Hiring in Crypto

Transcript

all right thank you so much for coming back so swiftly after lunch I think you made it back even before me uh you can really tell you're in Switzerland uh when people are there before the host um thanks so much for being here once again we have an amazing panel uh here today moderated uh by Nikita um and hiring in crypto I think is a struggle for 99 of us so yeah really looking forward to hearing what uh the audience has to say thank you I'll let you take it away awesome thank you so much well good afternoon everyone very nice to meet you we'll start off with some quick introductions on our panel which today is on hiring in crypto um as we just heard it is a very tough task hiring in crypto and let's see if

you guys agree with me but for a quick way of introduction I'll begin and then we can um uh go through the panelists my name is Nikita I'm the CEO and founder of Luna PR and Luna media Corporation we're headquartered in Dubai with offices in Miami Singapore and and maybe Zug very soon we've been in the space since 2017 we're a leading and award-winning PR marketing agency and Media company we've worked with 600 clients since 2017. we work on PR and communication strategies we also acquired the franchise for coin Telegraph Middle East last year Middle East is a fantastic region I believe and we're proud to be

bringing crypto media into the region I was also the host of CNBC Arabia's first ever web3 show which I also produced called on the Chain hitting 50 million homes and personally I've scaled my business in the last three years from five employees to a hundred so I definitely understand the challenges of hiring in crypto I'm excited to hear about you guys as well and then we'll kick off the panel okay so let me start first thanks for having me great event so my name is I was until recently the head of digital strategy of UBS and I've joined end of last year Sheffield half to be the global head of fintech so for those of you who don't know Sheffield half we're

a Global Executive search firm initially with financial services specialist but we expanded proactively in Tech and fintech is a very important topic for us we headquartered in London but we have offices pretty much around the world very active in other regions like the US which is our biggest um is our biggest market and we work with executive management teams of large financial institutions and teen Tech to find their next cxo managing directors VPS Etc and how is that related to crypto well one of the focus areas of the fintech practice I'm responsible for each crypto so we work with crypto Market maker digital surgeons

centralized and decentralized exchangers Foundations Etc um and well quite successfully so far so uh that's us super and it's a pleasure to be here today I work for a company called crypto Finance if you haven't heard of us before and we're a subsidiary of Deutsche Bosa so quite interesting being a crypto company that belongs to a large and traditional Financial Market infrastructure player and I hit up the sales team within crypto Finance which means I talked to a lot of banks and asset managers around how they can offer crypto and digital Asset Services to their clients

and I'm a little bit of an outsider really on the panel today because I don't have any specific recruitment experience but much like Nikita I have the Practical experience from a business perspective and so I joined crypto finance and as employee number 30 approximately we've grown to 120 people and I've built out the business development function within crypto finance and so I've done a fair amount of Recruitment and I think that probably my main claim to fame or reason why you should listen to me is because I have a fantastic team so at least did a good job with that but passing over to

daughter thank you very much and there's no such thing as an outsider here leaders like you happen to be my main important key stakeholder in this process so I think that it's very important if you can compliment whatever Phillip Julie and I are actually talking about in this in this forum so thank you for being here so my name is actually it's much longer but I wanted to keep the code short I am privileged and honored to head the people and talent team at Signum the world's first digital asset Bank before joining which I did slightly a bit over a year ago so still adapting

still learning still familiarizing myself with the new terminology that I'm constantly being confronted with in in this new industry I spent roughly 20 years in more traditional financial industry heading several or spanning over several HR roles starting from Talent Development into organizational development HR partnering and HR strategy and now being privileged to try to live the purpose of enabling our leaders and our Signum has to be better versions of themselves each and every day they come to work happy to hand over to you thank you my name is Julie Samuel and I lead

executive recruiting at chain analysis which I don't think is an unknown name here but just in case we do blockchain Analytics I have been in recruiting for quite some time at this point prior to chain analysis I spent a little time at slack before that Google and prior to that Citibank and then before that I was a sixth grade teacher so a bit of a different background there I'm very excited to be here wow amazing thank you guys very diverse panel today so I'm sure we'll get some valuable Insight so to begin with I want to talk about um the process of hiring in crypto and particularly because when I started off early on in 2017 there weren't many a

