I have always questioned the idea of recruiting “Purple Squirrels” or “Unicorns”. Whatever you may refer to these opportunities as they all have the same meaning,
“I am looking for someone that has an incredibly rare set of experiences, skills, and talents. Not that these people don’t exist but that there are very few of them”
Purple Squirrels are not limited to an individual who knows the newest technology (or has the new hot skill set of the season) but the mix of experiences, skills, and talents that makes the individual a Purple Squirrel. While I was in a delivery recruiting role, I would help my clients with these roles and had very little success – the times I was successful was luck, right place, right time, and the right package.
There was nothing strategic about it.
What always puzzled me was the hiring managers knew these were Purple Squirrel requirements because they would say it! Unfortunately, at that point in my career I was more of an order taker than a partner and didn’t provide much value other than taking a shot in the dark, or in most cases, multiple shots.
This led me to my recent realization: The “Purple Squirrel Effect”
A client called me for some advice on how they should back-fill his current position (he recently received a promotion).
Here is some context to my client’s situation…
- This company is a family owned business that has been around for 20+ years.
- They are very successful and most of the leadership positions are operated by family members except for the CFO role.
- Like most small & family businesses, there was a time when employees had to wear multiple hats. As the company continued to grow the employees acquired more hats until it came to a point they were spread too thin and needed to hire additional help.
- The position they were trying to back-fill was straightforward in theory but the specific experience(s) they were looking for were quite rare, random, and niche.
- Additionally, the salary was not in line with similar opportunities being offered elsewhere
After hearing the dilemma, I was curious how my partner had acquired this “rare” skill set. As I listened, I realized that it was a mix of random opportunities, hard work, dedication, learning on the job, and the motivation to help the family business be successful. The keyword here “random”. He had learned whatever was necessary for the business to be successful, often learning and improving on skills outside of his job “scope”.
We broke down the skills, talents, and experiences this person would need to be proficient with and what they would need to learn to be successful in the role.
The skills were broken down into four groups:
- Learn the systems
- Understand the market
- Learn the environment
- Ability to build rapport with the client base
Then we broke down the ramp-up time and what resources they would need to dedicate to help with training. We figured we could hire for 2/4 skills (understand market + ability to build rapport with client base) but the other two skills would have to be trained on. This would roughly take 4-6 months. At this point, the company has already been actively recruiting for the role for 4 months.
Finally, I had my light bulb moment.
Instead of recruiting for a “Purple Squirrel”, isn’t there someone internally that you can promote to back-fill that role? With this approach, you have someone that knows the internal systems, understands the market, has been working in the environment and has shown a track record of building rapport with clients. In addition, back-filling their role will be much easier. The skill sets required are not as rare or put another way, random.
My partner took my advice and interviewed 5 candidates internally, promoted one of them, and backfilled the promoted individual’s role. With this strategy, they filled both roles in three weeks and teams are off to a very promising start. Plus, their culture has a new buzz to it as employees are excited for the newly promoted individual.
