Hiring in web3 is a different beast. Fast-paced, unconventional, and deeply mission-driven. Few people understand that better than Leila Rosenthal, who’s led talent functions at both global giants like Uber and early-stage crypto startups like ether.fi. In this edition of People Protocol, Leila shares what it’s like to build a people function in one of the fastest-moving industries in tech, how she spots top talent when traditional signals don’t apply, and why every hire in a startup feels like a high-stakes bet.
You’ve led talent functions at both massive orgs like Uber and early-stage teams like ether.fi. What’s been the biggest mindset shift for you moving from scale to startup?
While every hire is important no matter where you work, hiring for smaller, earlier-stage teams carries higher stakes, and each hire has a much bigger impact. When I joined ether.fi, we were just 10 people, so every hire at that point represented 5-10% of the company. When you think about it that way, you realize how important it is to get it right!
It’s also crucial to focus on quality over quantity. At Uber, we had teams of thousands of engineers we could tap into for interviews. Here, we only have a few, and they’re already stretched thin with everything else they’re working on. Pulling them away for an hour-long coding interview can be a time suck, so it’s important to make recruiting conversions as efficient and high-quality as possible.
At ether.fi, you’re building the people function in a fast-moving web3 company. What are some unique people challenges that come with working in crypto?
I joke that crypto is like tech on steroids. We tend to move faster, disrupt more, and operate in a way I’ve never seen before. The people in this space are incredibly passionate. Not just about their own projects, but about the industry as a whole. There’s a lot of camaraderie and inherent collaboration across companies, which I really love.
That said, because crypto moves so fast, keeping up with talent trends, landing top candidates, and onboarding effectively can be more challenging. The industry is highly distributed and remote-first, so operating as an onsite or hybrid team in just a couple of locations adds a layer of complexity to hiring. But the benefits of in-person collaboration, and avoiding time zone headaches, are definitely worth the trade-off.
Web3 hiring can be unpredictable - pseudonyms, portfolios, GitHub over CVs. How do you adjust your recruiting lens when traditional signals don’t apply?
I’m not too fazed when a candidate doesn’t have a formal LinkedIn profile or a perfectly polished resume. What matters is their past work experience (however they choose to show it), their track record, and their motivations. We’re able to evaluate all of that during our interview process, regardless of what’s shared at the application stage.
We also rely heavily on referrals and have a talent network program that allows us to passively engage top talent over time. That way, when the timing aligns, either on their side or ours, we’re ready to hire them.
As a recruiter-turned-head of people, how do you think about performance, culture, and retention differently now that you’re owning the whole employee experience?
I love this question! So much of recruiting and people ops naturally overlap, but that connection often gets overlooked. Back at Uber, the functions were more compartmentalized, and I often craved more insight into how my hires were performing, what made someone an incredible hire vs. a poor one, and how to use that data to improve hiring decisions.
Running both functions at ether.fi makes it much easier to stay close to these things. I can track how competency and compensation bands form a continuous story from hire to tenured employee, how retention strategies feed back into recruiting, and how all of it contributes to improving our employee value proposition.
What’s one underrated or surprising tactic that’s helped you win great talent in a competitive market?
Not surprising, but definitely underrated: ask every single candidate you talk to for referrals. People generally want to help others in their network. If you can get them excited about your company, they’ll often be happy to refer someone they know. I’ve had lots of conversations with folks who weren’t a fit for whatever reason, but still connected me with someone great.
If you were advising a web3 founder hiring their first Head of People, what would you tell them to look for and is there anything you’d avoid?
I’ll keep this one simple:
- Make sure you’re aligned on the big stuff: employee value proposition, company values, how the company works best, and your overall recruiting philosophy.
- Be sure you can be honest with each other. A Founder and Head of People will naturally experience some healthy friction, and you need to be able to have hard conversations.
- Hire someone who has startup experience. There’s nothing quite like it, and bringing someone on who understands what it takes will make your life a lot easier!
