Welcome to Getro’s Innovator Series. In this ongoing series of posts, we're highlighting individuals and initiatives with innovative approaches to talent from Getro's network.

We talked to Ian Brunner, Head of Talent Acquisition at Protocol Labs to find out how Protocol Labs is leveraging Getro’s Job Board to radically improve the internet.

Building the Next Generation of the Internet

Protocol Labs in a few words

Protocol Labs is an open-source research, development, and deployment lab. They create software systems that tackle significant challenges, aiming to solve them with new technology breakthroughs, great user experience design, and an open-source approach to creation.

A Collaborative Process

Protocol Labs has collaborated on key web3 efforts such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), a protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system, as well as FileCoin, a decentralized storage network designed to store humanity’s most important information.

Protocol Labs is not a single company, but rather a network of OSS projects, tools, and companies working together towards a common goal. . Some network partners build applications and tooling on top of Protocol Labs’ core technologies, then gather feedback, iterate on their product, and even nucleate into new organizations and projects as the need arises. . Other companies receive funding from Protocol Labs via grants to develop technologies over a specific timeline.

Protocol Labs’ Network of Residents

To support this network, Protocol Labs has created a signature PL Launchpad program, a talent accelerator that helps accelerate talent into the web3 industry or space they’re interested in. Residents (participants in the Launchpad program) go through a six-week program with curriculum and interactive programming to get up to speed on Protocol Labs’ ecosystem, community, open-source technologies, and tools. They learn everything they need to be able to work in web3.

Launchpad Cohort Schedule 

This is where Getro comes in, allowing talent to see all of the opportunities available in Protocol Labs’ network of companies that they can potentially move into after completing the program.

Protocol Labs Job Board powered by Getro

A Shared Network of Web3 Talent

According to Ian, “Legacy web2 is much more about competition and winners and losers and trying to be successful in competing against other companies in the space. Whereas web3 is all about collaboration and working together to drive forward.”

In web3, everything is structured to allow movement between the network and allow sharing of knowledge…including potential talent. Right now Protocol Labs’ job board has 35+ partner companies and more than 200 open jobs.

But, it’s not just about bringing great talent into their network of partners. Protocol Labs has built out their recruiting team to almost 30 people to conduct active outreach and has also made a concerted effort to improve their recruitment branding using the Getro job board to increase recognition.  

For each PL Launchpad cohort, Protocol Labs onboards about 15 to 20 companies to their community. With just a click, they can select the companies and jobs they want to highlight on their Getro job board.

Protocol Labs also uses the job board to recruit their own talent, which has almost doubled since October 2021. However, since they are all about democratization, when a candidate doesn’t get hired by Protocol Labs, they can use the Getro job board to identify other potential open positions that could be a good fit. This process ensures that Protocol Labs is able to leverage the opportunities on the job board to help keep Web3 talent within their network.

Some of the job board features they take advantage of include:

  • Showcasing companies and jobs that Residents can join once they complete the PL Launchpad
  • Providing added visibility and legitimacy to partner companies in terms of exposure in the web3 space (this level of differentiation helps companies push through the sea of pretenders in the web3 industry)
  • Highlighting their own internal web3 roles to Residents

As they look to the future, Protocol Labs is excited to continue to expand their job board with Getro and is currently exploring additional ways it can further help talent access their network companies in all stages of the PL Launchpad process.

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