BBW23 – Day 3 – The Blockchain/Web3 Talent Landscape

[Music] hello everyone um my name is Mike melet uh I'm a co-founder of small recruiting agency called craft recruiting I've been recruiting for a little over eight years I recruited at a large technical recruiting agency prior to starting my own um I'm here with Emory and Trevor um Trevor you want to tell tell us about yourself absolutely so my name is Trevor I'm the director of strategic partnership with the crypto recruiters we are a staffing agency that is focused exclusively on blockchain crypto and web 3 I've been with the organization for uh two years coming up in a few weeks here and the organization itself has been around for 4 years and it was founded uh on the premise of rehumanizing the you know recruitment experience I'm actually is a New Year's resolution and really I think that's something that really resonates being in web3 crypto and blockchain because it's very community based and driven uh hey everyone I'm Em I'm the co-founder of ATA and ryen uh I started my career as a consultant McKenzie and then I switched to Technical Training field and I have been kind of in coding coder training and Workforce Development for about 10 years now uh we built startups before they trained lots of people and got them jobs in software development and and in the last year we kind of stepped into web 3 Technical Training uh and we are seeing lot of interesting stuff in the field and uh this is kind of a new um there's a different kind of tail Gap in in web 3 uh that we are trying to kind of wrap our head around uh and we are working with different protocols in the space L1 and L2 protocols who build the technical infrastructure for lots of different uh Technical Solutions with blockchain uh and a lot of these protocols like Solana pulka do ethereum uh they're trying to develop their own um Talent ecosystems uh so we partner with them and help them on board lots of new developers who are junior developers or experienced developers to build on their ecosystem and bring it to the market basically thank you em Trevor um so this first question it's a two-part question um what is talent in web 3 and blockchain uh what roles are available in the space and what skills are you seeing companies in the space looking for today yeah let me leave that off so you know in blockchain crypto and web 3 I think that you're going to see a lot of the the same kind of traditional rle that you would see in any kind of organization right you know there's uh marketing of opportunities there are Finance roles um right now there's obviously a lot of attention towards Regulatory Compliance there are analytics uh positions so anything that you can think of in a so quote unquote traditional business this also applies to blockchain crypto and web 3 right now just due to you know various market conditions and and and where we are um you know economically there's been more attention um from a lot of organizations to really focus on building um you know versus a a quote unquote bull market you know a lot of companies are hampering down they're really focusing on the infrastructure and the things that are going to be instrumental in terms of their success as a business so we're starting to see a lot more of our clients look for uh a lot all of those technical roles right you you're starting to see a lot of uh need for software Engineers developers uh high level CTO and other people that are going to be really driving the initiatives from the top down uh and you're starting to see even more you know marketing roles you're starting to to see Business Development roles and you're starting to see a lot more partnership roles as well too so that's kind of where we are with the landscape in terms of kind of what our clients looking for and you know working for a staffing agency you know in a very highly competitive industry right now we are very beholden to what our clients are looking for so what our clients need is really determining what we are looking for when it com to the actual talent pool out there uh yeah I think I agree with what TR is uh saying and in general uh a lot of F3 companies are tech companies they need similar roles uh but I think there are a couple different ways uh the companies in web3 differ from the other tech companies one of them is technology so they need kind of people who are familiar with how to work with blockchain how to work with protocols in the space uh and this that requires somewhat of a different technical stack uh for uh Talent uh in another way um again as Trev said elto companies are focusing on the making the business very viable result figuring out the product Market fit uh so we see lots of need in understanding the product and the market and where blockchain based Technologies uh can create value uh and in an interesting way the technical barrier uh is decreasing because a lot of say uh ethereum based uh and even other protocols uh are making their protocols easier to develop on at some point some of the stuff say you want to issue nfts or you want to do some other stuff it is not that different from integrating your normal software with an API with another service it doesn't require that much of a technical need in some cases uh so it's kind of as the infrastructure is developing becoming more developer friendly becoming more democratized and then the shift is going towards more solving the market risk and that is where we are seeing an increasing need where people to understand uh where a blockchain based business has an edge over a more traditional uh business uh so the from our view the talent need is kind of Shifting towards that side and the technical uh things are being resolved over time and lots of people are focusing on becoming smart contract developers and uh and I think there's going to be increasing demand there too but aot of smart contracts are public you can just use existing smart contracts and the need to develop like rewrite the whole thing is decreasing uh so I think people are going to get better at just using the existing stuff the uh using the apis ETC and focus more on the product Market fit uh and building skills and talent there and get employed in that area you know one of the other things too as you know job Seekers or people that are just in the industry overall you know a lot of our clients are looking for people that know the industry lingo that understand the technology you have to come into this with somewhat of an understanding right you know if you're going to apply for a top organization within the space you need to know things and they aren't going to be able to handhold you right so I think that as a job Seeker or as anyone that's just in the industry you have to be the mindset that you have to continuously learning you have to continuously educate yourself you have to continuously add skills to your portfolio right to stay