pur·ple squir·rel (pûr
p
l skwûrl)
1. Any of various arboreal rodents of the genus Sciurus and related genera of the family Sciuridae, having a long flexible bushy tail and including the fox squirrel, gray squirrel, and red squirrel. Except some kids have painted it purple.
2. The elusive perfect candidate in the hiring manager’s mind, who has every one of 27 components of the job description in their background, has worked for a direct competitor, and provides pro bono professional services in their field four nights a week. They’re a little hard to find, some would say because they may not exist.
They’re B-a-a-a-a-ck. Or maybe that depends on who is calling the shots on your search assignment in these crazy times. Search assignments are clearly on the downside (but not for long) and hiring managers are suddenly becoming increasingly “picky” – shall we say. I get the fact that there are lots of great people in search of their next career move. There are millions of people out there job hunting every day. Industries like finance, auto, manufacturing and others clearly have talent on the street looking and hoping to find a new gig to transfer their skills to. Got it!
What I don’t get are hiring managers who seem to be taking advantage of the current environment by creating an illusion that since the unemployment numbers are off the charts and growing that all of a sudden, there has been a huge increase in the number of purple squirrels that are suddenly available. If we search consultants can just find them… C’mon! Narrowly defining a search assignment to find, locate and place a candidate who has the necessary skills to meet the job description and fit into the culture of the company is a fair request. We do that all the time. Taking a pass on multiple candidates (for months) who meet all the requirements (and are a great cultural fit) just to find Mr. or Ms. Perfect is not always the right decision to make. The company has a void in their lineup, with product launches, customer support, lost sales opportunities or a whole host of other things that have to wait until Mr. or Ms. Hiring Manager gets a wake up call and realizes that the perfect, flawless, ideal, over-qualified happy go lucky candidate does not exist. Hello - is anybody home?
Having a set of hiring guidelines and a realistic job description makes a ton of sense to me. Wasting everyone’s time and negatively impacting the company, while searching for someone who does not exist is another. It’s a waste of time and money. Sorry..
OK – I feel much better now:-)
All of my searches are always for purple squirrels – welcome to my world in Silicon Valley. Even for non-technical positions, there is always a list a mile long of “must haves” because our environment/technology/CEO/Board/VC/whatever is so special…
And that is always true.
So, thanks for voicing the truths about recruiting for purple squirrels. Now I feel better!
Agreed! I spent some time working with several start-ups in SCV and feel your pain! As you know, knock-out-factors are great as long as the list is not too long! Thanks for your post!
I haven’t seen so many of these since 2002. Thanks for putting a smirk on my face before I sleep (in hunter orange pajama’s, of course).
I thought the entire species was wiped out in the early 2000′s. Apparently they seem to be making a comeback:-) We shall see! Thanks Christopher!
Love this rant Tim! Some hiring managers believe that paying a fee to a third party to canvass the market entitles them to seeing an endless stream of bodies, even though the best fit is likely seen in the first 3 candidates – if we do our job correctly. We all love to find the purple squirrel and often times we do for clients…but on those other occasions it’s really about the client understanding the strengths and development challenges of the interested candidates against the client’s “ideal candidate profile.”
Remember, purple squirrels may have won the popularity contest with hiring managers, but once on board – they could also be Rocky the Flying Squirrels with one phone call from another company!
It’s true. The expectation bar seems to rise too high for some reason during these challenging times. In most cases – the bar is out of reach.
It’s simply amazing!
Thanks Wally!
Hi Tim,
Just curious when and why you think search assignments will turn around soon? With the large number of displaced workers, don’t you see that as affecting the search industry for a longer period of time? I’d like to see some balance but can’t see it coming any time soon. I’m interested in your thoughts.
Thanks.
Rob:
While I do not profess to have a crystal ball – the sense that I get from clients and candidates in my own practice is much more positive now than it was in Jan or Feb – and that is a good sign. I think certain industries will recover sooner than others. Overall, this quarter will be better than last qtr according to the recruiter index (ExecuNet). They also predict that Q3 will improve over Q2 and we should see some daylight by year end and as we move into 2010. While I am not bullish on executive search in the near term – I am much more optimistic about where the market seems to be heading! Hope that answers your question.
But… we still continue to look for them! Hey, that’s part of the fun right? Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure we are compensated for finding that which is hard to find. With that said, I strongly agree with your comment about focusing on the developmental areas of particular candidates. In fact, beyond finding “purple squirrels”… I find it quite exciting to identify a soon-to-be superstar/purple squirrel.
Thanks for the post! I love the purple squirrel topic!
Looking forward,
Michael
Michael:
Me too! Chasing purple squirrels is what we get paid to do. It’s the very (out of reach) high bar that I have the problem with in defining a role or person that literally does not exist! There has to be a balance and for some reason in tough economic times the definition of skills and the ideal person a company is seeking can be quite unrealistic – as you know. Thanks for your post!
Hey appreciate the amazing way of bringing up this issue. Do you believe the pre-employment screening and assessing tools help in finding the right colored squirrels if not exactly purple?
As a provider of a pre-employment testing tool, I really wanna know this. We at HireLabs have worked really hard and researched thoroughly to come up with our product ProfileSense that helps in finding the purple ones..
http://www.hirelabs.com/