Hiring Trends and Challenges in the Blockchain Space

Transcript

what's up everybody how are you my name is Bellman can you guys hear me well clear thumbs up thumbs down just anybody alrighty awesome um thank you so much for the uh introduction uh my name is Bellman I'm the technical recruiter at off chain Labs the creators of arbitrim uh now that's in the hands of the Dao the community and the foundation um but uh but yeah now uh we're working on a few scaling Solutions and a compiler the layer three offering as well so super excited about that but I wanted to keep this talk kind of General um you know I've been recruiting in this space for the past year and a half two years or so but previously that I've

done a ton of recruitment throughout AWS companies small medium Enterprise level businesses as well so I've seen it all from the interview processes that I've created from the job descriptions to the different candidates I've spoke to whether they'd be in the U.S in the APAC region here in Europe um I've I've actually been in Bosnia for the past three months so just right across the border visiting and family have an opportunity to work remotely and even during my senior seminar back in 2019 I had the opportunity to you know look at the Workforce Development of like this entire region like what's what's happening from an economic development standpoint is there funding uh you know actually coming in driving the you know

technological growth and the you know opportunity here for folks so yeah diving you know diving into you know here at uh edcon like there's a ton of different projects there's a there's a ton of folks hiring as well and I really want to kind of take a deep dive into two aspects of it whether it be the project and the candidate perspective and how those two kind of do tie together and we'll we'll be discussing the overall Talent landscape the hiring Trends and the overall industry challenges as well uh yes I got you so the blockchain space is evolving rapidly and it's it's essential to keep

up with emerging Trends there is a shortage of qualified talent in the market and companies are struggling to find the right Talent some of the specialized skills you know with smart contract development cyber security and distributed systems but also on the you know opposite side that there is the business focus as well with the marketing the back-end operations product and such and businesses have you know one of uh one of two of these problems either they have the product developed and it's out on the market and you know there is a ton of user adoption but they don't have the business you know figured out whether it be the HR side the operation side the recruitment side the marketing the business

development specifically as well and it's kind of like asking yourself whether it be the project perspective or the candidate perspective what do I need like how do I play a role in this what's the piece of the puzzle that I'm fitting into as well and hopefully this presentation can kind of take a deeper dive into it here shortly all right so some of the trends that I've seen in the in the past two years while uh recruiting in this space just solely talking to developers uh Engineers Business Development folks product folks is there is a ton of you know activity when it comes to the

GitHub repos I think there's been about 24 25 million uh commits in the past year but when you actually look at the entire developer pool there's only about 24 25 000 active developers in a space full-time and that's across you know the entire world from the aipac region to Africa to Europe to the United States as well and when we look at the United States just as as you know a blanket a template of like you know the opportunities there's only 2 600 related jobs in the entire ecosystem and that's from the exchange-based the the node providers the protocol level and you know the the various other you know our

aspects of what it takes to actually have a project um and already we can see that there's a ton of activity from these like more of these web 2 companies if you want to say uh from the banking system to the supply chain side and you know there they have these small cohorts of individuals working on uh blockchain development and specifically you know there might be some researchers some product folks some business development you know um individuals as well but at the core of it if we look at a thousand person you know company there's only maybe about five or six maybe ten people working on this project to figure out if it would you know actually work and if if the

business use case is there and then you've got to kind of pitch it to different stakeholders pitch to the board see if they approve it get the budget for it and things of that nature but the fact of the matter is there is there is an opportunity in the business and there is an opportunity you know being developed within the space and specifically whether it be you know the ethereum uh you know side of it or whatever blockchain that this company might be looking to use the simple fact is there is these folks working on it and usually uh these individuals might have a better opportunity of getting to a chance to actually transition this knowledge into the more protocol side uh or or into the

more development side of things whereas an individual working just as a sole engineer and they might be focused on something else externally and they want to interview the space they're not going to have the advantage that this team already has so it kind of paints a picture of they already have the leg up but how does other individual you know kind of get themselves um you know on the on the same playing field and that goes back to education whether it be you know taking some sort of course at a at a university getting a certificate like all this kind of plays into you know your overall growth within your position like the business development business development

individual at a company who isn't focused on blockchain but is really interested you know in a uh within their spare time they they might go uh you know uh interview ad at a protocol company and only to realize that they don't actually have the skill set or the technical Acumen to get the job but the engineer who's working at the same exact company you know also interested as well they might actually be better at that business development role than the engineering role uh just because of the fact that they know how to sell the technology they know the vulnerabilities and you know things of that nature but at the at the end of the day the engineer isn't going to do business development obviously but just more of the comparison just to kind of

paint the picture of like the capabilities of it so some of the challenges that you know we uh We've run into um well we I've I've seen specifically um our finding qualified you know uh talent and you know at the at the end of the day like a lot of the things I just you know kind of mentioned tie into qualified candidates but they also tied into the compensation side of things and like how do you handle compensation as a project like at the end of the day if you don't have funding then you can't really hire for the role and you can't really build out a team but you also have a really good product that might be doing very well in this space so it's kind of like a double-edged sword where the product

the marketing the business development side all kind of ties in together but then again like if you don't really have the actual funding or the money to pay for these you know hires or the resources to onboard these folks it becomes a bit difficult to actually scale out and like really kind of grow your team as well and whether you're a small company a large Enterprise you have to have this budget essentially allocated for these hires whether they be researchers developers you know the and the many other roles I mentioned earlier as well well so some strategies for overcoming blockchain Talent would be to kind of really figure out what you need as a

project whether it be you know the many other roles I just mentioned uh previously but figuring out like your interview process figuring out your technical assessments who's going to interview these people uh where where are they going to end up you know Department wise are they interviewing for you know one position but whenever they get into the organization are we going to switch them and try to see if they're versatile are we going to communicate that throughout the interview process these are like very important things to kind of consider internally as a project because it really affects the overall Canada experience and it ties into how you're you know viewed also externally because this is a very very small space

like everyone knows each other everyone talks if one person has a bad interview you know at X at X company they're going to talk to their uh you know co-workers or even you know friends that are already in the space and they're going to you know Express that uh you know candidate experience and you know it it does kind of tie into employer branding and one of uh one of the biggest things that like is that I've seen the past maybe like six months to a year has been the focus on like diversity equity and inclusion and how that Horizon to The Hires to Global hiring you know because have an opportunity to have individuals

with various different backgrounds viewpoints does kind of paint a different project and give you know other individuals the opportunity uh to really kind of pitch in and chime in and like you know whether it be someone from the APAC region or from Europe that could be working together it does provide a different like use case for the project as well and then that kind of ties into the funding side of things be able to play uh pay these uh you know folks and things that nature all right so to tie it all together the blockchain space is evolving companies need to keep up with emerging Trends to attract and retain top talent by adopting a holistic approach and investing in training and

development they can obviously overcome these challenges of the talent Gap and build a strong and diverse blockchain team and uh yeah I just wanted to say uh thank you guys once again and if you would like to check out some of our opportunities please go on jobs.lever.com chain labs and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on Twitter at Xerox recruiter or on LinkedIn as well very very active on both but thank you so much for your time and I look forward to uh you know listening to other speeches today