A couple years ago I was struck with an epiphany that onchain portfolios would be a thing. It wasn’t until I saw @0xdesigner’s product portfolio that the pieces connected.
Syncing Talent with Infrastructure
As many have covered quite extensively, the internet’s economy steals from, leverages, and replicates certain aspects of its offline counterpart. It is fundamentally different however. And onchain is an even greater divergence.
The talent-to-infrastructure funnel is incredibly messy. Whether you were the talent or the hiring agent for the given infrastructure, we’re all aware of the difficulty to secure your respective objectives.
This messiness is part of the network-nepotism we readily rely on. It’s much easier to secure a job from someone you know, even tangentially, then send a resume into a corporation as a blank personality. The same is true of securing talent for a job you wish to hire.
The internet helped us connect, but we’re still awash in an endless ocean of data. Factor in minimal coordination mechanisms, the resulting effects are dwindling attention spans and shrinking of selection filters - even for ‘significant’ decisions.
Traditional
What do you imagine a hiring agent for Google goes through? Countless resumes with equivalent spotlessness. The top universities. The highest achievement certificates. A sea of top 1% talent by all metrics.
Thanks to YouTube you can see the resumes of some successful applicants. The overlapping patterns are:
extra effort/consideration
unique &/o significant proof of skill/talent/work
The traditional path is constantly looking for the untraditional these days. They still look for them through the tried and true talent funnels however. This means that top 1% credentials are becoming more of an introduction to opportunities, as opposed to the attainment of them.
Internet Native
The internet-native world is quickly changing this funnel. You see startups hire ‘non-credentialed’ people off of tweets that brought value or a cold dm with attractive value props.
As gig work increases, and the internet economy evolves into a more modular system, it becomes increasingly evident that impactful, aesthetic, and highly digestible portfolios will become assets. An interesting development, thanks to blockchains, is that the contents of these portfolios can now become assets as well.
Let’s refer back to 0xdesigners product portfolio.
https://twitter.com/0xDesigner/status/1682444705659854848
Impactful? Immediately. Aesthetic? Incredibly. Digestible? Quicker than any word document or powerpoint could ever be.
Portfolio-as-a-product (PaaP) improves the talents ability to differentiate themselves and the hiring agents ability to filter efficiently. Outside of their potential relationships, PaaP allows experiences to gain market signal. This is equally beneficial to both parties.
https://twitter.com/0xlght/status/1654201301201481728?s=20
It comes down to speculation at present, but who do you think would get hired for Sr. product designer at the next hot thing; 0xdesigner after sending his PaaP or an offchain individual who sent the traditional resume docs?
