Recruitment for PR agencies

Good PR people are not hard to find. The right ones are.

There is no shortage of candidates in public relations. There is a persistent shortage of candidates who combine genuine client instincts with the judgement, composure and commercial awareness that senior agency work actually demands.

At Account Manager and Account Director level, that combination is rarer than most agencies expect. And the people who have it are not waiting to be found.

The PR hiring problem nobody talks about

Most PR agencies do not struggle to fill their inbox. They struggle to find, within that inbox, the candidates worth actually interviewing.

A well-written job advertisement will attract applicants. It will not reliably attract the individual currently delivering excellent work for another agency, who is not actively looking, who is selective about what they consider, and who would only move for the right opportunity, presented in the right way.

The best PR professionals are not browsing job boards. They are too busy doing good work for someone else.

Reaching them requires a different approach entirely.

What strong PR candidates actually look like

At mid-to-senior level, the candidates worth pursuing share a recognisable set of qualities. They manage client relationships with confidence and without drama. They write and communicate to a high standard. 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.

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 them on what actually matters in an agency environment: client handling, quality of work, commercial awareness, and the ability to perform under pressure.

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
• Practive heads and 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.

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 simply is 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.

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.

Get in touch

If you are hiring within a PR agency and the candidates you need are not coming to you, Westminster Search can find them.

Book a Recruitment Strategy Call with Joe at Westminster Search

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