The Best Crypto Hires Right Now? The Ones Who’ve Been Burned

The Best Crypto Hires Right Now? The Ones Who’ve Been Burned

Date: 02 Jun 2025

Everyone talks about hiring “top-tier talent.”

What they usually mean is:
“Give me someone with big protocol experience, massive raises, and clean wins.”

Sounds great on paper.

But in Web3? Paper wins don’t always mean much.

You want to know who’s actually worth hiring right now?

The ones who’ve been through it.

Not just “seen the cycles” from the sidelines — but people who’ve built, failed, rebuilt, and stayed.

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Let’s talk about the kind of candidates who come across our desks:

• The engineer who shipped smart contracts for a promising DeFi app…
  until the treasury got drained and the founding team vanished.

• The head of growth who onboarded hundreds of thousands of users…
  only to have the token nosedive to zero.

• The product lead who helped raise $20M and hit every roadmap goal…
  but still got laid off because “the market changed.”

Those people? They’re battle-tested.

They’ve been through governance drama, protocol pivots, multi-chain chaos, and brutal token downturns.

And they’re still building.

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Here’s what most hiring managers don’t understand:

Survivors of this space don’t just bring experience. They bring perspective.

They know:

• What breaks when incentives are misaligned

• How to pressure test a token model

• What red flags to catch before they turn into a fire

• How to build trust in teams that are half remote, half anon, and all in

They’re the ones who ask better questions.
Ship leaner.
Move faster — not because they’re chasing hype, but because they know what happens when you don’t.

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But here’s the rub:

These candidates don’t always look shiny on LinkedIn.

They might have projects that didn’t make it.
Gaps where they took time to recover or regroup.
Stories that sound messy.

But if you take the time to listen — to hear what they actually went through — you’ll realize:

They’ve done more with less.
They’ve made hard calls.
They’ve stuck around when everyone else bailed.

In a market full of talkers, they’re the ones who still show up to build.

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So if you’re hiring in crypto right now, be honest with yourself:

Are you looking for the neatest résumé?
Or are you looking for someone who actually knows what this space demands?

Because the perfect candidate on paper might not be the one who can help you survive the next downturn.

But the builder who’s been burned — and still wants in?
That’s someone worth betting on.

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This space rewards resilience more than polish.
And if your hiring process can’t see that, you’re going to miss your best shot.

We see it every day.

And if you want help spotting that kind of talent?

We’re here for it. Let’s talk. Reach out to us HERE

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Still struggling to stand out?

Neil offers one-on-one career consultations to help you get clear, get seen, and get hired. HERE

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Looking for a job? Reach out to us HERE

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