A startup’s guide to recruiting and retaining remote talent

Hiring talent is tough.

No longer can businesses simply post a job ad in the classified section of the local newspaper and call it a day. As expectations from jobs and employers evolve, it’s easy to understand why some companies are having such a hard time. Besides, businesses that fail to adapt in this shifting landscape risk losing their talent to other more adaptable companies.

What then can employers do to attract and retain the right talent? Where do they start?

In the pilot episode of A Startup’s Guide to Remote Talent, G-P’s Charles Ferguson talks to Imran Mohamad, head of marketing at DeFi company Kyber Network, about the changing expectations workers have from their employers, how businesses can adapt to retain the talent they have, and how they can make themselves an attractive employment prospect.

Timecodes:

00:00 – Intro
01:24 – Introducing Imran Mohamad, head of marketing at Kyber Network
02:39 – The global shift to a remote working culture
04:24 – The increasing value employees put into being able to choose where they work
06:09 – What companies can do about the shifting perspectives of their workers
09:35 – How Kyber Network attracts innovative talent
13:41 – Kyber Network’s approach to building its global remote workforce
18:42 – The recap so far
19:22 – Next episode: How to establish an efficient remote-working culture

Hosts:

• Charles Ferguson, Singapore-based general manager for G-P’s Asia-Pacific operations
• Nathaniel Fetalvero, managing editor of Tech in Asia Studios and host of the Startup Snapshot podcast

Featured Interviewee:

• Imran Mohamad, head of marketing for Kyber Network, a decentralized exchange that enables users to swap, earn, and participate in DeFi in a seamless manner

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A Startup’s Guide to Remote Talent is a podcast by Tech in Asia, produced in partnership with G-P. Visit G-P’s website to learn more about the increasingly remote working world and how your business can gain an edge in the talent economy.

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Transcript

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Hey, Charles, you ever think about the good ol’ days?

Charles Ferguson:
What do you mean, Nat?

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Remember how, once upon a time, all it took to build a workforce was a couple of ads in the classified section of the local newspaper and, hey presto, you’ve got yourself a staff of employees?

Charles Ferguson:
Haha well, that’s not the way the world is anymore. Since the last couple of years, everyone’s gotten used to working from home, which means businesses have a whole plethora of factors that they have to consider now when hiring talent.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Ugh, tell me about it. Like, which markets should I hire from? How can I stand out from other hiring companies? What can I do to make sure the talent I bring onboard stays?

Charles Ferguson:
Exactly. You know, I’ve actually been speaking to a few people about this shift in the working world and I think you – as well as our listeners – might learn a thing or two if you’d hear me out.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Listeners?

Charles Ferguson:
My name’s Charles Ferguson, I’m the APAC general manager at G-P, and my co-host is Tech in Asia Studios managing editor Nathaniel Fetalvero. In this four-episode podcast miniseries, we’re going to explore the new age of hiring and how businesses of today – and tomorrow – can navigate the talent economy of the future.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
How did –

Charles Ferguson:
Welcome to A Startup’s Guide to Remote Talent.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Alright, Charles, I think the first thing we need to talk about when discussing the remote age of working is how businesses can even get started hiring.

Charles Ferguson:
That’s a great point, and it’s something that I discussed at length with Imran Mohamad, who heads marketing at decentralized finance company Kyber Network.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I think if you kind of go back to this idea of what is work, I think what has been defined previously is probably an outcome of, like, in the industrial age. And I think what’s going on today – with technology today, with decentralisation, most recently with the pandemic – I think it threw a lot of assumptions out the window, right? The assumption that we all have to be in the same room to be productive. Clearly, that’s not the case anymore, because the wall hasn’t burned down.

And especially in a world where, you know, a lot of what Web3 is all about is about saying, “Hey, as an individual user today, you can create and own.” And in a creator economy, when people are saying, “Hey, I don’t want to be an employee with you, but I can work with you. And I’m in Spain, and I can produce output.”

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Right, so this whole remote working culture basically gives you the opportunity to tap into talent from all over the world, you’re not just restricted to people in the country or city your business is headquartered in.