crypto-focused recruitment firms so I had to use platforms like indeed and I guess LinkedIn for hiring what are some of the best routes to hire in the space and what are the pros and cons uh would you say Arkansas so obviously I'm going to use that we specialize on but I think that should be quite reflective of you know the general Trends in the in the crypto industry so how do we source and recruit you know the best candidates for our clients um I think the first thing that is quite important is uh to um you know have ongoing transparency about what's going on in the market so in all the crypto verticals

interested in so the ones I was mentioning before crypto Market making digital security Etc we try to make sure that we stay very close from all the target companies that could be well Target companies in the in the case of those searches so we understand those companies their strategy uh how their structures their charts their key Executives we develop relationship with them so we know their personal circumstances as well which is a bit the the pointer and I think that kind of Market intelligence and research that we've developed in that space is quite unique that's not me saying it but like what I hear from our clients and then basically what that allows us to do is whenever we get a mandate for a search we can sort of hit the ground running

from the from the moment where where the contract is signed and then the the Steve search process is similar uh in the crypto world and in the non crypto world but logic is a bit um uh the following one um you know we would always start by developing a long list of candidates based on our pre-existing research obviously but um you know we what we do is tailored so we cannot we there's just a certain point be which we cannot only rely on pre-existing research so we would really map the whole market for our clients we were trying to come up with left field candidates that um you know that we we sort of discussed to provoke thinking to challenge the thinking of their client

potentially to enough rules of um of Thailand's data outlines might have might have not be been thinking of and then it's about you know approaching and qualifying uh the right candidates uh in the right way um and then you know uh while doing this we run competency-based interviews and there are specific methodologies to do it we assess fit culturally content wise and obviously there's a component of what we do that is about convincing you know those executive that they're fit for the opportunity uh that our clients offering and then you know uh with all that work we get to a point where we have a short list that we will present to our to our clients and support the rest of the recruitment process until

the onboarding of the writer the candidate so that's that's a bit logic the the best route in your Industries or in your company is to hire is it through working with a recruitment agency is it doing it in-house on your own is it both combined how do you find your talent I think it varies a little bit about what kind of role you are you're assessing for or you're searching for so we do a combined recruiting approach in this case sometimes we are relying on on recruitment experts and sometimes we like rely on our own in-house recruiting capabilities however more importantly

also to be visible in the market to anticipate the trends to follow the industry and to make use of the platforms available such as Discord GitHub attending crypto events and also holding our own events right and really also utilizing and activating our internal Network and external networks to act as ambassadors into promote a Signum towards an audience of Interest right and as as Philip also said to them well traditional recruiting is is is posting a job position and and then review and assess candidates as as you receive them in your in your application and hence I

also think here important to take into conservation the experience that you give the candidate along this process that you are being very proactive that you are establishing a relationship and and um connection and dialogue immediately with the candidates and yet that you act fast also due to this current marketing condition not to lose the talents again that you are actually very interested in so yeah in combination we we combine both approaches it depends a little bit on whether we feel confident enough to initiate the recruiting process our own in-house or whether we want to rely on additional expertise from external recruiters and all recruiter companies

as such and what about the other way around how do talents come in the spotlight I can probably start with that so I think from a um from a business perspective and particularly within sort of the sales organization and we meet a lot of people and you know at events like this and within the industry um and when I joined crypto Finance for example and we didn't have an HR team so a lot of the the recruitment that we did was um So based on networks people that we made made that events so it's really sort of establishing either direct

personal connections or actually getting referrals from other people within the industry and I suppose how do they get in the spotlight is yeah you hear about them from a reputational perspective or you know people personally and that saves you a lot of the the filtering and the the challenging process of finding the right fit that the daughter mentioned oh I want to go back to something Phillip you were on recruitment you know a lot of companies coming out of crypto are still startups how feasible is your the route you you talked about you mean how visible is it to work with a link shift search firm when you're in any stage um so honestly it really

