Comprehensive competition! Global consulting giants compete for blockchain cross-field talents

Rage Comment : The biggest problem facing the blockchain industry is the lack of talent. Global consulting firms such as Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG have indicated that companies are trying to recruit or train professional talent. Startups are also facing a talent dilemma and urgently need to increase talent recruitment efforts. For example, when Jeff Garzik, a senior Bitcoin developer, and investor Matt Roszak founded the blockchain service company Bloq, they found that recruiting talent was the primary problem. Among the talents, the most important thing is to find people who have both technical and business talents, because they know which areas to explore and commercialize the technology.

Translation: Annie Xu

“We are actively recruiting.”

Jeremy Drane, head of Internet finance at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), pointed out that the biggest problem facing the blockchain industry is the lack of talent, which was unanimously agreed by his peers.

Large professional service companies are facing a blockchain talent dilemma in their quest to meet the needs of the global financial industry. In interviews, global consulting firms such as Deloitte, PwC, and KPMG indicated that they are trying to recruit or train professional talent.

Eric Piscini, head of Deloitte’s Global Center for Digital Currency, said:

“We are planning to recruit 25,000 employees in 2016, including professionals in the field of innovation.”

Jeremy Drane pointed out that the current environment is similar to the early days of the Internet, both of which trained a large number of professional talents in the early stages of new technologies.

"We are thinking about which young people graduating from universities will be interested and what talent training plans we should adopt. The current trend is that companies must cultivate their own talents."

Eamonn Maguire, managing director of KPMG’s financial management, agreed, explaining that the company is developing talent internally as well as recruiting externally for expertise.

“We hope to conduct internal training on blockchain technology and also recruit externally. After all, there are limited professional talents outside.

Cross-disciplinary talents

Jeremy Drane said that the problem companies are facing now is that the talents that meet the technical needs are too limited to a certain field.

PwC is looking for people who have both technical and commercial talents because they know which areas to explore and commercialize technology.

"Our company is looking for cross-disciplinary talents, but unfortunately there are too few such talents out there."

He suggested that this is a key reason why PwC decided to work with technology companies such as Blockstream, Digital Asset Holdings and Eris Industries.

Eric Piscini said Deloitte is looking for multi-talented people because blockchain requires more than just technical skills

“We’re looking for cryptography, internet building, software engineering, and a combination of both.”

Startups are also facing a talent dilemma and are in urgent need of increasing their recruitment efforts. For example, when Jeff Garzik, a senior Bitcoin developer, and Matt Roszak, an investor, founded the blockchain service company Bloq, they found that recruiting talent was their primary problem.

Matt Roszak said Bloq will maximize the benefits of employees and allow them to work on a distributed basis.

“Salary, equity, vacation, and work-life balance are key, and we will provide a full range of employee benefits.”

Michael O'Loughlin, head of blockchain development at CGI Group, believes that talent shortage is one of the challenges facing the financial industry.

Support for blockchain is growing at a time when banks and consulting firms are experiencing challenges with losing and acquiring talent.

“A lot of the legacy systems, the wire transfer systems, and the people who supported our software in the bank retired. And the banks didn’t have a succession plan in place.”

As for potential benefits, Eric Piscini of Deloitte may not think the financial industry will benefit from these challenges right away.

He gave an example, saying that science and technology are still developing rapidly, which means that many institutions are quietly conducting technological exploration.

Eric Piscini believes that the difficulty in recruiting talent is not only present in the blockchain field.

“The talent shortage exists in many fields, not just in the blockchain field.”