Most scale-ups shortlist PR managers on the wrong evidence. They count media contacts, admire a client list, and come away believing they've assessed capability. They haven't. A contact book tells you where someone has been; it says nothing about whether they can build a function from a standing start, and building is the job. If you're working out how to hire a PR manager for a company that's growing faster than its processes, look for three things instead: sector fit, a measurement mindset, and evidence of judgement under pressure.
I'll defend that ranking, because it cuts against how most briefs get written. A founder says "we need someone with great relationships with the nationals", the recruiter nods, and the shortlist fills with people whose main asset is a phone full of journalists' numbers. Journalists move on, desks get restructured, and a pitch lands on its merits or it doesn't. The relationships are rarely the thing that wins coverage.
Sector fit matters more than a famous logo
A candidate who spent six years placing consumer brands in lifestyle pages will struggle to pitch a fintech infrastructure story to a trade reporter who has heard every version of "disrupting payments". The skills transfer. The instincts don't. Knowing which outlet cares, which angle is exhausted, which journalist has already been burned by your category: that's sector knowledge, and a scale-up has no time to wait while someone acquires it.
When I screen a CV for this kind of role, I look at the coverage the person generated, not the brands they sat next to. Ask for three pieces they won and what they did to win each one. The answers separate the people who ran the pitch from the people who were on the account when it happened. (Agency CVs blur this constantly, and it isn't always the candidate's fault.)
Sector fit has a second layer that gets overlooked: stage. Someone who has only ever worked with an established brand has never had to explain what the company does to a reporter who's never heard of it. That's a different muscle.
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Look for someone who measures before they're asked to
I've watched hires fall apart on this point more than any other. A PR manager joins, produces a monthly coverage report full of clippings and a reach figure, and the CFO quietly decides the function is decoration. The candidate wasn't lazy. They were never asked to connect coverage to anything the business cares about.
So ask them. What did they track beyond volume? Did they look at referral traffic, share of voice against named competitors, or whether coverage showed up in sales conversations? Which metric did they stop reporting because it flattered them without informing anyone? That last question is the useful one, because it reveals whether the person has ever been honest with themselves about the work.
The Chartered Institute of Public Relations has long argued against ad value equivalents as a way of valuing coverage, and the AMEC Barcelona Principles set out the case for measuring outcomes rather than outputs. A candidate who can talk about that distinction without being prompted is rarer than you'd hope.
Test crisis judgement without waiting for a crisis
Nobody can promise you a candidate who has handled your particular disaster. But you can find out how they think when something goes wrong, and you should, because a scale-up is more exposed than a mature company. There's less legal infrastructure, fewer layers of sign-off, and a founder who may be tempted to post a defensive thread at midnight.
Ask for a real incident they were close to, and listen for who they name as the decision-maker. People who were genuinely in the room tend to be specific about what was argued over and what they'd do differently. People who watched from the edge tend to describe the outcome. The ones who tell you everything went smoothly haven't been in a real one.
A take-home task that tells you something
Set a short task, and keep it short. A candidate shouldn't spend a weekend doing unpaid strategy work for a company that may not hire them, and good people will decline if you ask. Something that takes ninety minutes will do. Give them a real but anonymised scenario: a product launch with a thin story, or a negative review gaining traction. Ask for a one-page plan and the three journalists or outlets they'd approach first, with reasons.
What you're reading for is prioritisation. Strong candidates cut things. Weak ones produce a sprawling plan that touches every channel because they're afraid to leave anything out. How they handle the constraint tells you more than the answer does.
The strongest objection: surely agency experience is the safer bet?
There's a fair case for hiring from agencies. Agency people work across several clients, handle volume, and are used to producing under pressure. In-house hires from a single company can be narrow, and a scale-up that needs someone to run a launch next month may not have the patience for a slow learner.
I'll concede that agency breadth is real. Someone who has run six accounts at once can usually pitch faster than someone who has run one brand for five years.
But breadth is not ownership. An agency account lead rarely has to defend a budget to a finance director, say no to a founder, or live with last quarter's story. In-house recruitment in the UK for PR roles rewards people who've carried those consequences. My view is that you should hire for the job you're actually filling: if you need a function built, favour candidates who've owned something, whatever their route in. If you need a launch executed by a team that already exists, agency pace may serve you better. Most scale-ups think they're in the second situation and are actually in the first.
Where to find the shortlist
Once you know what you're screening for, the channel matters less than the questions. Employers who want to see how a candidate speaks before committing interview time can explore video-first recruitment on The Opportunity Hub, and the team there has written about where to hire marketing and PR talent in more detail. For a role with this much weight, senior headhunting through OHUB's Elevate service is also worth a look.
The next generation of scale-up communications hires will be judged on whether the CEO can explain what the function delivers. Hire the person who can help them do that, and the contact book will take care of itself.
