Everything you need to know about recruitment PR

Public Relations, or 'PR', is all about the way organisations communicate with the public, promote themselves, and build a positive reputation and public image. PR professionals help a business or individual cultivate a positive reputation with the public through various unpaid or earned communications, including traditional media, social media, and in-person engagements. They also help clients defend their reputation during a crisis that threatens their credibility.

Unlike advertising, PR is “earned media” and not paid for. Having your presence out there without the help of paid-for-marketing is increasingly important amongst the public as according to research carried out by Ipsos Mori, seven in ten Brits claim to trust advertising less than they used to.

 While the general public may associate PR with the TV show Absolutely Fabulous, the reality is far from the portrayal of non-stop wining and dining clients and journalists.

According to the CIPR (the Chartered Institute of Public Relations), it is “about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public Relations is the discipline which looks after reputation, with the aim of earning understanding and support and influencing opinion and behaviour. It is the planned and sustained effort to establish and maintain goodwill and mutual understanding between an organisation and its publics.”

PR also means different things depending on the specialism. For example, a celebrity PR agent will likely be more focused on photo opportunities and social media activity than securing an authored feature in a leading magazine. In comparison, a recruitment agency owner is likely to want to see their name in a key industry publication – somewhere that clients and candidates alike will access regularly – to raise their brand profile.

At a basic level, PR is all about effective storytelling that raises brand awareness among a defined target audience. In the recruitment industry, PR is extremely effective in placing stories about staffing firms in relevant channels that help influence and shape candidates’ and clients’ perception about your company.

Who is PR for?

While just about any company can invest in PR support, organisations that are willing to share their views on an ongoing basis will reap the most benefits from public relations. Those ready to bolster their current business plan with strategies for further growth will certainly be pleased with the results that come from hiring PR.

Furthermore, companies that are sitting on a wealth of data and knowledge – which applies to many recruitment firms – can certainly see results from PR, and enjoy all benefits that being a strong thought leader in their field brings.

So, how can good PR help recruiters?

Winning clients and candidates

A good PR strategy can help to attract the very best talent and most prestigious clients. Let’s face it, it’s much easier to recruit and attract candidates to a company they have already heard of. However, in the ongoing war for talent, now more than ever companies need to look at putting their best foot forward, and a competitive PR strategy can do just that.

Ensuring potential hires not only know ‘of’ you but also have a positive impression of your brand is key. This is where PR comes in – playing a crucial role in ensuring that firm’s opinions, thoughts, success and growth are highlighted. This will undoubtedly gain the interest of potential staff wanting to find out more.

Media coverage offers you third party credibility that you can’t really replicate anywhere else. When you’re in publications read by your target audience, it makes your direct approaches less cold. When you are being seen regularly as a thought leader, you’ll be the first agency a potential client thinks of when they’re hiring, or the agency that candidates call when they’re considering opportunities.

Managing your narrative

Companies that fail to invest in PR are essentially giving up control of their narrative. However, those that do are ensuring that their story will be constantly reviewed and refreshed in line with their wider goals.

This will help to not only attract customers and prospects, but also continually challenge an organisation to think about the messages it is sending out and whether or not they are relevant or effective. In the lighting-paced digital media landscape that we currently occupy, failing to take control of this will see your company left behind by competitors.

Getting the most out of your expertise

Recruitment companies are experts in their given sector, and usually have access to a wealth of data that is relevant to candidates and clients. By taking advantage of this expertise and using this information to produce quality content – recruiters can truly get the most out of this expertise.

PR can also help you spread this information as far as possible and across as many mediums as possible. For instance, a blog can be converted into a press release, which can also be transformed into a full-length press feature.

“I have in-depth experience recruiting within the PR and communications sector for various clients across different markets. So, I can confidently say that PR is a perfect way for recruiters to reach their full potential in an ever-growing market.”

Here are 3 of the main ways I believe PR could’ve helped in my time as a recruiter:

Attracting clients and candidates

PR separates recruitment businesses from their competitors and introduces new ways to attract potential clients and candidates. As a recruiter you are constantly looking for the next best client or top-class candidate and, in an increasingly competitive market, PR paves the way to a stronger business development and growth strategy. We’d love new business and candidates to come to us from our credibility and expertise and this is exactly how PR can help.

