Introduction

One of the biggest fintech company in CIS was looking to validate the product offering for a new blockchain-based project within their innovation lab. To ensure the product’s features would meet the needs of their target user base the team would need a product specialist to conduct extensive research and tailor their product/market fit. The team had less than two weeks to hire a candidate with extensive experience in Blockchain-based products to fill the knowledge gap and help the team build a product that would meet the demands of the market. They reached out to us with the goal of bringing on a product manager as quickly as possible to ensure they would still make their project’s timeline. This case study details how we met the challenge of finding their perfect candidate and avoided costly developmental delays for the team.

The Challenges

Core Hunter's client that specializes in building complex systems, was looking for a product manager with extensive experience building Blockchain-based products. To avoid derailing their development schedule they needed to bring on Blockchain product expert in the next two weeks. The panel responsible for interviewing candidates included the head of the company innovation lab, the project’s lead developer, the project manager and the company’s HR consultant. 

Given the high level of expertise on the client’s team and the strict time frame for finding their star product manager, we had to be sure every shortlisted candidate would be a great fit for the client’s team. 

Role Specific Challenges 

Hiring a top product manager is a difficult process and all the “usual” challenges were magnified by the team’s time crunch. 

1. Competition for the TOP talent turns the whole process into a recruiting battle. While there are hundreds of people who would apply for each product position, good candidates may choose from 2–5 offers, and it takes on average 4 weeks to find a truly suitable candidate. You cannot beat this competition by just offering a higher salary; in fact, the best candidates are often motivated by job responsibilities, processes, culture and the high-quality team of peers. You interview them, and they interview you, at the same time.
2. The role itself is not well-defined. Some companies expect product managers also to do QA, marketing, project management and even coding. While this multi-hat approach might be fine for very early startups, it would not work for the Sunrise team, who had clearly defined roles and needed a candidate with a demonstrated track record of successful product management in blockchain-based projects. 
3. Lack of industry-standard and accredited certification methods to set the bar for talent. There are myriads of product schools and courses, but without actually being responsible for a software product it is super-hard for a newbie to become a real product manager. Hence the “chicken and egg” problem.
4. Overall, the hiring process feels broken: both product candidates and companies are struggling to understand each other and find common ground. Popular complaints we hear from candidates — they are being asked stupid questions, face incompetent interviewers and rarely get actionable feedback. On the other end, hiring managers don’t have clear protocols for evaluating candidates and hesitate to draw conclusions on a hiring decision. (typical question surrounding the uncertainty of the hiring process include  “What if this candidate is not a fit?”, “How do I make sure we do not reject a great product person?”).

The Approach 

We sat down with the project’s team over Zoom to discuss their goals, hiring requirements, team dynamics and culture inputs to craft the job description that would attract the kind of candidate we were looking for. 

Once we had distilled the role requirements into a thorough and inspiring job description, the recruitment team went through our talent pool and selected 82 candidates that matched the team’s requirements. We went ahead and scheduled prescreening calls and in parallel continued sourcing efforts to identify potential great fits from outside our talent pool. To save the client's time, our head recruiter conducted the first round of interviews to assess the candidate’s soft skills and analytical abilities. 

To expedite the selection process Core Hunters designed interview questions that would probe the candidates’ possessed analytical and critical thinking skills needed to thrive in this particular role. The recruitment team used a scoring sheet tied to the top skills required for the role to evaluate the candidates' performance. The candidates that scored in the top 10% of interviewees were shortlisted and proceeded through to the second round of interviews conducted by the company’s managers. Due to the specificity of the crypto niche, recruiters, and tech experts of the customer checked the understanding of blockchain technology and protocols, as well as the principles of product development in this narrow fintech niche.

During the technical interview the candidate was asked to complete a technical task online while sharing their desktop screen with the selection committee. Our team used this method to evaluate the candidate’s technical skills and stress resistance abilities.

After the interview rounds the customer’s managers selected five candidates to complete a take home assessment.

From the results of their interview and assessments, two were selected to proceed to a final interview round after which one of the two candidates was offered the position.

Result: Time to hire =18 business days

Offer

The Value Delivered. The candidate hired by Core Hunter's client helped them to finalize their preparation to reaching Y Combinator and started their fully functioning fintech MVP almost 3 months before schedule.

Hiring with Crypto Hunters saved this fintech company almost $34,000 in hiring costs and compared to their local CIS talent market.

✅ P.S. To make your hiring processes smooth, use this Remote Hiring Checklist

This article was originally posted at corehunters.com. It's our Portfolio Project specialized in Blockchain and Crypto Recruitment Industry.