depends um the first element is obviously there's a cost to it so you know I think the best proxy of whether you're at a stage where it makes sense for using search from or not is probably how much funding you have so you know they are in some in some crypto verticals you have um I don't know in crypto Market making for instance uh you see you see sometimes seed rounds that are at 50 million for instance I'm thinking of Portofino Technologies for instance a little CD round last year for 50 million obviously you when you have that level of funding you know you can use extreme search firm from day one in most cases you know when you do see grounds in other even outside of crypto whether you know the fintech

verticals like new banking for instance it could be at your first hit run it's like 2 million you know and then using 10 of that just an indexed search for next year search fees probably doesn't make sense you know so there's uh there's this Dimension and probably there's also another dimension which is a bit you know to what extent you can use your own network for your first recruitments and to what extents um you know at some point that's not that's not enough and very often what you see um I'm thinking of football advisors for instance in Switzerland they start using their network but often they do like local recruitments or recruit former colleagues Etc and from the day they want to re-deliver on the the hockey stick in terms of

revenues that they promised to the investors and that requires going outside of Switzerland to Germany or to Asia or to the US then you can't rely on your own network and given that you know having the right senior Talent is so critical to be able to develop on your subject to deliver a new subject roadmap you probably don't want to you know like just pick someone randomly in a market that is on the other side of the world and you might want to rely on the expertise uh because you know in our case we've helped European fintech expand in the US American fintechs explaining in Europe and in both cases we know the market very well and those decisions are so critical so critical to to deliver on the side G and I can tell you it used to

be a stylist before that um I think there's a point where it really makes sense to to Outsource it so um obviously not everyone would agree but that's uh my conviction and also the reason why I moved from strategy to executive Search all right well um the next question I want to ask is some of the trends that you're noticing in in the recruitment uh Staffing and uh even Talent space uh recently geographical locations or hiring Trends or where the where the talent is coming from uh just an example is in the past couple of months the the fee for developers has shot up because of how

many blockchain protocols there are out there people are venturing out into different countries to look for blockchain developers such as in India there's now like so many developer recruitment agencies coming out so what are some of the trends that you guys are noticing in your respective companies yeah so chain analysis is about 900 people today which means we've scaled a lot over the last few years and some of the challenges that come with that is the talent might not exist at all in the world or if it does it probably doesn't exist at scale and so the question becomes how do you create a talent pool that doesn't yet exist anywhere how many of you are hiring managers in the room

or have hired for your teams so the most challenging conversation that I have is I can't get you what you want and so the conversation can actually be very productive which is let's talk about your team what do you already have on your team what skill sets exist and then it's what gaps can we fill if you have people in banking can we get someone who does thefts if you have people in one region maybe we can find someone in another and so to your point like you can look somewhere but if at the scale we're hiring it doesn't exist you're then creating the talent pool and you can then open it up to various levels of diversity of experience perspective

thought gender and find pockets of talent that might not exist that's a very good point yeah the space is still so new that sometimes the talent is not out there and even personally at Luna PR we've sometimes hired people it's interesting because just like the Internet it's implemented into so many other Industries so often there are companies that are looking for someone with web 3 experience and the other aspect web 3 and property web3 and insurance web3 and for our case PR um and sometimes you have to choose one or the other and I I always feel in my case it's the the pr skill that I can

find much easier than the web3 skill and so internally we hold web 3 courses to to teach our you know PR and comms Specialists what what the technology is all about I'd actually love to share a complimentary story to that I had the pleasure recently of meeting the chief Talent officer for Activision and blizzard which is the um the game company behind um Candy Crush and Diablo and all these sort of exciting things and their approach I thought was a really fantastic is in that they've actually mapped they've gone back into their internal organization taken a look at who their top performers are so highest bonuses

and career progression Etc and they've mapped that back to the CV characteristics that they looked at at the beginning um in the hiring process and they've been able to identify what are the predictors of success and actually what aren't the predictors of success and then you open up your pool much wider because you're not necessarily trying to hire for a specific skill that's not an indicator and they also then looked at what they can train internally and of what they have to hire for and my key takeout as an extrovert that works with a lot of software developers is one of the key predictors of success for software developers was management experience and one of the reasons for that that they

