Recruitment for Public Relations Agencies
You are not short of applicants. You are short of the right ones.
That is the specific and recurring frustration of hiring at Account Manager and Account Director level in a PR agency. The inbox fills up. The CVs look plausible. The interviews are reasonable. And then the hire is in the role and you realise, too slowly, at cost, that plausible and right are not the same thing.
The candidates who are genuinely strong at this level are not applying for your role. They are delivering excellent work for another agency, they are not actively looking, and they will only consider moving if the opportunity is presented in the right way by someone they have a reason to take seriously.
That is the gap Westminster Search fills.
What actually goes wrong at this level
PR agencies hire badly at mid-to-senior level for recognisable reasons. They are worth naming.
- Strong writers and communicators who cannot manage a client relationship with the confidence and independence the role demands, who need more support than the agency has capacity to give
- Candidates who present well in an interview but have never genuinely owned an account, where the gap between their self-assessment and their actual capability only becomes clear once they are in the role
- Hires made from the active market — people who are available, rather than from the pool of people who are performing well and would move for the right opportunity
- Senior candidates who have the experience on paper but whose best work was always in a supporting role, and who struggle when the accountability is entirely theirs
At Account Manager and Account Director level, the cost of these mistakes is not just financial. It is felt in client relationships, in team stability and in the agency's reputation with the people it most needs to impress.
What strong PR candidates actually look like
The candidates worth pursuing at mid-to-senior level share a recognisable profile. They manage client relationships with confidence and without drama. They write and communicate to a high standard without needing to be told. They understand that agency life is commercial as well as creative, and they contribute to growth as well as delivery.
They are also, almost without exception, already employed and reasonably content, until the right conversation finds them at the right moment.
Identifying these individuals, assessing them properly, and approaching them in a way that earns a genuine response is work that requires sector knowledge, a credible network, and time that most agencies do not have spare.
Our approach
We do not advertise your role and wait. We go looking.
We map the market — across PR agencies and in-house communications teams — and identify individuals with the right combination of experience, client instincts and professional credibility. We approach them directly, with a clear and honest account of the opportunity.
We assess on what actually matters in an agency environment: client handling, quality of work, commercial awareness, and the ability to perform under pressure without constant oversight.
What you receive is a shortlist of people who are relevant, properly assessed and genuinely interested, not a volume of CVs that still requires significant work to sort.
The roles we recruit
We focus on the appointments that matter most to agency performance:
- Account Managers
- Account Directors
- Senior consultants and communications leads
- Team managers and emerging leadership positions
These are the roles where the wrong hire creates the most damage and the right hire creates the most momentum. We treat them accordingly.
The candidates we reach
Our network includes professionals working across PR agencies and in-house communications teams at varying levels of seniority.
Most are not actively seeking a new role. Many will not respond to a generic approach or an unsolicited message from a recruiter they do not know. They engage when the opportunity is genuinely compelling, the agency is interesting, and the conversation is handled with intelligence and discretion.
What clients say
"Joseph found me the perfect job instantly. He immediately understood the kind of profile the company was looking for — and they had been looking for a while before they asked Westminster Search to help."
Haude — Senior Consultant, Public Policy
A note on discretion
Senior hiring in PR is rarely straightforward to manage quietly. Agencies often need to move carefully, replacing a key person before they have left, building a team ahead of a new client, or hiring without signalling a change in direction to the market.
We handle all candidate approaches with care for your position and theirs. That is not a feature. It is simply how this kind of work should be done.
Why PR agencies work with Westminster Search
The agencies that come to us share a common frustration: they are seeing applicants, but not the right ones. Or they know exactly the type of person they need and that person is simply not visible through normal channels.
We are most useful when:
- The role is at a level where hiring mistakes are costly and visible
- Previous processes have produced quantity without quality
- Speed matters, but not at the cost of getting the hire wrong
We will not send you twelve CVs to make the shortlist look full. We will send you the people worth your time.
Talk to Joseph about your search
If you are hiring within a PR agency and the candidates you need are not coming to you, the most useful next step is a direct conversation about what you need and what the market looks like right now.