A simple press release can be used in so many different ways across various social media channels to draw in your target audience, especially when shared by consultants – who tend to have 10x larger networks than their companies, and are 3x more likely to be seen as authentic when sharing information.

Driving engagement

Engagement is the key to successful business development, and PR drives engagement in so many ways.

Using current news and relating this back to your business can help spark engagement, showcasing yourself as a thought leader and allowing you to make connections that could have previously proved difficult. 

Getting your name out there in relevant recruitment press will increase credibility and demonstrate your expertise. 

Finally, being able to create valuable content and stretching it across numerous different platforms draws people in and creates an effective way for clients and candidates to interact with your brand.

Advancing business development

PR creates credible material for recruitment agencies to evolve their business development. Furthermore, when it comes to PR for recruiters, many already have the resources at their fingertips. Recruitment CRM systems provide tons of data that can be used to create thought-provoking pieces to trigger engagement. 

This data can be presented in different ways to target multiple streams of potential new clients and candidates. Using this data and recording the engagement it drives e.g. shares, likes, traffic and Google Analytics can help you to measure the positive effect that PR has on the recruitment BD cycle.

“If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail”

A well thought out, comprehensive PR plan can often be the difference between success and failure for your recruitment business’s campaign. Planning will help you organise your ideas, make sure your core messages are consistent, define your target audience and decide on the tactics that you will use to target them. While ‘make a plan’ might sound like the most obvious statement in the book, it’s something that often gets overlooked or doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves. So, with that in mind – here are five simple tips for creating a successful PR plan.

1. Outline your goals

When you create a PR plan, you need to outline exactly what it is you want to achieve. These need to be clear, achievable and consistent with the overall objectives of your business. Time frames are also important – plan out a set amount of activity for a certain period, and a date for revising plans later on. For instance, you could start by considering the full year ahead, planning for six months, and revising after three. Like everything in business, PR requires flexibility and a recognition that things may change over time.

2. Define your target audience

Identifying your target audience is another critical step in your plan. All the best PR work in the world will mean nothing if the audience isn’t relevant and receptive to your message. Whose support do you need to reach your goals? Who will be interested in what you have to say? Once you’ve identified this, research where you can find and influence your target audience. For instance, start looking at the relevant publications in your sector. Or perhaps targeting social media and bloggers would create more engagement. Defining this is absolutely essential. Without it, you are going in blind.

3. Outline your key messages

Creating compelling messages that you want to communicate to your target audience will help shape your content and enable you to meet your goals. When you create a PR plan, this is a stage you cannot skip, and something that should require serious thought. The best key messages are believable, easy to understand, relevant, and succinct.

4. Tactics

Now you’ve worked out your messages and target audience, you need to consider the best tactics to reach them. Here are some of the most common examples:

Plan press releases – Plan out the press releases you intend to issue throughout the year or month, and be on the lookout for topics that you could react to, or piggyback on.

List-building and pitching – Take the time to research and build a database of relevant journalist that you can then pitch in ideas to.

Editorial calendars – Look at forward features of magazines and websites, as they can offer an excellent way for gaining exposure, and planning out future activity.

Contributing bylined articles – This is will help you not only generate exposure, but also establish yourself or your business as a thought leader in its sector.

Case studies – These work similarly to bylined articles, but also offer a tangible, real-world example of the benefits of your product or services.

Speaking opportunities – Research conferences, trade-shows, webinars and roundtables for opportunities to put forward your business as a speaker or a member of a panel discussion.

Measurement

The final step of a PR plan is the one that is often most overlooked, with 50-60% of PR campaigns having no method of evaluation at all.

Measurement should be considered from the very start when you create a PR plan. Share of Voice, quality and quantity of coverage, leads produced and many other methods can be used to measure how effective your PR efforts are. What’s crucial is that you outline how you intend do this at the start of a campaign and stick to those metrics consistently.

To achieve the best PR coverage possible for your business it is vital that you develop a story that can influence and shape the perceptions of your target audience.

Here are three top tips that will enable you to do that.

1. Decide whether or not the message is right for a PR story

It’s all too easy to push out a sales message or tell people how great your company is but how is this different from an advert?

