Want a job in blockchain? Tough luck. Hiring gone haywire.

ddeconomics (31)in #blockchain • 7 years ago (edited)

The labor market isn't perfect and has loopholes, which is especially true for blockchain hiring. The labor market is the process of:

people promoting their skills to get a job
recruiters looking for the best person for the job.

In the labor market employers can't tell the difference skillful workers and unskilled workers, or between hard workers and lazy workers. Meanwhile, applicants--those seeking a job--know their skills and abilities better than employers. In economics this is called 'information asymmetry'.

This information gap enables job applicants to leverage the hiring process, either by demanding higher salary or inflating their credentials or accomplishments. To offset this recruiters have ways to expose applicants' true potential, including setting strict skills requirements for the job. Since recruiters have incentive to hire the best candidate for a given salary, they have a tendency to craft lofty job requirements.

This is especially true for emerging industries that involves technical skills. Take the example below--blockchain technology has only been around ~10 years, when Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin whitepaper during the height of the financial crisis.

Since then, there appears to be a growing list of developers who have started to build innovative apps in the distributed ledger space. But even then, even experienced programmers have only logged a few years of direct experience developing blockchain apps. In fact, there's a severe shortage of skilled labor, yet the demand for these specific skillsets is significantly growing. This poses a challenge for HR staff who may not have enough exposure to the tech but are required to post job vacancies.