Is the Quant Social Butterfly This Year’s Purple Squirrel?

Each year a new “super candidate” emerges among executive recruiters panning the streams for that next “gold” standard among employer expectations. Those of us in the business of connecting job seekers to job openings refer to these rare and often “too good to be true” candidates with the perfect combination of skills, personalities and knowledge as a “purple squirrel” representing that difficult to find person who may only exist in the imagination.

Talking to recruiters and hiring managers, it appears this year’s purple squirrel could be what one headhunter called the “Quant Social Butterfly,” that candidate who can excel both in the mathematically challenging world of quantitative analysis as well as in the “real world,” where he or she can be personable, likeable, and able to communicate and relate easily to others in a variety of social situations, such as client dinners and events.

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