If the coverage you’re looking to achieve is sales and has no ‘news’ element to it, no editorial team will touch it. You can, of course, simply pay for an advert, but again, be honest with yourself – will it give you real value for your money? How many adverts do you actively engage with on a daily basis? If you’re looking to raise your profile as an industry expert, chances are an advert will be a waste of money.

2. Stick to what you know

So how do you secure the best editorial opportunities? By narrating a story that’s not all about you. This isn’t as difficult as some might think. You and your consultants are likely sitting on a wealth of information that journalists are crying out for. Your knowledge of the top skills that are in demand, where there’s a shortage of talent or how the employment market is changing is something that most sector press will be after. And you can build on this data. Providing the context behind this information, why these trends are occurring and what your predictions are for the future allows you to tell the story of who you are, what you do and why you’re an expert, without the direct sale.  

3. Make it relevant

Relevance and timeliness are key to a good story. You don’t want to wait for weeks before you comment on industry trends, and if there’s breaking news that you can comment on do it straight away. And if you’re keen to share your views on a particular topic, ask yourself why? Do some research for any recent reports that make this topic relevant to the here and now and use this information as a ‘hook’ to share your own views.

If you can’t find anything relevant, instead think about how you can make it newsworthy. A simple survey to your database or on your social channels asking others to sharing their thoughts on the topic you’re keen to get talking about will give you the data to make it relevant.

It’s one of the busiest professions out there, with constant emails and phone calls journalists simply don’t have time for you to beat around the bush – the less of their time that you take up the better. You may have the most interesting and well-written press release in the world, but if you don’t know how to engage with a journalist successfully your piece has every chance of being dismissed.

Before you even go to compose that email or pick up the phone, it’s important to do your research. Who is the right person to contact regarding your article? Is there a correspondent directly relevant to the topic you’re discussing? Learn the publication inside out – highlighting particular sections where your piece could fit in will be sure to score you brownie points. Find out when the press days are – emailing or calling on these days is a big no in the eyes of the media, you’ll only irritate them and get ignored.

When it comes to contacting the journalist make sure you’re engaging. Consider the best angle for them and their readership and avoid a sales approach. One of, if not the most important piece of advice is get to the point! Unnecessary waffle in an email or a ten minute phone conversation isn’t going to earn you any friends, an elevator pitch is the best way to retain their attention.

Here are five top tips on how you can successfully pitch to a journalist:

1. Pitching needs to be relevant

It is critical to put aside the necessary time and effort to craft well thought out, personalised pitches to journalists. There’s nothing worse than a generic, copy and pasted pitch, which hasn’t taken into account anything about the publication or journalist.

You should tailor your pitch as closely as possible by checking out the website of the publication for specific sections that would be good to place content in, or searching the journalist to see if they have a history of writing about the topic you are suggesting. This is especially important if you’ve had no prior contact with the journalist.

2. The subject line matters

The value of an engaging subject line must not be overlooked. Put yourself in the shoes of an over-worked, busy journalist that is flooded with emails, hundreds of which will be potential pitches – you simply won’t have time to look at everything.

Therefore, without an engaging subject line, you are essentially wasting the small window of time where you could grab their attention. Focus on crafting an engaging subject that will boost your odds of securing features.

3. Always have the audience in mind, no matter how advanced you are

It’s easy to lose sight of the audience and what will be relevant to them when you have written hundreds of pitches. However, no matter how experienced you are or how clever you think the angle is – the basic principle of producing relevant and interesting content for a target audience will always hold true.

4. Remember to hyperlink

A small but important detail to remember is that including relevant hyperlinks in your pitch will go a long way towards showing a journalist that you are well-informed on a given subject. For instance, linking to any previous work your recruitment firm has produced on the topic that you are pitching will be very effective.

5. Don’t overcomplicate things

While it might be tempting to pack as much information and value as possible into your pitches, it’s important to resist the urge to do too much. Ultimately, you’re not trying to show how smart you are, how wide a vocabulary you have, or write a literary classic – you’re trying to deliver results. You will get far more success from providing everything that is needed in a well-written, clear and concise manner than trying to prove you’re the most knowledgeable person out there.

One last thing to remember…

It’s a dangerous and deceptive phrase. It’s important to know that journalists can use anything you say to them, so nothing is truly ‘off the record’. If you find yourself wanting to use this phrase, then the information following it should be left unsaid.

