Topic: The Headhunting for Blockchain Professionals Starts – Part 1 (Read 325 times)

Lots of money and human assets are being invested nowadays in the crypto industry. We can see new kinds of crypto currency and new smart contracts on the market almost every day. The hype is incredible. Startups launch Initial Coin Offerings (ICO) instead of the Initial Public Offerings (IPO) worldwide and raise almost the same amounts as venture investments are able to bring. Tezos ICO’s unprecedented $232 million-worth of bitcoin and ether record on the market will be broke very soon, experts forecast. At the forefront of this demand, market needs for blockchain and ICO experts grew too. Hype born the other hype — recruiters starts their serious head-hunting for blockchain pros. Unfortunately, the HR market is not able to meet this kind of demand — there are too little opportunities the market can offer, staying hungry.

Looking for any proof? While writing this article and talking to blockchain startups founders, I got four job offers just due to the combination ‘blockchain’ and ‘good at writing’. The HR market in many countries faces the increasing demand of blockchain employees. For example, in the United Kingdom, the blockchain job market has seen an average monthly growth of 25% with 546 blockchain jobs have been posted in the UK since August 2016, according to Joblift. LinkedIn data show more than 1000 blockchain-related job adverbs this summer, more than treble the level of a year ago. The number is growing at more than 40 percent each quarter. All the main worldwide job portals have their blockchain section — Job.com, Indeed, Monster, etc. There are even special job portals customized for blockchain adverts: Blockchain Jobs or Blockchains Startup Jobs, for example. Vladislav Martynov from the Ethereum Foundation in the meantime invested in BlockGeeks, the global project to consolidate all the experts in the blockchain area and to help companies to find the relevant employees for their blockchain-based projects.

Interesting fact: the proportions of specialists the market required are changing. A year ago 90% of job adverts claimed they are seeking for blockchain developers and other technical pros. Today about 30% of adverts belongs to project managers, behavioral researchers, analysts, marketing and SMM managers, communication managers, copywriters, and editors.

As the number one issue facing the blockchain industry today is a lack of talents, top blockchain developers are so scarce that they can demand annual salaries ranging between $300.000 and $600.000, according to industry experts. However, blockchain marketing managers, especially with ICO experience, have now salaries 2-4 times above the average on market.

Which competencies are current experts short of to cover the demand? An ideal employee should not only have a fluent English but also to be up to speed on blockchain technology. Even for jobs in marketing and communications companies ask for a technical background (higher technical education, for example) or proved experience in ICO campaigns support, or knowledge of specific tools (e.g., Telegram and Slack, crypto-related media and social channels, work with advisors, ICO trackers and listings and so on). The majority of projects are constrained by tight schedules and high rates, with some intending to launch ICOs in 1-3 months in order to earn money on the hype. Almost everywhere you get a non-standard work day for real-time interaction with users from USA, Europe, and Asia. However, in fact, nobody has more than two or three years of experience in this.

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