uncovered was actually social skills and ability to work within a team and after they'd sort of discovered that or they come to that finding they then took a deliberate approach to building up the teamwork skills and like within the organization so I think that kind of a creative approach was really interesting maybe to your question on on Trends I can I think obviously the main train conviction is a bit that uh adoption is the long-term Trend and that obviously that will drive hiring so we're very positive on that on the show to me term there are things that might have a bit

of an impact and make the path a bit you know like um not so smooth and mostly three things regulation fun you know fundraising activity generally speaking and an Institutional adoption and I know that the last topic has been discussed quite a bit this morning in another session but in terms of Regulation it's obviously very popularized and uh I won't say anything you guys saying that basically you have essentially Two Poles you have the US on the one side where it's not it's not so easy for a lot of crypto companies and the rest of the world with major centers like uh well like here in Switzerland uh Europe with Mika uh the UAE that are much more crypto friendly and basically that drives Talent flow's

um massively so we have lots of clients in the US institutions or crypto native companies that often tell us the same thing which is a bit um we have a great product roadmap but we're not too sure whether what we have on the roadmap is going to be legal or at least allowed in the US in the next six nine twelve 18 months which obviously forces a lot of them to put things on hold and leads to a lot of talents you know voluntary or another those companies if there's a type of client that is a type of talent that is really in demand in the U.S right now it's um you know risk compliance officers

you know that kind of uh of talent and there's been a lot of talent flows in that space I think recently binance announced that they they poached um the the global heads of compliance of Gemini and Kraken I think I was last year um but so that's for regulation and uh and obviously in Europe uh you know it's not for crypto friendly and you see uh large companies like okay x binance uh um crypto.com opening uh the European headquarters in well actually in Paris mostly um then in terms of fundraising activity you know like anything Tech cryptos crypto companies tend to use the the defend arrays to uh to hire and to invest in Tech and for the hiring part of it um you know obviously 2022 and 2023 have

not been great 20 21 was obviously much better but still the right projects can raise funds uh on the right the right circumstances and variations I think we've seen that uh with the series B of Taurus uh with the market making uh the crypto Market making fundraising I mentioned uh of last year and then the last piece uh is a institutional adoption um and you know I'm still a believer that there will never be a mass adoption of crypto if like large financial institutions crypto and and a lot of them right now uh you know if you have we work with a lot of very large Advantage institutions and we have a few exceptions many of them are a bit stuck in what I call uh the POC uh

white paper uh kind of cycle and um you know the day that changes and they really Embrace crypto I think they can be big big you know employers and hires of executive talents and that that's probably the main last one awesome yeah that's very insightful I just read my next question I want to talk about company culture and environment it's funny because when I spoke to someone about opening up here in Zug uh they someone said to me um uh if you if you have long working hours forget hiring here because after 4 pm No One's Gonna work I don't know how true that is but um it's interesting because in Dubai they're so used to like

working long hours late nights but they also want to start late it's just you know company culture and so we've had to kind of adjust our timings in the office based on what works and initially even we had to work Sunday through Sunday through Thursday and now luckily the UAE has adjusted that so we were able to ensure we're hitting globally but in terms of company culture how is how important is it for companies to have a strong one internally yeah so I think a lot has changed over the last couple years prior to the pandemic I think everyone kind of looked to a Google to say that's who we want to

be we want the massage chairs we want the free lunch and that was what everybody valued I think the pandemic changed a lot of that in that people want flexibility they want work-life balance they don't necessarily want to be in the office even if you do get a free massage and so what we have learned we've done a few questionnaires a few studies within chain analysis and what we've learned is people really want to make an impact they want to work at a company that has a mission aligned with their values and so we've spent more time giving a voice to the employees letting them tell their story of the impact that they've made both internally and externally that helps with retention it helps with hiring and making sure that there is that alignment

yeah well to recite my my manager and CEO of sickness of culture eats strategy for breakfast I think he never misses a moment to re-emphasize that very important measures within the company and hence yes exactly as you said I also think the crypto industry is a very unique culture and and in general and and companies often prioritize decentralization Innovation transparency much more focused than you may find in other Industries and I truly believe for for for signomers but also for potential candidates looking into

