An interview with Emily Landon, The Crypto Recruiter

How to find a job in cryptocurrency. An interview with Emily Landon, The Crypto Recruiter.

[00:00:01.060] – George Levy

Hi, and welcome to Changing the World one Blockchain at a Time, where we bring you the leading minds and personalities in blockchain, bitcoin, and cryptocurrency. Today's guest is Emily Landon, the crypto recruiter. Emily's unapologetically in love with recruiting and crypto. Her days and most of her weekends are helping people find crypto jobs. Emily, I am so excited to have this conversation. I've been actually anxiously waiting for this because you're such an exciting and so necessary space. Thank you so very much for being our guest.

[00:00:32.100] – Emily Landon

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it George.

[00:00:34.870] – George Levy

You know, one thing I've got to tell you that I love about what you do is I always talk about we're changing the world one blockchain at a time, and if we use this technology properly, we're bound to make the world a better place for everyone. But to do that, we need people that are actually working in the blockchain space, and that's what you're doing. You're actually known as The Crypto Recruiter. How did that actually happen?

[00:01:00.260] – Emily Landon

That's a really great question. How did this happen? So, I wanted to start a company that was really focused on ethics, right? Because recruiting has become a very transactional field. Candidates aren't being followed up on. You know, it's really just about the fee. And I wanted to create a company where I could be thoughtful in who I worked with. Right? Because I want to be responsible for helping people find their dream jobs, not just making money. That's a bonus. But it's really about helping people find their dream jobs. So I wanted to work for a company where I could be selective in who I work with. I could make sure that the person that I'm helping is going to be walking into their dream job, not a hot mess. So we look for things like great cultures, growth opportunities. We're looking for healthy and well funded companies. But most importantly, I'm looking for excellent leadership, because you quit a boss, not a job. So I think that's what makes us a little bit different is we're selective in who we work with. We really prioritize candidate experience, and we're just obsessed with crypto. I mean, the reason that we started this company was because I want to see this industry grow as fast as I can in my lifetime.

[00:02:08.730] – Emily Landon

Right. It kills me that I won't be around when the final bitcoin is mined, so I just want to see as much as I can.

[00:02:15.490] – George Levy

You know, one of the things that I love about the way that you were talking is that you truly speak like someone within the space. I'm also obsessed about the space, and I truly feel that, you know what? I really want to be there. The year 2140 when the 21st bitcoin actually comes up. That's cool that you brought that up. But what I love about everything that you said is and this ties me to the concept is I was saying, why did you create the crypto recruiters? And then you truly believe and you really see the whole “there is a dream job out there”. And I see all the things that we're creating. You have this concept of a dream job. Tell me more about why did you create the crypto recruiters? In context of it? Like in the Day-to-day, how does that work out?

[00:02:54.790] – Emily Landon

Yeah, like what do we do everyday? Well, I mean, my job is to make friends online and find them jobs. So basically it's ten to 14 hours days. You gotta love what you do when you're in recruiting. And what we do is we just scour the internet to find people. LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub. We're really working hard to find these candidates for our clients. So we spend a lot of time just screening people. So having 10 to 22 conversations a day with candidates, just screening them to see how they are, what their culture fit would be like, what their skills are like, and then we submit them to our clients. So it's a lot of networking, a lot of conversations, and a lot of organization required. Because when we're submitting a candidate to a client, we need to stay in touch with that candidate. They deserve to know what they are like, the stage of their application, every step of the way. So our golden rule is, every Friday we call our submitted candidates and say, hey, my update for you is I really have no update, but what are you doing this weekend?

[00:04:03.490] – George Levy

And I find that fascinating. In the interest of transparency, I was once recruited. I was the vice president for the World Business Forum in New York City, and I was recruited for that role. And the role of the recruiter was so incredibly important for me because it opened up my eyes to so many different possibilities. And what I see sometimes, especially in the crypto space, because I'm so actively involved in it, is that there are thousands of jobs currently available and people just don't know that there's a lot of positions available. And many of these positions are actively recruiting. People don't really see how critically important what you do is to just basically being able to empower the blockchain workforce because without what you're doing, there's just empty jobs. This whole blockchain transformation will never happen.

[00:04:50.440] – Emily Landon

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think something that people are missing out on is going to be job alerts, right? So setting those up so you can literally set up a job alert with just the word crypto on Google, and any crypto job that's posted, you're going to get an email about it. So I think people really need to be looking into job alerts, following companies, but I think recruiters bring a lot of different value. I mean, just with our network alone, right? Our job is to get your resume in front of the hiring manager so you don't have to go through HR, right? You're going direct to the hiring manager who's reviewing your resume, so you're skipping a step on top of that. Most recruiters don't do this. I'm genuinely happy to help. So I connect people with hiring managers in my network just to get them an introduction, not looking for anything in return. I've gotten so many people jobs outside of my client base, and, like, my last boss would have been very upset with that. But currently I really have this is going to sound so silly, but what you get out of the universe is what you put into the universe.

[00:05:54.310] – George Levy

I love that. To me, if I were going to hold on to the catchphrase, I would say, I love that you said that. I'm a big believer in that as well. And I think the more of a positivity angle you bring into things, the better the world becomes. We all want to make the world a better place. That's what we're doing. And I'm really excited. I want to bring out as an aside, I'm so excited that we're actually being able to help you by enabling you and providing the people that you work with the ability to be able to earn certificates from BIT. And we actually put a special code for the crypto recruiters and to be able to work with you to actually empower people to really understand how to use these technologies. Very excited you're doing this.

[00:06:33.180] – Emily Landon

Yeah, no, we are, too. I think the blockchain certifications are going to be really helpful for candidates, because what it gets down to is everybody's got a resume twin, right? Someone that has a similar background, has worked at similar companies. And if I'm looking at two resumes that look similar and one of them has a crypto certification and the other does not, who do you think I'm calling first?

[00:06:54.490] – George Levy

And that's beautiful. And the key thing that I want to point out is that the blockchain certificates issued by BIT are actually recorded on the blockchain and they can be independently verified. So it's not like it's a PDF, it's not like it's a JPEG. It's literally you can check for yourself that people really earned it. So we're really excited we're working with you. One thing I would say to the audience that's actually watching this, I want people to know exactly how they can keep track and actually connect with you. Learn more about The Crypto Recruiters. How can they do that?

[00:07:22.170] – Emily Landon

A couple of ways. So the first way is just go to our website, thecryptorecruiters.io Secondly, you can find me on LinkedIn. LinkedIn.com/in/thecryptorecruiter we're all over Twitter and Instagram. We're even on TikTok, so we're all over. But LinkedIn is the best way to get a hold of me. And then our website is going to be the best way to get a hold of the team and to apply for jobs.

[00:07:46.110] – George Levy

That's fantastic. Thank you. So very much. Emily I'm very excited I had the opportunity to speak with you. I wish The Crypto Recruiters in everything that you do the absolute best. Thank you for being here.

[00:07:56.890] – Emily Landon

Thank you for having me. We'll talk soon. George.