Recruitment marketers have faced a common challenge for a long time now: getting consultants on board with PR activity. We all recognise the frustration. Those in the profession know that the best and most impactful marketing and content strategies are ones that everyone in the company supports. Whether that’s through sharing press coverage and blogs, being active on social media or contributing to the content themselves, having recruiters involved in PR will be hugely valuable in driving up engagement levels.

But this has been a real challenge for many staffing companies for understandable reasons. Recruiters need to recruit. Their focus is on placing candidates. If they’re not doing this, they’re not making money, so tearing them away from that is difficult.

However, the simple fact is, PR and business development go hand in hand, and the two together are a perfect match for driving client conversion.

Getting PR and BD to work together in recruitment

While every business is different, there are five common steps that recruitment marketers can take to really align PR with the sales activity of consultants:

1. Build BD into any PR and marketing plans

   Make sure that you get your recruitment consultants involved from the very start. Bringing recruiters into discussions when planning the topics, themes and messages in your firm’s PR activities isn’t just going to ensure that content is being developed to support new business but also helps marketing teams get consultants on board with any future plans.
   
   

2. Loop consultants in on the benefits to them

   If you want to get someone involved in something that they perhaps don’t deem a key part of their role, you need to demonstrate what’s in it for them.

   Highlight the traffic that’s being driven to blogs (i.e. potential leads), the readership of a publication (aka new contacts) and the engagement that’s being achieved on social channels (or possible prospects) to those involved in business development. If a consultant has the numbers put in front of them that show they could increase awareness of their profile or grow their network by x%, they’ll soon become marketing’s biggest ally.

3. Have a process in place to measure results

   In order to track when PR has resulted in a conversion, it’s critical that the database your firm uses is set up and being used in a way that ensures this information is being recorded. Arguably the most crucial element in this is the human one: making sure consultants are adding the right information.

4. Showcase successes

   Where consultants are seeing results from PR in their business development activity – shout about it. The more that their peers see their them converting leads through effective use of content and media platforms, the more they will also want a piece of the pie. Remember as well that demonstrating the success to those responsible for your PR and marketing budget regularly will pay dividends longer term. Don’t wait until your scheduled review time to demonstrate the conversion rates that are being achieved as a result of the PR content that’s being used for business development.

5. Keep communication going

   Once consultants are on-board and getting involved in PR and marketing activity, keep a two-way dialogue going. It’s important that marketing teams aren’t missing out on key metrics because the sales team haven’t communicated that a particular lead stated that it was the content in an industry magazine they read or a social media share that pushed them to sign on the dotted line with the business.

It’s all about the press release

A quick search reveals that a worrying number of people think PR stands for press release, but it’s so much more than that. Yes, a release is an effective way of getting your name out there, but what if you want to establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry? There are myriad options for firms to utilise when diving into the world of PR, the press release is just one of many including white papers, articles, surveys, polls, events and more.

PRs spend all day drinking

It’s not Ab Fab, well not anymore. In the past, PRs could form bonds with journalists essentially by buying them a few drinks, but that’s no longer the case. The world has changed – the media in particular has shifted dramatically – and now, frankly, there’s not enough time to spend a few hours in the pub selling your client to the relevant individual. In the era of ‘productivity’ that we live in, it’s considerably more challenging to convince a journalist to take time out of their pressurised and time-short day which they could spend actually doing their job.

It’s easy getting publicity

It’s not – journalists get hundreds of emails and calls per day – and even particularly engaging stories may not be picked up if they’re packaged and presented in the wrong way. Putting a subject line in an email to a journalist that reads ‘Thrilling new cutting edge announcement about game-changing super product,’ will only get instantly deleted. The industry is much more nuanced than in the past and getting publicity is all about the strength of your contacts and the quality of your material. Without both of those things, you’re unlikely to get featured.

All press is good press

This is one of the most popular myths about PR. Ask SeaWorld whether it believes ‘Blackfish’ was good press, or how Ratner’s fared after its owner described its products as ‘total crap’. The answers will be overwhelmingly negative. SeaWorld has recorded plummeting revenues (84% in 2015 alone) since the damaging documentary was released and has seen visitor numbers cut in half.

