Scaling NEAR Protocol from 35 to over 140 people

NEAR Protocol (at the time was NEAR Inc then transitioned to Pagoda) had launched mainnet in early 2021 and started to onboard projects into their ecosystem. The business had ambitious plans to hire across engineering (application and protocol), operations, finance, legal, HR, marketing and developer relations.

At the time NEAR was relying agency submissions for around 90% of all their hiring (which was reduced to less than 5% in just a few months) and with just a Head of People and one coordinator in place they needed a solution that not only attracted top talent but could lead the recruiting efforts, manage workforce planning, compensation advisory, and being a trusted advisor to the leadership team and founders.

Jamie Robshaw (founder of SVX.dev) joined the business in November 2021 as an embedded talent acquisition advisor, he set up processes and hired a talent acquisition team to be able to deliver on the growth plans. Jamie personally delivered over 55 out of the 100 job requisitions with no external support including: Head of Infrastructure, CFO, General Counsel, Engineering Leaders, Chief People Officer, Marketers, Core Engineers, and many other positions. 

After 3 months of being embedded as a talent acquisition advisor Jamie was promoted to Director of Talent and remained in the business for 20 months, and continue to support NEAR and other ecosystem projects with hiring.