What Recruiters Look for in a Blockchain Engineer Resume 📝
For blockchain engineer candidates to stay ‘in the race’ for a job opportunity, a few key things should be present in their resumes
Resumes play an important role in the hiring process of any profession. It’s no different in the world of Web3, and blockchain engineers in particular!
Recruiters and hiring managers are usually very experienced and have seen many CVs: the good, the bad, and the ugly. They tend to know what they are looking for in a potential employee, and they can easily tell if your CV matches their criteria. Hence, it’s important to understand their thought process when they first come across your CV.
For blockchain engineer candidates to stay ‘in the race’ for a job opportunity, a few key things should be present in their resumes. Let’s explore them, shall we?
Industry knowledge, parlance, and experience
Probably you wouldn’t hire an electronics engineer for an aeronautics engineer role because they would lack the fundamental knowledge. The same is true for a blockchain engineer
A blockchain engineer should ensure they demonstrate important knowledge of blockchain principles and problems on their CV. For example, how projects they worked on address issues relating to the ‘blockchain trilemma’, issues of composability, or of cross-chain logistics, or ‘gasless’ product experience and user accounts.
Blockchain, while niche, is a vast ecosystem where knowledge is constantly being updated so if blockchain engineers are not paying homage to the latest on their CVs, then Recruiters are likely to believe that their knowledge is outdated
It's additionally important that blockchain engineers describe past and current experiences accurately and do not exaggerate. A good Recruiter (often someone from the blockchain team!) will be able to spot inconsistencies and contradictions and become very sceptical very fast, even before you get to the coding challenge stage to prove yourself
Transitions between jobs that make sense
From a timing perspective - not too short time between jobs
A candidate needs to be able to demonstrate achievements because companies want to hire engineers who can achieve things and make an impact. Having short stints between jobs makes it very difficult for the candidate to prove meaningful achievements and therefore the Hiring Manager or Recruiter will find it difficult to justify moving the candidate through the process. A rule of thumb here is at least 12 months in each company or project.
From a tech stack perspective
It’s also important to have relevant experience in a particular area of software development. As such, it doesn’t make sense for frontend developers to suddenly apply for backend jobs and the other way around. Even if you have learned about blockchain but spent most of your career as a frontend developer it’s not going to be an easy transition and there are tonnes of things you need to learn besides blockchain-specific knowledge.
You should also match the most significant technology requirements, such as programming languages or frameworks. While I agree that, especially for senior developers, language is just a tool of choice, there is still some overhead to learning a new language or framework. Especially in a fast-paced environment like blockchain technologies.
Some companies will specifically be open to engineers transitioning from one technology to another, such as from C++ to Rust. If this is the case, you will see this being clearly stated in the job description (most likely in the requirements sections).
From the tech stack perspective, there are not many things that are going to be considered a red flag. A more common one would be constantly jumping back and forth between technologies.
Make your intentions clear
Candidates should indicate a clear indication of whether they intend to remain a strong sole contributor, whether they intend to move toward a Lead or Senior role, or whether they want to move toward leadership responsibilities and eventually onto an executive role
This matters because the company probably knows which of these types of people they are and aren’t looking for. Or the company will want a position to begin, for example, as a sole contributor and after 6 months the person can be promoted
This context, coming from the candidates' resume, is also an indicator to the Hiring Manager of the salary expectations of the person though of course is not definitive because markets, competencies, tech stacks and so forth can vary
Some senior positions might include technology leadership. You might be expected to lead some of the company projects on the technology side of things or act as a team lead. You should clearly indicate if this is in your area of expertise and interest.
Proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation
It's not exactly intuitive to point this out because the use of language is not considered core to an engineering role, and it's not apart from coding, however proper language use on a resume does give a recruiter insights
For example, is this person educated enough - either formally or self-taught - to be able to express themselves in a coherent way. Even programmers need to communicate with colleagues at some point.
Proper use of language shows that a person has sufficient attention to detail, that they are logical, and can even help express the person’s personality. After all, engineers are people and not robots!
Don’t forget the basics
You should clearly state your country of residence and any employment limitations (i.e. not available for B2B contracts or not open to certain timezones). Companies will most likely have their legal constraints. Specifics depend on many factors such as industry and company size. You should always include at least your country of residence.
Please also don’t forget to include your language skills information. Try to be accurate about your level of speaking and writing skills.
Also, a two or three-sentence note on top of the first page, stating who you are and what you are looking for is going to be very helpful.
About the authors
Senior Recruiter, Web3 Advisor, Angel Investor
Head of HR, Coinvesting Holdings,
Ex-Head of Recruitment, DAO Maker
Ex-Head of Recruitment, Minterest Labs
Senior Engineering Recruiter
Co-founder at 16bit Recruitment