PR can’t be measured and is therefore pointless

In the past, it may have been hard to measure ROI, but in today’s world with numerous analytical tools at our disposal, this isn’t an issue. If you’re looking to drive increased traffic to your website, for example, Google Analytics can identify how and when people accessed your site and their journey through the different pages, which allows you to measure the demand for your content. 

Ultimately, it depends on your goals and what platforms and methods you should adopt depends largely on what you want to achieve. If you want to bolster your social media channels then an increase in followers and engagement is a clear indicator that you’re getting ROI. This is just one of dozens of examples and the reality is, there’s no excuse for not measuring the success of your PR activity.

Act immediately

As soon as you are aware that you have a problem, start the process of dealing with it, rather than trying to hide it yourself. Involve the people that need to know as soon as possible so that nobody is first made aware of the matter by a reporter. Your communication professionals should be part of those in the loop.

Get experts

Get those with expertise - usually your PR team - to handle internal and external communications. They will know how to word things in a way which doesn’t fuel the fire.

Issue a simple holding statement

This will reassure your stakeholders that you are aware of the situation and are assessing it. This will give you time to investigate further and prepare a more detailed statement.

Decide your point of contact

Decide who will be your point of contact for all related telephone calls and other communication and instruct staff to direct enquiries to them. This will stop unprepared employees from being put on the spot. Instruct all personnel not to give off-the cuff interviews or speak to anyone from the media without prior agreement. Ensure that only approved comment is released to the media. Those who do speak to the media need to be fully briefed on what to say and what to steer clear of.

Take responsibility when you need to

Hold your hands up and apologise rather than make excuses and, if you need to make a change to the way that you operate, make it clear how you plan to do so.

Monitor social media closely

It is much harder to manage than the press and broadcast media because all kinds of people can pile on with little regard for the facts. Make sure you know what is circulating so that you can respond when necessary with approved key messages. Similarly, ensure your search engine history doesn’t throw up comments which are at odds with your current position.

Accredited to Peter Drucker, it’s one of the most important sayings in modern business management, and entirely relevant for PR, or any campaign for that matter.

Measurement is an often overlooked stage of PR campaigns – in fact somewhat shockingly, 50-60% of campaigns have no method of evaluation at all! Without it, you can’t analyse the performance of the campaign nor learn anything from that data, so how on earth are you going to determine the ROI of all that time and money you’ve just invested?

Effectively measuring PR starts with goal-setting, and ROI will depend on the nature of the goals you wish to achieve. Ensure they are as quantifiable as possible to establish who, what, when, and how much the campaign is intended to affect.

PR activities are likely to influence KPIs and so it’s important to measure this, for example website analytics can show if the number of visitors has spiked. Leads are a likely outcome of a successful PR campaign so it’s essential to track the source of every lead – a quick ‘new customer survey’ is a simple way to achieve this.

Advertising Value Equivalent (AVE) is a common tool to measure the effectiveness of PR. It is the estimated cost of buying the space taken up by an article, had it been an advertisement. However, while it may make PR look like it captures huge value, it doesn’t take into consideration certain factors such as the weight of influence a news article has versus an advertisement.

When measuring coverage, quality matters. Is the publication reputable and one that your target audience reads and engages with? Is your business portrayed well? What is your Share Of Voice (SOV)? It’s the same with social media – vanity metrics such as followers, likes and comments are all good and well but what is the relevancy and quality of them? Are they coming from potential leads or influential individuals within target sectors? Large amounts of irrelevant engagement should negatively affect your measurements and thus clearly defined goals and outcomes are of particular importance.

When it comes to helping your company achieve its goals, great communication can be what makes the difference. So, here are seven top reasons why you should invest in recruitment agency PR.

1. Access to larger network

When you invest in PR for your recruitment agency you’ll be gaining access to a network of quality relationships within your sector that you may not normally have had access to. In the same way that your USP to clients is that you have access to valuable talent pools, by investing in recruitment agency PR, you’ll have access to the contacts that can help you take your brand to the next level.

2. Sector-specific specialisation

Hiring an agency that specialises in your specific industry will allow you to seamlessly work with them as a partner and extension to your company, as they are already familiar with the sector you work in, industry jargon, and any of the struggles you may be facing. This will in turn lead to better results in terms of media coverage and exposure.

