Hunting the Rare Species

Have you ever seen a purple squirrel outside your house, office, a garden, or a forest maybe? I am assuming that you haven’t, but did you know that they actually exist?

Given the rarity of sighting a purple squirrel, the recruitment industry borrows this term to refer to a candidate who is a perfect fit for a given job opportunity.

A purple squirrel is a candidate who holds the ideal qualifications and experience, possesses the right mix of skills, one who is an innovator, who spearheads initiatives, is extremely talented, one who can be creative and be able to think out of the box, requires minimum training and starts contributing to the business soon after joining the organization. This candidate also fits perfectly well in the organization culture, is available to work in the location stated for the job requirement and is willing to accept an offer that fits within the budget assigned for the position in question.

A purple squirrel is a rarest candidate who is hard to find, who is extremely talented, a game changer, the difference maker, the innovator, the ultimate rockstar of an organization. This candidate is the one who creates the delta at work and often emerges as a high-potential employee in the organization, whom the business would always want to acquire and retain.

There are times a candidate is hired for a particular role in an organization and gradually moves into another role and starts managing both the responsibilities efficiently. Now the hiring organization becomes totally dependent on 1 person for 2 sorts of roles. Once this candidate moves out of the organization and the hiring manager start looking for a person to replace him, it becomes difficult for the recruiters to look for a suitable replacement. That is one such incident when the concept of purple squirrel holds true.

Other challenges that might be faced by an organization while looking for a perfect hire may include factors like time constraint, budgetary constraints, obsolete job description, poor branding and visibility or may be not recognizing the purple squirrel. In addition to this there can be instances when candidates take up the job offer but they don’t join as the best candidates usually have more than one offers with them.

 Some ways to find a purple squirrel could be, using multiple sourcing channels, organizing referral programs, joining online forums, attending events, using social media, tapping on passive candidates, mapping and developing a database of the available candidates in the said industry, etc. There are certain other factors which support the hiring of a perfect match but may sometimes be ignored by the hiring organization such as focusing on employer branding, boomerang hiring, making the best interview experience, etc.