Every
HR professional must be thrilled with the term “Purple Squirrel”. Quite a
familiar term among HR industry, but to all those who don’t know:
“Purple Squirrel is a candidate who
has the perfect combination of qualification, work experience and skill set for
any particular job position.”
This
breed is one of the rarest one and every recruiter aspires to recruit these
individuals with extreme talent and innovative capabilities. If recognized in
time and given proper space, they can directly impact an organization’s growth
and success instantly.
However,
they have those pioneering capabilities; they are mavericks and tough to manage
and are definitely not good team players. They can only be well integrated if
the team understands their intentions and is prepared to take on their
unconventional ways. Despite of these facts, they are like the trophies for
recruiters and can be the game changers for any business.
Growing
recession has further increased the interest of recruiters in these candidates.
It is obvious that business leaders want to put these pioneers in senior
positions to get the ultimate solutions to business challenges. But, they need
to understand that conventional ways of recruitment are not suited to find such
talented individuals.
Many
perceive this purple squirrel concept as an unrealistic expectation and can be
a reason for unfilled job positions. However, this is not completely true, but
the traits can be even found through internal hiring or monitoring a
candidate’s performance who has been giving outstanding results. They can be
easily tracked through their high-impact work in the organization. Here only
what the organizations need is an efficient Talent Management System that can
monitor individual employee’s performance and bring it in notice of the
management.
You
may never know that you have a purple squirrel within your existing workforce,
if you don’t have proper performance indicators that can detect the hitherto
unrecognized talent.