joining organizations that have a very open and very visible culture are finding this utterly appealing and are seeking exactly these kind of elements also in order to identify and to be able to truly live their values every day and to be authentically coming and bring the best of themself into the workplace and if you find a culture that is embracing diversity and is embracing innovation different and and diversity of thought you're also able to come into a safe place where you can truly bring your true self to work every day and I think that's actually also not even a trend but it's going to be a element that is

staying also within the industry do you feel like this this aspect of employee sentiment is sometimes underestimated with Executives in a company I think that well I can speak for how I have experienced it and be having been in several places I do think that there is an increased and high Awareness on the importance of culture I do think that many initiatives are also being designed and enrolled to tackle exactly that topic but I believe that most crucial part of having a healthy internal culture is also the getting rid of the how do I freeze that allowing your people or your staff

members to feel safe enough also to raise criticism in a constructive way to not be afraid of raising their voice and to placing ideas or observations and that this is then being appreciated and being welcomed and asked for right because you need to create that safe environment also to create a self a healthy culture and I do think that there is an increased oh well it actually is also part of my task and my most important task to constantly mirror what I am observing and and to reflecting back what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing in order also to anticipate and propose new ways of addressing exactly some of the topics that we may see that that our staff members are still struggling with

I do think that it is would be wrong to say that there is not an intention at executive level on around this topic and that applies like I think in general to all companies see my colleagues are nodding so I may be uh touching a relevant Point here I think um no exactly I think the the intention is definitely there I think that what would differentiate like the winning organizations is also in the the execution right because um you know um Julie also mentioned like a vision and um you know purpose within an organization and all of these things are really easy to put on slides and I think the the intention is there the

acknowledgment is there that these things are important but actually living it within the organization is really important like as you said if you say ah we're very open to criticism and then the first time that somebody puts their hand up in a town hall they don't get like a good response then it's you know it's not living it so I think that's where the differentiation will come which is interesting yeah really and I think this is something we see very much this um and that really differentiates defined from Trend fire I'm not saying fine no one cares about cultural it's absolutely not the case but um I think the crypto Community is much more uh Mission driven but much more and when we're involved in those processes

um it's um we disproportionately more often get the question of from candidates of what is the culture like what are the people like um is do they really do they have high level principle or is the the organization of the company really you know organized along those principles and do they really those principles and you know when we do active searches for a very large Banks I mean I'm not saying they don't care but we really really get the question of I don't know how Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are different from a cultural perspective not saying again it's not important but it's so disproportionately more important in D5

and I think it's just a fundamental element for uh for a crypto company to be a successful hire whether it's executive or non-executive by who I am are you finding that employers are more interested in in getting the employees to work in office under the same roof or is the culture really has has it shifted to work from home are we over that Trend now after covid or is this going to be like a long-term um long-term way of working personally I think it's there to stay I think that many employers or realize during the the lockdown that it

is actually possible and I also think it is an increasing expectation from candidates internationally that remote working is an option however there are of course some boundaries especially when you are regulated as as we are at Signum so we are trying to offer a more like a hybrid motor also based on the conviction that we do think that interactions in the office dialogues and the ability to socialize also have a healthy impact on on our staff so we are aiming more towards a flexible working model where you have the option also to do hybrid working but

how does it affect productivity or do feel like there's no difference or an improvement even I would say it's very individually how that affects in general right because each person acts differently um can I can say for an earlier experience when I was not yet with Signum we had situations where we realized that this is not beneficial for a person in terms of productivity being in at home five days a week so we appealed and urged the person also to come back into the office to to to be able to to to have the social interaction personally I am utterly productive when

I work from home because I'm having less disruptions I can really focus on what I need to produce and I need to deliver so I think it's very individually I would not foresee a huge drop in productivity by switching into a more hybrid working model in general I think Julie wanted to so we moved to a hybrid work environment as well which basically means if you are near an office there is an encouragement not necessarily mandate that you go to the office three days a week and to arrange with your team which days those are so that you get that human

interaction um I think there's an acknowledgment that there is a benefit from that interaction that you get in person but it's not a requirement because you can certainly be more productive from home the other benefit is you can hire anywhere and so recognizing that being there in office doesn't mean you have a different mandate from a work perspective and facilitating a remote environment where whether you're in an office or remote you have that camaraderie is important it has to be an active effort it has to be employee relations groups it has to be events that take place virtually and making sure that you are fostering that environment and not just assuming it's going to happen while someone is that they're at home office versus the in-office office