Charles Ferguson:
Yeah, but the thing businesses need to understand is that transitioning into a remote working culture doesn’t just open you up to the opportunities Imran was talking about a while ago, because now even the people in your vicinity might not be so psyched about having to go into the office.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I can’t say that I’ve done any survey

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Fair enough.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
But what I can speak of, from experience… So I’m married, I have two kids, and a third one on the way.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Congrats.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Thanks, but so, obviously, there are different priorities, right? And even for myself, I want to get stuff done. But it cannot be also with the sacrifice of other things, which are more important to me, right?

And I see this even more so with my wife, who literally has taken multiple time-offs, sabbatical, quit jobs, so on and so forth, because kids are the priority in her head, and there is no alternative, before something like this really happens in terms of a remote revolution, right?

So I think with with such opportunities in play now, it becomes a reality where someone like my wife, who has eight to 10 years of marketing experience in Fortune 500 companies can say, “Hey, I could potentially get a gig that I can utilize my skill sets, experience, contribute productively, feel that I’m being paid a fair wage, and still have the balance that I want,” because she wants to be at home, she wants to pick up the kids, she wants to be there, and not delegate that to an afterschool daycare, for example.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Totally.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
You know, Charles, I can already imagine what some companies have to say in response to that, like, “If my employees don’t come into the office, then how can I tell that they’re actually working?”

Charles Ferguson:
Yeah, and that’s why you see so many companies start rushing back towards what was previously considered “normal” or, in some cases, decide to take a hybrid approach, where some days you gotta be in the office, while other days are spent wherever you want.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Yeah, but isn’t that super frustrating for employees, though? Honestly, I’d hate Mondays so much more if I had to come into the office.

Charles Ferguson:
That’s exactly my point. You and I and all the other workers out there are beginning to value the choice of whether or not we work in the office or from home or even from the sunny beaches of Bali. What businesses need to realize is that that choice is just one step away from choosing to work for an employer with a better – and more trusting – remote working environment.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I think what’s missing there is a lack of nuance.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Yes.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Right? Because there are jobs where you have to be resident because it’s high tech, the tools are there, the clean lab is there, whatever it is – it’s a service industry. But again, it’s a free world, you can choose where you want to work.

But where there is choice, and then you say “I don’t trust you,” I think that’s a very strong signal. And I think it’s a very small world today and, you know, if people don’t trust that you will take them as an honest, genuine worker, employee, contributor, then there are many, many other companies or organizations that would likely be willing to give them that same or better wage and trust them more.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
But does that mean companies just have to deal with the fact that their workers might not be working when they want them to be? Like, that’s the tradeoff you have to make to ensure that you’re an attractive enough employment prospect for the increasingly remote world and the talent that resides there?

Charles Ferguson:
Not exactly. Imran and I talked about that as well.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
What are some of the creative ways to ensure that you’re providing for retention and opportunity and in a business place that’s remote like this?

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
There used to be the famous Google I think, I can’t remember what they call it 10% or 20% Time?

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Yeah, I remember.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I think they scaled down on that.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Probably, probably like a 2% now, haha.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
But I think that is a concept that is very interesting. And if I’m not wrong, it generated some ideas like Google… like Gmail, for example, right? So clearly having the ability to let your people ideate outside of the boundaries of OKRs or KPIs can generate business outcomes if there is an overarching framework idea that we can hold people towards.

I think, with what Kyber Network or KyberSwap does, a lot of what happens in terms of our innovation actually happens through the ideas of our people. So I think a very important part of it is how do we create a big enough vision, idea, and goal that people can look at and say, “I can nest my ideas, my contributions, my creations, my goals, my dreams in this.” And in an industry where it’s kind of like a flash in the pan, sometimes, right?

I had the CEO ask me when I was still considering, and he said, “What will keep you with the company for a long, long time?” And I knew then that they are an organization that is really looking at how do we keep and retain people for a long time.

And so I think that’s one very important part, right? Because I personally, in my journey, have always looked at how do I optimize my own skill set, my own contributions for the greatest impact while taking care of my family? Right, because I do want to do something meaningful. And that’s why I think with an industry like ours, you have, like, an incredible opportunity to create stuff, right? Like, I give a very simple analogy. Like, if you’re an automotive engineer today, would you be going to dedicate your next 10 years to building the better diesel engine?

