# MIP39c2-SP28: Adding Maker Talent Core Unit (MT-001)

## Preamble

MIP39c2-SP#: 28
Author(s): @manomad_
Contributors: @synesthesia
Tags: core-unit, cu-mt-001, mandate
Status: RFC
Date Applied: 2021-12-08
Date Ratified: <yyyy-mm-dd>

## Sentence Summary

MIP39c2-SP28 adds Core Unit MT-001: Maker Talent.

## Paragraph Summary

Maker Talent's purpose and objective is to recruit best-in-class talent for the Maker Protocol, targeted through innovative social recruiting practices and offering an outstanding candidate experience.

## Specification

### Motivation

#### The Problem

As MakerDAO and its Core Units grow, the need to connect with professionals in the blockchain industry is becoming a critical matter and requires both urgent attention and a long-term strategy.

Until now, Core Units have been growing by employing their own resources and personal network to locate the required talent. This strategy, however, is limited as MakerDAO scales up.

Observing the upcoming challenges for Maker in growth and adoption---and the struggle to find talent within such a small niche---, the lack of a recruitment strategy can compromise the success of MakerDAO.

We believe that a long-term solution to this problem is to be found in developing and maintaining an active pool of blockchain professionals who shall be enthusiastic about the Maker spirit and projects, so we may accelerate and facilitate their onboarding process when needed.

### Core Unit Name

- Name: Maker Talent

### Core Unit ID

- ID: MT-001

### Core Unit Facilitators

- Discord: manomad#0321
- Forum: @manomad

### Core Unit Mandate

#### Mission

Recruit best-in-class talent for the Maker Protocol, targeted through innovative social recruiting practices, and offering an outstanding candidate experience while being a reliable partner for MakerDAO's hiring needs.

#### Vision

Build a thriving ecosystem of MakerDAO Core Units and integrated commercial projects, fulfilling their recruitment needs through Maker Talent as a one-stop shop for best talent in the blockchain. Maker Talent sources and recruits for the Maker Community in an efficient and transparent way, while providing state-of-the-art candidate experience.

#### Our Values


## Strategy

Our primary strategy consists of four pillars that break down Maker Talent's mission into actionable, early-stage roadmaps. To grow as a reliable partner for MakerDAO hiring needs, we need to align and streamline activities across these four pillars. To put it into detail, we must:

1. Become a reliable hiring partner within MakerDAO.
2. Utilize Social Recruiting as a main recruitment strategy.
3. Find the best talent from across the blockchain world.
5. Provide an outstanding candidate experience.


Let's dive a bit deeper into the strategies mentioned. Here is how we apply them today, and how we will continue to make them actionable.

### Become a Reliable Hiring Partner Within MakerDAO

The hiring market is a double-sided market. Providing a great candidate experience is just one side of the coin. The other side, however, places a requirement on us to be seen by the Core Unit Hiring Managers as _the_ MakerDAO Hiring Agency.

* Build a network of Subject Matter Experts to help filter and recruit best-in-class talent.
* Create a central hub for all MakerDAO's hiring needs, which is to be easily accessible by both hiring managers and candidates.
* Act as a partner that understands the Core Unit needs and roadmap.
* Deliver candidates that match requirements within a reasonable timeframe.
* Provide continuous insights about market status and candidate's funnel.
* Create an easy-to-follow and automated registration process to request new hires.

### Utilize Social Recruiting as a Main Recruitment Strategy

Blockchain talent experts and developers alike are often prominent within social networks both on and offline. We must be sure to seek them out through both inbound and outbound strategies.

* Set up easily identifiable branding for Maker Talent that at the same time promotes MakerDAO.
* Develop recruiting strategies for Twitter, Github and Stack Overflow, among others.
* Offer crystal-clear and fair referral programs to increase talent pull effect by MakerDAO itself.
* Deliver workshops and keynotes on a range of hiring and retention topics.
* Sponsor and attend industry events attracting young yet-undiscovered talents.

### Find the Best Talent from across the Blockchain World

* Invest in apps and tools to reach the best developers within their communities.
* Attract top candidates by creating a process that is fun, insightful, and enriching.
* Train recruiters so they can acquire the needed expertise in terms of social recruiting, sourcing, and the MakerDAO business domain.
* Create a clear and easy process for candidates to apply for future opportunities: backed up by a team focused on nurturing our talent pool, conducting proactive interviews, and attending fairs and blockchain events.

