How to recruit in web3

Web3 particularities

I think that the main difficulty is that Web3 is a novelty, so there are not (yet) many people out there with professional experience in this industry. 

But there is currently a lot of buzz around Web3, so we are trying to attract candidates that are starting to see it as a career opportunity. The challenge as a recruiter is to understand the motivation behind it, and personal projects are very interesting to look at when evaluating this aspect. 

In the recruitments that we did in the last few months, apart from Blockchain engineers, no one had previous experience working in a blockchain company. For example, we recruited a growth manager who follows Blockchain from afar. Before we contacted him, he wasn’t interested in working in this industry. What made this candidate the best one was his willingness to learn, innovate, and apply what he knows about growth in a totally new industry. 

How do you attract top talent?

Finding candidates is quite different for Defi/ Web3 candidates.

If you expect people to be looking for your project and your job openings, you can wait for a long time.

You need to actively look for them. Having employer branding is very important, but it takes a lot of time to get results, so you need to see it as a long term  investment. 

We have a career page where we explain what it means to be working at Request. We talk about our values and how we work. 
We also use our social media to communicate about our company and our job openings. 

So far, the most successful tool we have been using is LinkedIn. I know it’s not always popular with tech recruiters, but it has given us great results. A year ago we were nine and we are now over twenty. Most of the recruitments have been made through LinkedIn.

We contact candidates individually and we customize the message we send them by explaining why their profile made us contact them. For example, the fact that they used to work for an invoicing company or that they wrote on their LinkedIn that they wish to work for a blockchain company. It’s also very important to be fast and flexible when it comes to setting up calls. We are also very honest with our candidates. We draw the most accurate picture of what it looks like to work at Request and we don’t oversell anything.

Being fully remote, we recruit people worldwide. Being distributed allows us to recruit the best people without any geographical barriers. It also brings us into the most interesting debates among us thanks to our different cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. We want to be a company that will bring useful products worldwide, and if our team is a representation of that, it can only work.

What characteristics do good applicants often have?

It’s a challenging question.

I think that as a startup and a blockchain company, one thing we know for sure, is that everything changes really fast. In two months from now, I already know our company will be different and the ecosystem will also have changed. You are recruiting people that find this statement exciting and not scary. People who have this growth mindset and willing to take whatever opportunities they have to learn. 

How does the recruitment process work?

We try to optimize time and effort for everyone involved in the recruitment: the candidates, the managers and sometimes the recruiting agencies. Yet, it’s important to be thorough in our interview process. As a small company, each person joining the team will have a major impact on the project and the team spirit. We need this impact to be positive which means recruitment calls and onboarding are key. 

We usually get about three calls: HR, team lead and co-founder. The recruitment process lasts no more than two weeks in total. Each interview during this process is an opportunity for the candidate to get a different perspective of our company.

Why is onboarding crucial?

For us, the challenges of onboarding are helping the new person with:

• Having a sense of belonging to the team without seeing anyone face to face, at least in the first few weeks.
• Understanding the culture, especially all of its implicit parts.
• Adjusting to the remote settings (autonomy, work/life balance, etc.)
• Providing as much support in their learning curve with Defi/web3, like introduction calls with key people, links to useful books or videos. We also give them a personality test orientated on their ability to learn. We believe that by helping the person to better understand his/her strengths, he/she will grow faster.