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Yes.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Or the better or next electric engine? I think the answer is obvious.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Yes.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Right. So –

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Diesel.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Haha.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Right, so it seems like a remote-working culture that not only trust employees to get their work done but also empowers them to innovate in the areas they feel drawn to can actually be extremely beneficial to the company in question because, in exchange, the business also gets the boon of both attracting new talent and retaining the ones they have for a long, long time.

Charles Ferguson:
Exactly. Plus, if you have a culture that encourages innovation, you’ll be a magnet for innovative people.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
OK, but how about for companies that need talent, like, right now? How do they go about searching for these kinds of workers that will embrace that culture we just talked about? And what if they’re looking for talent that has a very specific and highly coveted set of skills?

Charles Ferguson:
Well, Kyber Network had to ask itself that question when it started out five years ago.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
By definition, Khyber is a pioneer. So we’re a pioneer in the DeFi space before the term DeFi was invented. And so we’ve been here for five years.

By definition, the industry is early adopters. So people who are in the industry as talent, builders, or people who are users even, they’re all early adopters, right – In whichever bell curve you’re looking at. So by definition, it’s a tough, tough ask in terms of looking for talent, just because, when I’m looking for people, I’m looking for people with both functional and industry knowledge. And if it’s not proven industry knowledge, two years experience, it is “show me your portfolio,” right? Tell me what degen stuff you’ve done. Like, I’ve collected air drops, or I bought this NFT and I lost money, or whatever it is. It cannot be someone that says, “I’ve heard of blockchain and I’m willing to learn,” there’s just no proven enthusiasm or interest, right?

So by definition the type of people that I would look for would be a very small segment of the population. Then, now the challenge would be how do I find them? So we’re primarily based in Singapore, Vietnam, but we do have talent like in Germany, Indonesia, and the rest of Europe, in Korea and Japan. So the challenge is, how do we find the talent… it’s like a needle in the haystack, right? And how do we stand out in front of other employers as well?

So we do work with universities to sponsor the events, hackathons, and stuff like that, like, 80% of our staff are engineers.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
That’s great.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
So hackathons are very important for us to identify good talent and position ourselves in front of good talent. And what we also do find is our user market tends to overlap with our talent market as well. So that means our talent tends to also be heavy users.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
So that’s helpful.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
That is helpful, right? So what then that means is that, actually, market education helps us as well. So on our side, we obviously work with firms like Tech in Asia, we also work with very crypto specific publications and platforms, your Binance, your CoinGecko, we work with foundations like Ethereum Foundation, Polygon, and so on and so forth, right. So all these, the more that we do education outreach, I think it also helps in terms of the brand awareness, as well as that employer awareness.

But at the end of the day, it still comes down to a lot of, like, hustle, push, referral, so on and so forth, right? Even, like, scouting and headhunting as well, like, I’m guilty of using my LinkedIn Premium and going down and looking for marketing managers because I really need, like, this specific kind of person.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Absolutely. That’s what it’s for, man, nothing guilty about that.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
Yeah, so I think the answer is like many, many facets, but it is a very global world right now. We’ve also found some of our part-time or even full-timers through platforms like Upwork and Fiverr, where we started out on a part-time basis or ad hoc basis, and then part-time and then full-time as well. So the channels and the areas of entry are also many different ones as well.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
So I’d imagine that a global business like Kyber Network would need to look at hiring global talent as well, right? How do they go about doing that?

Charles Ferguson:
Well, it’s interesting because the approach depends on the business. Some companies might need a number of employees to be awake and working at different times of day, so they’d make sure to hire talent across different time zones. Others might simply focus on the markets that they have a strong presence in or even markets that they’re looking to expand into.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
So our business isn’t structured based on looking at geographies, right? So DeFi is global. What this means is that when I market, I market globally, we don’t target any specific countries. So we do have users from, you know, many, many dozens of countries, but we do have a certain affinity to certain locations.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Sure.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
So what we find that works for us in the past is that, organically, we would start to build up a base of users. And I wouldn’t even look at it from a geography, but we look at it from, like, a language perspective. So for example, I have community moderators in Japanese, in Korean, in Turkish, and Indonesian, right? And Mandarin, as well.