competitive because it's extremely extremely competitive in this industry right you know right now the overall supply versus demand I mean it's just not even close right so as an individual that's seeking to enter this industry you have to go above and beyond to differentiate yourself and you have to be extremely knowledgeable and continuously learning things and getting the experience even if you're new to the industry you know take that time to volunteer um you know join a dial start up something on your own right whatever you can possibly do to get that experience that's what our clients are looking for and they're coming to us saying hey we need someone with three to 5 years of experience well that means that you need to start today right you can't start tomorrow not next week not the week after that if you're really serious and passionate about this space you have to be gaining experience by any means necessary and there are ways to do that in this industry want to add something to uh to what you said uh a lot of the things people build in the crypto space or web 3 space uh the early adapters are people like them uh other web3 enthusiasts or crypto enthusiasts uh so as Trevor said you need people who understand the lingo of that early adaptive Market uh because that is where what you're going to Market uh in that is the potential client base customer base that you have uh so familiar familiarizing yourself with the kind of the crypto or repti subculture makes a huge difference as you mentioned lingo they're I mean yeah uh people use different words people mean different things and they interact differently uh to some extent uh so being more familiar with that whole ecosystem is a big uh skill advantage that people or in the ecosystem all has yeah and when it comes to technology right you know I'll end it on this as a developer or anyone you know engineer coming into this space obviously right you're going to need to be aware of smart contracts you're going to need to know the differences between various protocols and what they are able to offer you need to be able to uh you know be strong when it comes to solidity right rust um move other type of programming languages and understanding what that's going to do and why an organization wants to have that whether it's for scalability security or just you know overall adaptability and and something that's going to fit with what the actual product that they're offering so you know the name of the game is to be continuously educating yourself and to be continuously um you know advancing and not staying stagnant to be proficient in this industry so I think we touched on it uh quite a bit there but um any additional ways on you know for the candidates out there how to get the attention of an employer and secure a role in web 3 in blockchain emry uh yeah I think uh as Chev mentioned there's it's a very competitive Mar competitive State uh where there a lot of technical people who want to get in into this and there are not that many roles uh to be honest uh but we also see there's a very high interest from the platforms the protocols for building the infrastructure here who want to showcase uh what their protocol can do and they cannot find enough people to build on their protocol F they allocate a lot of resources for ecosystem development uh and they want more people to show what can be done so kind of they need more entrepreneurial people they need people who can navigate the product Market fit Maze and also who can build uh things so if someone wants to get ahead uh I would recommend them to kind of build more things here and try to become more entrepreneurial here uh and go to heatons meet other people uh not focus on just building the technical skill but build a more comprehensive set of skills to show that you can build iterate understand the market uh and those people I think get a lot of resources uh the ones who want a job right now because there's not that much employment uh in these companies because there are not that many companies that scaled to hire say 10,000 developers like say Google does mhm uh so sh the focus is more on these kind of entrepreneurial more holistic skill skill sets as opposed to just technical yeah you know I think that that's really important Emory you know you have to be highly adaptable you have to be um extremely flexible right you know you have to be willing to make a bit of sacrifices right you know a lot of startup organizations they require long hours uh you're going to have to be multifaceted and you're going to not necessarily going to be able just to possess your job TT title quote unquote right um you know I'm seeing employers that are looking for social media managers that can also do Community Management they can also do a lot of other things right you're looking at people that um are in very highly technical roles clients are asking them to be able to converse with people in marketing departments right being able to speak with people in the analytics departments right you know there has to be this very uh collaborative type of Nature and that you have to really think outside out of the box and be very entrepreneurial in terms of taking you know control of your own career you know is one of the things that I think that's really you know great about this industry and one of the things I love about it is that you know there is still a lot of collaborative type of you know sharing and a lot of people in this space you know if you're trying to enter into this industry people want to help you right so you're not out there alone you're not trying to have to go about this totally on your own and I think that's one of the beautiful things about web gree blockchain and crypto at this point right now is that you know people want to help people want to share their knowledge so if you're a job seeker yes you can work with a recruiter you know you want to work with an in-house recruiter which is someone that is at you know a cabba Labs or a coinbase or Gemini right any of these other larger organizations but also build a relationship with an agency that's going to be working with a multitude of different companies so that you can get as much exposure out there as a jobseeker as you possibly can right and the time that you're putting into this you have to also be proactive you you have to be the aggressor in this type of situation you can't just sit around and wait you can't just you know apply to a bunch of jobs and kind of sit back and think that you know that's all that you have to do you have to uh be a notorious networker you have to go to events like this you have to be on various social media platforms you have to have a presence on LinkedIn uh telegram Twitter Discord you know you have to really be um connecting with different groups you have to be learning all the time so as a job Seeker in this space you know you have to do things