Using smart contracts for smart hires

Can blockchain help hire outstanding engineers for a blockchain wallet? Can it help find potential future stars, regardless of CV?

We asked this as we sought a new approach to finding world-class talent.

This new approach took a few factors into consideration.

1. Engineers at Argent define the product direction. This is true across all our roles — iOS, Android, Backend etc. This means they need to be familiar with Ethereum.
2. A potential contradiction to the first point — we want to find the best talent, wherever it is, whatever the background. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to those with Ethereum experience. So, could we find a way to test people’s ability to learn about Ethereum quickly and independently?
3. Last, we wanted to combine our careful (albeit subjective) reviews of CVs with a more objective method.

The clear answer: Why not use the tools available in the Ethereum ecosystem?

We devised a challenge of a candidate’s ability to interact with an Ethereum smart contract. We also test for knowledge of basic crypto primitives, like SHA-3 (and, by the way, we’re delighted to have one of its inventors, Gilles Van Assche, as an advisor to Argent).

More specifically, the challenge involves getting a blockchain application ID by calling a smart contract on the Ethereum Ropsten Test Network. You can see the challenge and application here.

The results?

Over 90% of applicants fail this challenge. And we never make exceptions: fail the challenge, fail the process. No matter how good a CV is. Some have failed because of a small mistake. But this lets us spot who pays attention to details. It’s crucial that everyone at Argent carries their weight and ensures the highest standards of work.

The challenge has helped us build an amazing and eclectic team. We’ve got PhDs in nuclear physics, quantum cryptography, and decentralized cognitive networks; former founders and CTOs that have scaled mobile apps to tens of millions of users; and a couple of young future superstars who blew us away despite their limited experience.

Particularly rewarding was that we did actually discover and hire a couple of candidates who had no knowledge of Ethereum before the challenge, but who demonstrated a remarkable aptitude for learning. And we even hired a candidate that started the process just because he was curious about the challenge. He passed the test, we discussed our shared vision and he ended up joining the team!

In short, we’ve found the process helps us to identify exceptional people that are equally motivated by making the decentralized web accessible to everyone.