### Provide an Outstanding Candidate Experience

As talent is scarce within the crypto sphere, we need to ensure that we provide an experience that is fair, involving, and transparent to the potential candidate. Regardless of the final decision, candidates should regard time spent in the recruitment process as valuable, contributing to their individual growth.

* Act as a partner to candidates so as to assist them in interview preparation, explaining the process in detail, and aligning expectations at all stages.
* Train interviewers (hiring managers and recruiters) on interviewing skills.
* Optimise and promote our software to track candidates (Applicant Tracking System or ATS) as an easy-to-use tool for hiring by training interviewers with insightful and useful videos and workshops.
* Compensate candidates for carrying out complex technical tests.
* Prepare a set of communication materials to guarantee that candidates are properly informed about the position and conditions, as well as MakerDAO projects and our roadmap.
* Continually improve the performance of recruiters, hiring managers, and everyone involved in the process by sharing qualitative feedback and KPIs from candidate surveys.
* Make sure that effective and personalised feedback is sent to all unsuccessful candidates.
* Keep in touch and interact with our existing database of professionals to ensure we make the most of it.

## Some Challenges We Will Face

Let’s consider a few real-world scenarios which are likely to pose a challenge for our endeavours and, as such, must be quickly mitigated.

#### Talent Scarcity

Blockchain talent is scarce. In addition to the basic hard skills, candidates need to outperform others in the new decentralised, distributed environment. What can we do to ensure we can reach them, and by what means?

##### Answer

Blockchain talent is rather rare. Here, you don’t post an offer and soon after have people applying like in other industries. Beyond this, it is---more often than not---difficult to find out the candidate’s real name and efficiently gather their contributions across social media.

It is necessary to connect with them through common interests and promote inbound recruitment. Some examples include events, webinars, sharing common practices, participating in meet-ups, and keeping in touch not only when you need them. The use of our community power is key: we need to transform every Maker stakeholder into a connection to the best talent.

#### Sub-par Candidate Quality

How do we make sure that we ask the right questions to assess candidates' competence in an industry where everything changes so fast?

##### Answer

During interviews, we tend to be overly focused on how candidates respond. We are used to classic questions-vs-answer interviews: here, the outcome ends up being limited. Candidates tend to respond with the same type of answers so as to stay in the safe zone and reduce the risk of confrontation.

We need to create complex but realistic problems that are similar to the scenarios that Maker faces every day. We also need to promote candidate-interviewer interaction by asking more open and insightful questions. During an interview, the process can teach us much more than the final answer.

Giving acurate and immediate feedback, engaging by co-creating new solutions, and inspiring candidates with Maker’s vision and mindset is part of the essential skill set needed to get the most out of interviews and to guarantee a pleasant recruiting experience.

#### Measuring Performance the Right Way

A usual metric for recruitment agencies in the centralised world is the moment of “hire”. That puts quantity over quality. This simplistic strategy often disregards if and how long a successful hire stays at the position. Funds spent on the hiring process are thus easily wasted by short retention period and both time and resources needed to phase in a new candidate into their new position.

##### Answer

Creating a scalable and efficient recruitment machine for Maker may sometimes require the employment of recruitment agencies; however, we will try to avoid doing so as much as possible---for cost and quality reasons. Partnering with hiring managers with well-trained internal HR professionals is key in order to achieve this. The more engaged we keep our community with Maker’s vision and projects, the less help we will need from externals.

### Coming Soon...

Recruitment is an urgent need at MakerDAO. However, there are other requirements that also deserve an action plan from Maker Talent. Despite my current limitation to recruitment, we will---as soon as we are fully operational---**expand Maker Talent Core Unit into other areas** impacting onboarding experience, training, contributor experience, retention, perks and benefits, and many others.

We already recruited nine professionals throughout the SES incubation programme and we are now working on another 8-10 openings for 2022 (to see the openings visit [Maker Talent Openings Webpage](https://makerdao.recruitee.com/)).

## Related Documents

- [Core Unit Budget MIP](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip40c3-spxx-modify-core-unit-budget-maker-talent-mt-001/12077)
- [Core Unit Budget MIP (MKR)](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip40c3-spxx-modify-core-unit-budget-mkr-maker-talent-mt-001/12076)
- [Core Unit Facilitator MIP](https://forum.makerdao.com/t/mip41c4-spxx-facilitator-onboarding-for-maker-talent-core-unit/12078)