that are going to be maybe a little bit uncomfortable right now and as you were mentioning Emory yes there isn't a lot of um you know as much demand for particular positions as there were even a year ago right now but we're still in the infancies of this industry we're still developing there's still so much room to grow and if you can get in right now this is the I think honestly quite now right now is like one of the best times to get into this space because when adoption does come when regulatory Clarity does come I mean you're going to start seeing more traditional companies you're going to see Banks you're going to see web 2 companies web 2.5 companies that are trying to shift and use this technology and if you're trying to get in then you know then quote unquote the train has left the station and it might be a little bit too late or it might just be much harder for you to get in so right now I think that the barriers to entry in the space even though they might be difficult it's a little bit lower than when really when things take off you know then you're just going to have a different kind of issue when it comes to getting a job I also want to add that you know sometimes you got to get out of your comfort zone you know there's so many online communities that are in this space that you can Network and find like-minded people that are more than happy to help you and to kind of guide you through some of the things that that may be tougher and that that's not that's something newer in web 3 and blockchain that there's like that much access to those that that would be able to help guide you and and assist I also think that um there's a lot to be said for um you know a lot of projects building in public or and also like making contributions um like different GitHub repos and you know getting in you know Dows like Trevor referred to to um these kind of things will help you find potential managers in the future or people that may know of other opportunities that paired with working with a agency recruiter that always has their ear to the ground trying to assess like where there's needs and where where there's clients that are actively hiring you know that that's always beneficial um so that leads me to to my next question which is like what should a candidate know about working with a recruiter yeah you know I think that people need to understand that working with a recruiter is is is it's very much relationship based right now I think that that used to be a little bit different and and the industry is kind of changing it used to be very transactional uh before it's like hey I have a job can you fill this job can you do it or not and that's pretty much it right that's how the conversation goes right now I think that especially in a a market like this that you have to be proactive and you have to be understanding that you know you have to share um really all the things that matter to you you have to be very vulnerable you have to be honest with yourself in terms of what you're looking for you need to be very open to communication and when you're working with a recruiter if you don't hear from a recruiter if you apply for a position and you don't hear from a recruiter from in the week reach out to them right you know just don't sit around and say well that that person goes to me I don't know what happened right take that opportunity to you Outreach to them and see what's going on because it's their job to get back to you and quite frankly a lot of recruiters you know they may be they might have a job posted at noon and by 2: p.m. that day they have a thousand job applicants right I mean it's incredibly hard sometimes just to keep up with the tremendous Val the tremendous volume and right now especially in this market when there are much more job Seeker than there are jobs you have to do the things that are going to make you stand out stay top of Mind absolutely stay top of mind for sure and that recruiter may not have something for you today but two months down the road when you know a hiring manager that they'd work with previously comes back to them and says you know we have this role open and think back to that conversation with that candidate that you didn't have the perfect role for them that that day but you're going to be giving them a call back uh you know very shortly after getting that new job requirement that that just came in so and one other thing too to add to that is that you know this industry is still people talk in this industry it's still small right so the way that you act um and the kind of attitude that you have that's going to follow you right so be very cognizant of what you put on social media um the type of conversation that you're having with people right you know understand that you know if you may not be a fit for one job at one particular organization but then that person if you build a relationship with that recruiter they might leave that organization they might remember you say hey you know what I had a conversation with you a year ago and I know that you you know you were extremely passionate you um you know you weren't really a great bit then but since then I've seen that you've done XYZ you've gained these things to your skill set now you're going to be a good fit for a role that we're working for so understand that you know what you do now follows you throughout your entire career I think that's really important to stay stay ahead of that for sure so may give some time for questions yeah yeah um let's touch on one one last point or one last question um and then we'll open up to to some questions here um want to talk about why Dei matters in a recruitment strategy and in web web 3 and blockchain yeah you know diversity Equity inclusion um it's interesting because I I work for a woman-owned um staffing agency you know I think that there's obvious a push too for you know more women and more inclusiveness in this space and you know web free blockchain and crypto is a very interesting industry because it's very Global um so you know there are people and collaborations I mean a lot of the companies that I'm working for they're remote first right some of these companies don't even have you know physical offices so you're getting people you know you might have a person that's in the UK and you know a person that's working in you know Ecuador and a person that's working in the states a person that's working in Canada and all these people are very collaborative um so I think that you know one of the things that's interesting right now web three blockchain and crypto um that's a little bit different from a lot of organization a lot of other different Industries is that there is a push towards you know kind of keeping a a kind of inclusive environment where there's going to be representation from all type of individuals that are interested in this space right so um I think that's really important but