During the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the Kraken exchange had to create new jobs and hire new workers to cope with a sudden increase in activity on its platform.
This is what Kraken’s Chief Brand Officer, Christina Yee, revealed in an interview with Fortune Magazine.
Not all manufacturing sectors have been adversely affected by the lockdown. Some, such as online exchanges or video streaming, have had to deal with an increase in demand due to the situation that has arisen.
The lockdown, combined with Bitcoin’s halving, has increased activity on the exchange platform to such an extent that the company was quickly understaffed.
The jobs of the Kraken exchange
For this reason, CEO Jesse Powell decided in March to send an online questionnaire to all 800 staff members to ask them if they had any family members who would like to work for Kraken.
The lockdown caused massive unemployment, even among friends and relatives of the company’s employees, and after realizing this, Powell decided to combine the needs of the company with those of the families of his employees by offering them a job.
After receiving nearly 400 reports in response to the questionnaire, to which more than a quarter of employees responded, 94 new positions were filled, mainly in customer service, as new accounts registered must be verified to ensure they comply with banking laws.
In addition, priority was given to candidates who claimed to be in serious financial difficulties.
Christina Yee said:
“We’ve hired people’s wives, husbands, mothers, children and roommates”.
She added that this initiative also provided other benefits, such as the fact that new hires live with company employees has accelerated their training and facilitated communication.
Yee commented saying:
“Everyone is more productive because of the ability to share insights, and because they’re less worried about their loved”.
In addition, some of the new hires are now getting lower wages than before, but they have accepted anyway because, at such a time, a stable job is still better than no job at all.
Every worker also received a company laptop.
The success of the initiative has been such that Kraken is considering launching a second round of selection with which to hire another 100 workers.
The company has stated that should the situation in the crypto markets remain hectic, it intends to keep all the newly hired staff.