3. An independent perspective

By outsourcing your PR to an external agency you will be able to take advantage of an objective, independent perspective. A good PR agency could potentially offer advice that those within the business either do not feel confident in giving or cannot appreciate from the inside. Furthermore, they know what works - while you may think the opening of your new office will make a great story - we may tell you otherwise!

4. Manage your narrative

Recruitment firms that invest in PR are ensuring that their story will be constantly reviewed and refreshed in line with their wider goals. This will help to not only attract candidates and clients, but also continually challenge a business to think about the messages it is sending out and whether or not they are relevant or effective. In the lighting-paced digital media landscape that we currently occupy, failing to take control of this will see your company left behind by competitors.

5. Making your content work for you

An effective agency will not only be one which helps you with content development, but will also be one that makes your content work for you, and get the most possible benefit out of it. This can be achieved in a number of ways – for instance, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). An agency that is skilled in SEO can enable your content to appear far higher in search engine rankings for certain phrases that are relevant to your business.

6. Time

At the end of the day, you and your consultants have got a job to do, and recruitment is a full-on industry. By investing in effective PR support, you’ll be able to focus as much time as possible on achieving your day-to-day goals, without having to spend time on brand messages and PR activity.

7. Attracting candidates, clients, and recruiters

Finally, a good PR strategy will help you to become a more attractive employer. Media coverage offers you third party credibility that you can’t really replicate anywhere else. When you’re in publications read by your target audience, it makes your direct approaches less cold. When you are being seen regularly as a thought leader, you’ll be the first agency a potential client thinks of when they’re hiring, or the agency that candidates call when they’re considering opportunities.

When it comes to partnering with a PR firm, there are a number of considerations to factor into decisions. However, quite often one of the questions we come across is whether a recruitment business should go for a generalist firm or a specialist agency. While there are benefits to both, for staffing companies in particular, having a niche expert on board can often provide the greatest return on investment.

Here’s our take on the specialist versus generalist PR debate.

Expert knowledge is needed

When it comes to getting your message across in a manner that works for your recruitment company, having a representative that speaks your language and really ‘gets’ your industry is something that we often find business owners are seeking. But a generalist PR firm will have to start from scratch to develop this knowledge and expertise. With a specialist firm, you will have access to communications professionals who not only possess the PR skills set to design and deliver a PR and comms strategy that’s tailored to your firm, but also the niche knowledge to be able to hit the ground running.

Focusing on quality over quantity

We’ve found in the past that when a recruitment business is making a decision on a PR firm, it often comes down to us versus a generalist agency. And when it does, the topic of numbers will undoubtedly be raised. We fully expect to be told “the other firm is promising more coverage.” Our response is always the same. They may be able to achieve that for the same budget, but what’s the quality of the coverage?

A generalist firm may be using an expensive newswire distribution service to deliver larger volumes of coverage, but often these are made up of news aggregator sites rather than targeted press activity. You may have your name featured on several of these websites, but will your target audiences see these? It’s highly unlikely, in which case, it’s not delivering the end goal of most PR activity: gaining visibility with new business prospects.

Targeted connections

If you take a ‘Jack of all trades’ approach to your external business partners, you will get just that; someone who has the odd connection across a variety of media outlets, but no specific area of expertise. But if you’re a firm placing IT contractors internationally, for example, what does it matter if the PR firm has successfully helped a local restaurant gain coverage in The Sun?

Working with a niche firm that has connections in media that is relevant to your firm will provide more meaningful results.

Honest advice

Another benefit of a specialist is that they will often give you honest feedback and advice. Based on the expert knowledge that a niche PR firm has, they will be able to guide a business on what does and doesn’t work. As a case in point, we know that a new office opening won’t generate the news interest that a recruitment firm might be after. However, the reasons behind a new office – an increase in business that indicates hiring activity is increasing in you sector vertical, for example – is newsworthy and will be of interest to publications that are relevant to your business.

Specialist versus generalist PR: niche is the way forward

When it comes to choosing a PR firm to engage with, generalist and specialists can both have an appeal. But, much as recruiters will often highlight why their niche abilities will deliver the better result for employers, a specialist recruitment PR expert can provide firms with greater value for money.