right yeah the space is very young and so a lot of the times the the the talent that comes through is also young they're the crypto enthusiasts they understand albeit in Switzerland this space seems more sophisticated and more focused on the banking and finance and Payment Solutions so you're getting a lot of people from Trad Phi enter enter um you know the web3 space but in Dubai for example in the Middle East um there is a whole host of different kind of a variety of projects from metaverse to nfts where a lot of the times you're dealing with degens who have zero professionalism at all

those are some of the challenges that I've seen in this space in in the Middle East and even for that matter in Miami where we have our other office what are some of the challenges that you're noticing for recruitment in the space and how do we overcome them there is a lot of risk aversion which I'm sure you all have seen in your hiring efforts there are a lot of misconceptions about the web 3 and crypto space that make it so that people will not even get on the phone with you when they hear that that is what you're hiring for and so I think the interesting thing about hiring in this space versus hiring in any other space is we kind of collectively have to

recruit together across every company in traditional Finance you've got Goldman competing against JP Morgan and Tech you've got Google Cloud compete against AWS for all of us we kind of all have to sell the industry as a whole where it's going where we think it's going to be because that is going to create the sentiment across the potential employee landscape that will help everyone and I think that's really unique I think in the in the market in Switzerland device quite institutionalized and so uh

you know even when I was at GBS the the people reporting to me had very you know traditional backgrounds like Consultants from the mbbs you know those kind of profiles and a lot of them were very seriously considering options like you know Signum crypto Finance or you know even I don't like getting into crypto so I think that's sort of uh yeah the challenge is how you train them and there are some um you know some crypto companies that have like structured recruitment programs and training programs Etc it's not the case for most of them to be honest and then the other question becomes you know how can you you know safely transition people from try to find to Define and make it work

and um it's a challenge I think it's mostly a cultural Challenge and some of the trend fire executives are ready for it and we've seen very successful examples and some are not and you know the funny thing is they are actually businesses and spaces in crypto where you actually you'd better find someone from trying to find I don't know like I'm always thinking of uh you know a business that is willing to get a license like if you take license or a banking license you know having someone who's used to interact with Regulators who's already done it I mean it's great and also who's culturally you know interacting in a smooth way with Regulators is a great thing and those guys are often working for those persons are often working in

uh in trying to find so you know that I think you can create a health healthy combination of people that are the natives plus some transfers from dreadfy awesome well thank you so as we're coming to the end of our panel discussion I'd like to leave one last note for the audience if everyone can give one tip to everyone who's hiring in crypto or the web3 space what would it be I mean I would uh strongly um suggest every person uh working today and trying to find to be thinking about crypto video we are not at the best moments in the market but the bad Market is not

there forever and I think this is an issue that will offer amazing guy opportunities going forward so I advise everyone to very seriously consider it um maybe a bit of an obvious one but try and retain people because especially if you're in a hiring manager position it it can be difficult to find the right people at the moment to look after the ones you've got yeah very good one well I would like to build on that thank you for taking my sentence but no no problem but I think that one key element also in order to retain the talents is really also to make sure already very early in the hiring process that you'll have a strong focus on a great cultural fit someone

who is able to identify with the values and the vision and Mission and purpose-led person already very early in the process I do think that that will be critical also for a retention success later on so that will be my my recommendation do you have one thinking recruiting we often think our main goal is to sell to sell the opportunity of the company I would say shift your mindset and make it your goal to educate educate about the industry educate about the role and the company the teams that you have because even if they're not the right person or don't accept the role they're likely to educate someone else about what they

learned and that kind of expands the knowledge and expands the talent pools yeah that's fantastic I think all those tips combined make a very important factor to keep in mind when hiring anybody in this space hiring overall even for that matter well thank you so much I guess we'll be around if you have any questions just find us and thank you hope you enjoyed the panel [Applause] [Music] maybe one from the audience if somebody does have a question for any of our panelists by any chance all right well let me wrap it up at that

thank you so much thank you