How storyarb turned a hiring fix into a company-wide ops system with Typeform

storyarb didn't have bad systems—they had efficient ones.

"I don't know that they were ever working fine," says Abby Murray, CEO and Co-founder. "It was working fast. And we knew it wasn't a long-term solution." 

When Abby started the agency, she was the entire operation: setting up platforms, handling hiring, and managing clients. But as storyarb grew, its hiring and onboarding system broke down.

Each hiring round, someone would spin up a new application form and a new file. Nobody knew where anything lived. There was no routing, no central view, and no consistent process. 

"I remember vividly the transition when we grew out of Google Forms. When it was time, it was time." - Abby Murray, CEO and Co-founder, storyarb

Led by Chief of Staff, Lauren Layton, storyarb rebuilt operations from the ground up. With Typeform, they replaced chaos with a scalable system for hiring, onboarding new employees, and collecting feedback. The system they built to fix hiring became the blueprint for everything else.

With Typeform, storyarb has seen:

• 100% of applicants routed, tracked, and sorted through a single Typeform-to-Zapier to Notion pipeline
• Recurring automated employee surveys (monthly pulse, end-of-year engagement, 360 reviews) run without manual coordination
• Continuous client CSAT and NPS in place of ad hoc check-ins
• 4x improvement in client onboarding efficiency

Challenge: A hiring process that couldn’t keep up

When Lauren joined storyarb as Chief of Staff, she inherited five color-coded spreadsheets to track candidates, plus separate forms with different questions and exercise requirements. It was impossible to know which was current. 

With no single source of truth, there were a lot of, “Where does that file live…?” questions throughout the hiring process. Lauren needed all applicant information flowing into one centralized location where multiple people could evaluate candidates.

storyarb was growing fast—hiring needed to scale just as fast. 

Solution: One form to start every hire

As a four-time founder with a successful exit under her belt, Abby understood that fast and messy could only take storyarb so far. She needed a tool that could keep up and wouldn't become obsolete the next time storyarb grew.

"While it's sometimes more expensive to go with Typeforms or Notions of the world, it makes more sense to invest in that infrastructure. It's something that scales with your company and won’t become obsolete." - Lauren Layton, Chief of Staff, storyarb

storyarb’s Typeform-powered hiring pipeline

The storyarb team started with hiring. The application form for new employees now lives on storyarb’s website, linked from every job posting. Applicants start on one form, select their role, and land on role-specific questions. 

Zapier sends the application straight to a Notion careers board where hiring managers can review, shortlist, reject, or mark as spam in one click. The master job board tracks progress across all full-time roles:

• Shortlisted applicants are sent a role-specific exercise
• After the exercise is returned, Lauren changes the applicant’s status in Notion and tags a hiring manager for review
• From there, applicants move on to live interview rounds and reference checks

The board also doubles as a talent database. Candidates who were strong but poorly timed—whether they accepted another offer or don’t live in a hiring region—are tabled rather than lost. Every application is searchable, so storyarb can see how a candidate has evolved.

Now any hiring manager can come to one place, see every applicant for a role, and take action with two clicks.

From hiring to a business-wide operational shift

Once the talent pipeline was running smoothly, Lauren and Abby faced the same question in every department: Why build something new when they already had something that worked? 

Abby's standing rule before evaluating any new tool is to check whether the existing stack already covers the need. "More often than not, you're probably not using that platform to the fullest," she says. "Make sure you don't already have the thing that you need."

Typeform kept passing that test. The same Typeform-Zapier-Notion logic that fixed hiring became the default infrastructure for any information-gathering across the business—employee feedback, client onboarding, and client pulse. 

Every time a new operational problem surfaced, the answer was already in the stack.

"Typeform was an obvious choice. We've used it in so many different ways across our business, both internally and externally. They've really become a trusted and reliable partner." - Lauren Layton, Chief of Staff, storyarb

Results: Automation that frees people to do more

What once took hours of founder-led coordination now runs on its own. Client onboarding runs 4x faster. Hiring managers have stopped asking where files live, because every applicant is routed, tracked, and reviewable in one place.

"New hires are shocked at how well-oiled this machine is when they come in knowing it's a startup." - Abby Murray, CEO and Co-Founder, storyarb

The feedback layer runs the same way. Monthly pulse surveys, end-of-year engagement reviews, and 360s feed directly into quarterly planning. Typeform triggers all of it. No manual coordination needed. ‍

Client CSAT and NPS surveys run on a set cadence, so storyarb tracks sentiment continuously instead of catching a single moment on a call.

The systems at storyarb aren't just working “good enough” anymore. They're working. For growing teams, Abby and Lauren’s advice is simple: Move fast, but build systems that can scale with you.

Ready to build your own hiring system with Typeform? Get started today.