Noble Markets Leverages 2Bridge's Recruitment-as-a-Service (RaaS) To Keep Pace With Hiring During The Crypto Craze Of 2019
The Challenge:
In 2019, as the crypto industry was growing and evolving rapidly, Noble Markets closed their Series A and had Billions of client money sitting in custody. Noble initially retained 2Bridge to hire a CTO to help grow the firm. They were so pleased with the results and that they decided to Leverage our RaaS model to grow. Noble was looking to hire aggressively and contracted 2Bridge for a year-long engagement to assist their growth. The task was to hire ~47 people, including 5 Subject Matter Experts (Crypto, FX, Arduino, Security/Encryption), 1 Head of Product, 5 Software Engineering Managers (SEM), and six people for each engineering team.
Our Strategy:
Regarding Talent Acquisition, Noble only had an ATS, no recruiters, and a Human Resources person. They were spending a fortune paying agencies a per-placement fee. They had a small product and technical team, including the recently hired Head of Engineering, who doubled as the head of product (until one could be hired). They effectively had no talent brand in the market and no participation in the NYC tech community. We worked with the Head of Engineering and the CFO to craft a strategy - first, headhunt a Head of Product. Second, we focused on standing up the software engineering management (SEM) team while concurrently building out the product organization. Once those three goals were accomplished, we went to market, headhunting the specialists while concurrently hiring the individual contributors w/in each vertical.
Our Approach:
Communication: In addition to leveraging Slack DMs and various channels to create open and real-time communication, we held weekly meetings with the Head of Engineering and Head of Product (once hired), which focused on what was working, what wasn't, what needed to change, and how to evolve recruitment processes. As the team grew, we incorporated more people into these syncs.
Executive Recruiter: At the beginning of the engagement, Noble had very few technical or product people to interview and hire at their desired scale and speed. We paired our top executive recruiter to work closely with the Head of Engineering, the CFO, and the leadership team to Identify and headhunt a Head of Product. Once that was accomplished, we focused on hiring the 5 Software Engineering Managers, creating the leadership base to help interview and build the framework for all technical & product hiring moving forward. Concurrently, we went to work building out the Product Organization, including 8 Product Managers, 3 QA Automation Engineers, and several Business Analysts.
Establish Processes: Now that Noble had an SEM team and Product Organization, we worked closely with them to implement interviewing best practices and rubrics to eliminate bias and create a workable interview framework to deploy across engineering and product. We customized the ATS, creating scorecards and rubrics. We built their careers page on the website and LinkedIn. Throughout onboarding, a consistent focus was interview training so team members could step in quickly and instantly know what and how to evaluate.
Build a brand: At the start, Noble had no careers page or authentic "Talent Brand." Once we created a careers page for their website and on LinkedIn, we partnered with Stack Overflow, BuiltinNYC, and other such sites to build buzz. Our team created content to raise awareness, and we cross-posted it on LinkedIn, social media, and other talent communities. We incorporated email marketing and our AI tooling to find specialized candidates and crafted comprehensive email and SMS campaigns to drive passive engagement. In doing these things, we effectively tapped both the passive and active markets.
Outcomes:
Contracted for a year, 2Bridge was able to hire the leadership within two months and had their teams staffed within six months while actively headhunting the specialist roles. As the engagement continued, additional hires occurred. Within Product and Engineering, we built a DevOps Team, A Security Team, and an Applications Support team. Noble quintupled in size, going from 40 people to 200 by the conclusion. We far exceeded our expectations. Noble spent a fraction of what they had been spending on traditional agencies.
The Client:
Noble Markets is a next-generation banking platform that provides post-trade technology for OTC markets. Their sister company, Noble Bank International, is a non-fractional reserve bank that focuses solely on enabling clients to clear, net, and settle FX & OTC transactions in real time.
