How to Hire PR Talent With Real Media Relationships (Not a Contact List)

When a client hires your agency for earned media, they are buying access and judgment. So when you hire, the question is not whether a candidate knows the beat. It is whether reporters on that beat answer their email.

A contact list is not a relationship

Databases sell contacts. Relationships are built by being useful repeatedly: bringing a story a reporter actually wants, respecting an embargo, and saying no to a client pitch that would waste the reporter's time.

Interview questions that surface the truth

• ◆Name three reporters you have placed with in the last year and tell me what each of them covers now
• ◆Walk me through a story you killed because it was not right for the reporter you were talking to
• ◆When was the last time a journalist came to you first, and what were they looking for
• ◆Which beats have you lost touch with, and why

The last question matters most. Candidates with genuine relationships know exactly where their coverage has gone cold, because they track it. Candidates with a list claim every beat.

Verify with reference checks that ask about placements

Ask former managers for the two or three placements they associate with this person, and whether the candidate brought the relationship or inherited it. Both answers can be fine. Only one of them is portable to your agency.

Match the relationships to the client roster

Deep enterprise tech relationships do not transfer to consumer lifestyle. Before the search starts, list the three publications your clients ask about by name. Recruit against that list, not against a general communications profile.

This is the part of a PR search that generalist recruiters cannot do, because it requires knowing who actually covers what this quarter. It is where we spend most of our time.