Recruiters: Predicting Web3 Hiring & Roadmap for Action

As any job seeker or focused recruiter will tell you, right now the market its about finding jobs and getting the right people into them before the hiring funnel becomes clogged. As of December 2023, each tech job is receiving two applications per minute, just on LinkedIn alone. So, is there a "hidden job" market where the plumb jobs are laid out to a select few? Sort of yes, and sort of no.

For savvy recruiters, predicting hiring intent in this dynamic space is the key to unearthing top-tier blockchain gems, before they are listed. Ditch the hunches and grab your analytical goggles, because we're about to crack the code of Web3 hiring with data.

Combine these three data clusters to identify companies about to expand and the talent they will need:

1. Follow the Funding

• Crunchbase: Track Series B and C funding rounds. Big money often translates to big expansion plans, and new teams bring… new hires!

• BuiltIn: Watch for hiring sprees and leadership additions. A new Head of Blockchain? Sounds like team-building time.

• CoinMarketCap: Monitor rising token prices. A bullish market often correlates with increased talent needs. Just like layoffs are correlated with declines in crypto-prices, hires are associated with climbs. Look at what companies have tokens tied to with chain and you'll see who is on their way up.

2. Buzzword Bonanza

• Follow industry leaders and track company pages for keywords like "scaling," "growth," and "product development." These signal a need for additional horsepower. Tools like Meltwater and Cision can help you track the chatter.

• Learning leads: check out places like LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, and other Blockchain education sites to watch for surges in interest in specific topics. Founders and early hires often take a few courses to inform the hiring they are about to start.

3. Tech Tonic

• Google Trends: Track rising search volume for specific blockchain technologies like DeFi or Zero Knowledge Proofs. Increased interest often precedes hiring needs.

• GitHub: Monitor open-source repositories in your target space. Active development signifies a growing team (and potential openings).

• Conferences & Events: Keep tabs on key blockchain conferences like ETH Denver and Consensus. Companies often announce expansion plans and recruit talent at these events.

Your Personal Talent Dashboard

Now, let's turn data into action. Integrate these insights with your recruiting software. Tools like ZoomInfo and Leadfeeder offer robust APIs that connect seamlessly with ATS platforms like Greenhouse or Workday. Imagine, with a few clicks, your dashboard displays each recruiter's top ten outreach targets for the day, ranked by predicted hiring urgency and potential tech stack needs.

Crunchbase Monitoring

This retrieves recent Series C funding data from Crunchbase to identify expanding companies.

import requests

# Set API key 
crunchbase_key = "YOUR_API_KEY"

# Construct request
url = "https://api.crunchbase.com/v4/companies"
params = {"funding_round_type": "series-c"} 
headers = {"accept": "application/json", "authorization": f"Bearer {crunchbase_key}"}

# Send request
response = requests.get(url, params=params, headers=headers)

# Parse funding data
data = response.json()
for result in data["data"]["items"]:
    print(result["name"], result["funding_rounds"])

GitHub Monitoring

This checks development activity levels in GitHub repositories related to blockchain technologies.

import requests
import datetime

# GitHub personal access token
github_token = "YOUR_TOKEN"  

# Define target repository
repo_owner = "ethereum"
repo_name = "go-ethereum"

# Construct API request
url = f"https://api.github.com/repos/{repo_owner}/{repo_name}/commits" 
params = {"since": str(datetime.datetime.now() - datetime.timedelta(days=30))}
headers = {"Authorization": f"token {github_token}"}

# Send request
response = requests.get(url, params=params, headers=headers) 

# Check recent activity level
commits = response.json()
print(f"Commits in past 30 days: {len(commits)}")

Tracking SEC Filings

Below is some sample code to demonstrate how to use NLP for extracting investment theses and planned projects from SEC filings. The key steps are using NLP techniques like tokenization, removal of stop words, lemmatization to preprocess the sentences, followed by topic modeling using k-means clustering to extract the major investment themes and planned expansions.

import requests
from nltk.tokenize import sent_tokenize
from nltk.corpus import stopwords
from nltk.stem import WordNetLemmatizer
from sklearn.feature_extraction.text import TfidfVectorizer
from sklearn.cluster import KMeans

# Download SEC filing from EDGAR database
filing_url = "https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/..." 

filing_response = requests.get(filing_url)
filing_text = filing_response.text

# Preprocess text 
sentences = sent_tokenize(filing_text)
sentences = [sentence.lower() for sentence in sentences]  

stop_words = set(stopwords.words("english"))
lemma = WordNetLemmatizer()

sentences = [
    " ".join([lemma.lemmatize(word) for word in sentence.split() 
            if word not in stop_words]) 
    for sentence in sentences
]

# Extract feature vectors  
vectorizer = TfidfVectorizer()
X = vectorizer.fit_transform(sentences)  

# Cluster to find topics
num_clusters = 10
kmeans = KMeans(n_clusters=num_clusters)  
kmeans.fit(X)

print("Investment Theses & Planned Projects")
for i in range(num_clusters):
   cluster_sentences = [sentences[j] for j in range(len(sentences))
                       if kmeans.labels_[j] == i]  
   theorem = " ".join(cluster_sentences[:5])
   print(f"- {theorem}")

Formula for Fortune

Now, let's put it all together. For each potential client, assign points based on these elements:

• Funding: Series B = 3 points, Series C = 5 points (and bonus points for recent rounds!)

