A Novel New Way to Recruit Talent

TL;DR

• The German Intelligence Agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), has just launched an NFT collection that puts their applicants to the test.

• In order to mint one of them, you first have to go through a ‘cryptographic treasure hunt’ that’s been designed to understand how people solve issues related to cybersecurity.

• The role is for a blockchain cyber security engineer – and the best way to know if someone can do the job is by seeing them do the job.

Full Story

We’re still not sure if this is folk lore, or he actually said it – but supposedly Bill Gates once said: “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

‘Work smart, not hard’ is engrained in lazy people; and one result of that is discovering more efficient ways of working.

Well, the German Intelligence Agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (let’s call them ‘BND’), has just launched an NFT collection that puts their applicants to the test.

Here’s how it works:

BND has created a collection of 999 dog NFTs.

In order to mint one of them, you first have to go through a ‘cryptographic treasure hunt’ that’s been designed to understand how people solve issues related to cybersecurity.

Only those who get through the cryptographic treasure hunt (uncovering the correct data) are able to mint the NFTs.

Here’s our take:

First off, we love to see the innovative approach.

The role is for a blockchain cyber security engineer – and the best way to know if someone can do the job is by seeing them do the job.

Secondly, a ‘cryptographic scavenger hunt’ has a hint of marketing virality to it.

There are so many jobs out there these days that it’s tough to get the word out. An approach like this just might reach a bunch of candidates who wouldn’t have otherwise heard about the role.

Lastly, there’ve only been about 200 NFTs claimed so far. Which means either this is a really tough scavenger hunt, or maybe there just aren’t that many people looking to put in the effort for a role like this.

Whatever the case, while it’s not super repeatable for most companies, you’ve gotta admire this out-of-the-box thinking.

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