began as a way to help build the first team has continued through every stage of Decagon’s growth. Today, Decagon has more than 30 people on its talent team, but Paraform still operates as an extension of that organization.

“I think ultimately speed is always one of the most critical components of building a company. Paraform has been critical in helping us maintain that velocity at every turn.”

As the internal team has grown, where Decagon uses Paraform has evolved.

“Whenever we need to either increase the capacity in a very high-velocity role, or we need to build a pipeline for a highly specialized role in a new country, for example, we can always rely on the Paraform team to be a great partner to us.”

During hiring surges, Paraform gives Decagon additional reach without requiring the team to permanently staff for the peak. For specialized roles, it can bring in recruiters who already understand the market. And as Decagon has expanded internationally, Paraform has helped create recruiter capacity and candidate pipeline before the internal team was fully established in each location.

Maintaining the bar across 25+ hires

For Decagon, the measure has always been the quality and impact of the people it hires.

“Ultimately for us, we’re very results driven. The most important thing is candidate quality and ultimately how many hires we are making.”

Across the partnership, Decagon has made more than 25 hires through Paraform, spanning machine learning, core engineering, Agent Product, and more. As the roles, seniority levels, and geographies have changed, the search has been able to adjust quickly around Decagon’s feedback.

“Whenever we're calibrating on a new geography or role or seniority, whatever coaching or feedback that we provide gets taken in very quickly. And we see that pan out in the results of the candidates that are being sent to us quite quickly.”

That feedback now flows across Paraform’s recruiter network and, more recently, Paraform Agents. Now, every role on Paraform is enabled with a custom agent. Three Decagon hires have already come directly through agent matches. As Decagon gives feedback on who it wants to meet, pass on, and move forward, both the recruiters and agents can adapt to what the team is actually looking for.

At Decagon, the bar extends beyond the initial hire to how much people can grow with the company.

“I think the wonderful thing about the high talent bar that Paraform has been able to maintain for a lot of the candidates that they bring in is we might be able to find leaders, but we also find a lot of great ICs who can grow into leadership roles here at Decagon.”

Tara Roudi is one example. She joined Decagon through Paraform as one of its earliest Senior Agent PMs. She went on to lead one of the company’s largest AI transformations and has since grown into Sr. Director of Agent Product Management, leading a function that has expanded from roughly six people to around 50.

“My growth at Decagon has mirrored a bit of the rocket-ship growth of the company overall. I’ve been afforded the opportunity to continuously step up and step into a leadership role.” — Tara Roudi

A partnership built for Decagon’s next stage

Decagon has always valued long-term partners that can grow alongside it. As it enters its next phase of growth, its recruiting needs will continue to expand across teams, roles, and geographies. Paraform gives its talent team additional capacity when it needs to move quickly or build expertise in a new area.

“We’ll continue to scale, we’ll continue to hire for high-velocity roles, and we’ll also continue to have specialized roles that we’ll need. We're excited to partner with Paraform along that journey.”