And the latest one that we set up was Indonesia. And it was because we saw that there’s some organic growth in Indonesian users based on web visits and all that. And we also had a good opportunity where a very enthusiastic community member said, “Hey, I would love to take on the mantle, I would even volunteer to just moderate the community.” And also, it came to a point where we said, “Hey, no, we actually would love to work with you on a deeper level, if you want.”

So we do find that, again, at least for our side, the industry tends to be very early adopters, which by definition, take a lot of proactivity. So when it comes to having to push and pull the talent in, what I find is that, at least in my experience, it doesn’t work as well. But again, it’s a very different situation for different employers. But yeah, that’s how we look at it, at least on the various communities, it tends to be by language, and it tends to be based on organic growth first.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
So, are you all aligning yourselves to some extent around time zones? Because while I realize that your construct is global in its very nature, there are still particular markets that have a higher propensity to adopt what you’re bringing to market than others, right? Perhaps Uganda might not be a top market for you today. It might be later. But as you mentioned earlier, Vietnam and Singapore has concentration, and now Indonesia and Mandarin speaking North Asia and Japan, etc. What’s next for Kyber Network with respect to remote work? Is this the future of work?

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I mean, for us, I think it’s very much the present.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Right on.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
We primarily, right now, most of our people are operating within Singapore, Asian, or European time zones. I mean, surprisingly, we do have a decent number of users that come in from places like Brazil, for example. But we don’t necessarily need to have a specific person based in that timezone in order to serve them, at least not yet. But we might do that in the future. Who knows, right?

So I think, again, depending on where it organically grows, we might look at that. I think with our industry the way it is, a big part of what’s going to happen moving forward has to lie between the discussion that happened within the industry and regulators and central banks, for example.

Charles Ferguson (Recorded Interview):
Sure.

Imran Mohamad (Recorded Interview):
I think there’s no other way around it, regulation is important. Protecting consumers is important, weeding out bad actors are important. So we stand by that. Very happy to share that we are five years old, with a reputation of not having any relation to scams or hacks, right? And that’s not something that is commonplace within the industry as well.

But again, for the talent, and the industry, and the whole market to evolve, I think, beyond the early adopters, those will need to happen. And I think once those discussions happen, once there’s greater clarity, I think the policies and hiring will also evolve alongside it.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Right, so to recap, businesses need to prime themselves for the new remote-working era by trusting their employees and empowering them to innovate because people’s priorities have drastically changed and what they want in an employer now is very different from before. This, in turn, labels them as innovative employers, which makes it much easier for them to recruit quality talent from universities, while potentially being able to poach workers from less adaptive businesses in the space. And all that leads to greater talent retention, which means workers don’t bring the skills and expertise they’ve gained at their jobs somewhere else.

Charles Ferguson:
Very succinctly put.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
OK, but how do you keep that culture of innovation and the embrace of remote working alive? I’d imagine it’d be easier for some people than others. And just drastically shifting into a remote working concept might just lead some of the less adaptive, yet talented, employees to seek other opportunities.

Charles Ferguson:
That’s a good question – one I’ll answer in the next episode.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
Ah.

Charles Ferguson:
And to all of you listening, thank you for listening to A Startup’s Guide to Remote Talent, a Tech in Asia podcast, produced in partnership with G-P. Make sure to follow us on your podcast platform of choice so you can catch the rest of the episodes we have in store for you, where we’ll be discussing everything you need to know about the future of the remote-talent economy. And if you’re on an app that lets you, go ahead and give us five stars and a review. It really helps us out.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
While you’re at it, we gotta give special thanks to Imran Mohamad from Kyber Network for sharing his wisdom and expertise with us on this episode. We’ll put links to his LinkedIn profile in the show notes if you want to get in touch with him. And if you’re interested in a job at Kyber Network, check out the Tech in Asia Jobs board, where the company has a handful of open roles put up.

Charles Ferguson:
That’s right. And if you’re a business owner or business leader and you need or want some assistance in figuring out your remote talent strategies, visit G-P’s website at g-p.com and we’ll be sure to help you out. I’ve been Charles.

Nathaniel Fetalvero:
And I’m Nat. We’ll catch you next time.