• Buzzwords: "Scaling" mentioned on LinkedIn = 2 points, hiring spree on BuiltIn = 4 points, etc. If you can, leverage the social media listening tools I mentioned above to really find the radar pings. 

• Tech Tonic: Rising DeFi searches on Google Trends = 1 point, active GitHub repository = 3 points

A score of 10+ indicates a hot prospect with high hiring potential. Tailor your outreach accordingly, highlighting your expertise in placing talent for their specific needs (predicted from your analysis, of course!). Don't be shy about a little (harmless) cyber-stalking. Look up the people and the company on news.google.com; mention articles, comments, and posts they've made in communities like LinkedIn, Telegram, and Discord; and scout out any talks or appearances they've made on YouTube. You can find out a lot about company culture and personal values via publicly available information. 

Crafting the Perfect First Pitch

Personalize those initial emails. Personalize those initial emails. Personalize those initial emails.

But, before you start writing, use this worksheet to craft your messaging strategy (also save this worksheet and its results in your CRM):

Personalize with a Web3 Prospect Card

Target Company: [Company Name]

Industry: [Blockchain Subsector]

Funding: [Series B/C/etc. + Amount]

Buzzwords: [Top 3 keywords from LinkedIn/Job boards/Twitter]

Tech Tonic: [Trending technology on Google Trends/Active GitHub repo/Upcoming conference participation]

Candidate Fit: [Predicted tech stack needs based on data]

Values, Beliefs, Attitudes (VBA)

Marketers use this structure to create audience segments. You should be using it for your business development prospects. 

• Values: [Identify 2-3 key values from company mission/press releases/leadership interviews] If found in your research, list 2-3 key values from your prospects personal media. What phrases and buzz-words do they favor? What is more important to them personally?Example: Innovation, decentralization, community-driven

• Beliefs: [Uncover 2-3 core beliefs from similar interviews/articles/social media]Example: The future of finance is blockchain-based, Web3 will revolutionize the banking industry

• Attitudes: [Recognize 2-3 prominent attitudes from online interactions/employee reviews]Example: Passionate about building disruptive technologies, growth-oriented mindset, valuing diversity and inclusion

B2B Hiring Profile 

This is a little different than the Formula For Fortune above in that this should be linked to a specific contact, not a company as a whole.

• Hiring Urgency: [based on funding, buzzwords, tech activity]. Regardless of what a company is doing, how quickly is this contact likely to hire? Are they a "I know it when I see it" person or are they a "I know what I want, give me it now?" type of person? 

• Candidate Fit: [Based on predicted tech stack needs AND personality.] What kinds of resumes will catch this prospect's eye? What's their view on employment "gaps" or degrees or job titles?

• VBA Alignment: You can dig deeper on this but generally use this to inform your best approach and later, the best approach for your chosen candidates.

5 Outreach Approaches

Use the above to tailor your outreach by grouping each prospect into a type. Make a single choice. If it doesn't work, change it but, don't muddy your voice by trying to be everything to everyone. 

1. The Strategic Aligner: Emphasize your deep understanding of their values and mission (e.g., "We share your passion for building a decentralized future") and highlight relevant past placements matching their tech needs.

2. The Problem Solver: Address a specific challenge hinted at in their online presence (e.g., "Scaling your DeFi team? We specialize in placing top-tier blockchain engineers").

3. The Talent Whisperer: Showcase your expertise in sourcing hidden talent pools like niche Telegram groups or emerging Discord communities.

4. The Future Forecaster: Discuss the latest industry trends and how their hiring needs might evolve (e.g., "With the rise of NFTs, X skillset will be crucial. We can help you stay ahead of the curve"). 

5. The Collaborative Partner: Propose a strategic partnership beyond placements, offering talent consulting, market analysis, or access to your candidate network.

Hiring Types

Keyword Inspiration

• Use VBA-aligned keywords: decentralization, community, innovation, disruption.

• Mention specific technologies from "Tech Tonic" analysis, above.

• Reference relevant industry leaders or events especially if they attended.

• Inject a touch of Web3 personality (think DAOs, tokenomics, metaverses). Web3 companies will trust you more if you can demonstrate, not just talk about, your expertise in the tech. Token-gate some content. Provide your candidates with NFT badges for completing training. 

What You Just Learned

You know know how to monitor the market for Web3 hiring intent signals before they happen. You also have some tools to profile individual prospects using marketing segmentation techniques to give your CRM some power and to tailor your outreach for maximum effect. As always, monitor those opens, CTRs, and conversions (did they respond, set an appointment, or download something)? By tracking those metrics, you'll be able to find your outreach ROI and assign a dollar value to each action in your B2B business development funnel.

But even more, you'll be able to track the efficacy of your predictive efforts in finding jobs before they happen. Is there a "hidden job market?" or, is it a quantum job market? It's not actually there, until you look for it.