still nonetheless right organizations still have to hire the best person for the job so they have to even kind of you know tow the line a little bit with that but I definitely see a lot more focus in it yeah em anything you want to add or should we open it up uh yeah sure um as as chair mentioned I think the often here the definitions or expectations for DN and I are very much US based us- based expectations of disadvantage communities uh but a lot of uh crypto users and people who adopt these Technologies are people who live in African countries in India uh and when we think about the inclusivity or representation uh it's a more there's a chance to Define it differently uh in a global uh sense uh and probably being inclusive uh for a crypto company is very much about making foreign developers feel uh welcomed uh or uh making the time zone more inclusive uh you're probably going to find more developers in web 3 in say India in Nigeria and than in Western countries because to them crypto is a solves a daily problem and lots of people get into it after they use these products like I don't personally use crypto products on daily basis but lot of people in Nigeria in India in Turkey use these things as either investing opportunities or just solving their daily problems so if you're if your currency has been devalued to the point where you would be resorting to to using um cryptocurrency uh as a kind of as a standard um it's looked at a little bit differently than it's kind of an option for us here in the US and I think that lastly I mean it doesn't necessarily have to just be like a check boox right you know that that's something that companies are just doing to do it I think that you know having representation of of of people throughout the world when you're building a team in this space is great because as you mentioned right you know the adoption rate um I've been able fortunate enough to travel around the world and it's just incredible to see you know small mom and pop shops that are fully crypto it's Global you know and I don't see that anywhere in Boston right you know I mean it's incredible that you know we're very much ahead of the game in so many things but I think that you know we're very behind um the eightball when it comes to just really actually utilizing this technology and being able to understand it from a very conceptual standpoint so you know um it's an interesting thing and I think that's definitely going to be you know something important for organizations as they build their teams moving forward cool any questions for from anyone here please on how competitive it is for job Seekers to get into the industry what's and you mentioned how you have to stand out Above the Rest like what's one thing that you would recommend to stand out against all your other competitors so I think I I heard that so because it is a highly competitive industry some of the things that you can do to stand out there are so many things that you can do right if you're a developer you know I I would say you know be be vocal uh put yourself out there you know a lot of people and and and candidates in this space right now you know they are creating their own content you know they're creating you know YouTube channels about them just coding and developing they're joining hackathons they are being extremely vocal on various social media platforms right you know they're creating these own kind of organic groups they're connecting with other people that are doing this as well too right so you have to think outside of the box and you know what worked yesterday is not necessarily going to work tomorrow because this pace moves so fast so you know you have to do those kind of things you have to um reach out to people and thought leaders in the space you know your network truly is your net worth in this space so I would say connecting with as many people that are knowledgeable about this space as you can learning from them continuously educating yourself and to really do those things to stand out um join as get as much experience as you possibly can join as many organizations that you can and if there's not an opportunity for you that you can find in a highly competitive space like this you know what create one for yourself I've had people that um actually started their own podcast because you know it was a tough time getting a job and then that podcast became successful and that opened a door for them to you know work as a communication specialist in a much larger organization so really stay stay true to who you are um I would say you know really understand what you want to do and have that internal conversation where your true passions are and follow those dreams and just you have to never give up you know what what your failure may be today that's going to be something that's going to help you learn and you know Propel in the future so be tenacious never give up and always be uh evolving and that's how you can stand out I I'd also say sometimes it's important to even make contributions when it's not going going to help you financially or monetarily today um you know I I've seen people make contributions to to projects or products and and then next thing you know they're talking to the CTO or co-founder and they're impressed by this you know add-on or or the tinkering that some someone had done that's within their Community um I think in this space there's more access to hiring managers and to leaders that are open to having those conversations with those that are using their product or that are engaged in the in the in the industry or the space um so that's that's yeah and one last thing too right when you're reaching out if you're trying to make a a relationship with a recruiter you know um everyone's reaching out with the same standard message I need a job how can you help me right and that's great you have to do that but I think that one of the other things that you can do to stand out is say hey you know what I've done research on your organization I might not be a fit for this role but I'm really interested in this because I can solve this problem right so try to identify how are you going to be able to contribute and how you're going to help an organization get better instead of kind of coming from the mindset of me me me think about what you can do for them and how are you going to differentiate yourself and continuously reach out you'll be surprised that you know highle people in organ in organizations they are actually open to having a a chat with you right and just kind of come from that mindset and just be open-minded there's not too many other spaces where you you'd be able to you know direct message a Founder on Telegram and next thing you know you're having coffee with them and you know Talking Shop um so I I just kind of I I tell the candidates that I work with to take that approach you know put yourself out there [Music] there