How to Hire Digital PRs: Tips From a PR-Turned Recruiter

Who better to learn how to hire and build a digital PR team than a former PR-turned-recruiter?

James Congdon worked for years at Verve Search, only to find himself gravitating more and more towards the recruiting side. Then in 2020 he took the leap and started his own recruitment agency for digital marketers, With Frontier.

I asked James if he had some time to share his thoughts and tips on hiring digital PRs today.

This is a must-watch for agency owners.

Top Tips and Insights

Based on our chat, here is a breakdown of some of the top tips and takeaways.

The industry is changing

U.S. and Australian agencies are now looking at UK-based talent as they begin to establish digital PR departments.

Hiring has shifted towards mid-level roles, with fewer entry-level opportunities and fewer senior-level positions available.

Also, agencies are leaning towards candidates with some experience (6-12 months) rather than fresh graduates.

Agencies should avoid the quick hire (lean on freelancers instead)

James recommends avoiding reactive hiring—long-term investment in junior hires can prevent future staffing crises.

However, that’s not always possible, so his alternative is toconsider freelance talent to handle sudden surges in work rather than hiring full-time.

How to structure a strong gigital PR team

I love how James broke this down. He basically had five archetypes that make up a great team.

• The Tenacious Outreach Specialist: Someone who won’t give up after the first rejection.
• The Creative Ideator: Generates unique, newsworthy campaign ideas.
• The Data Person: Cleans datasets and extracts compelling insights.
• The Commercially-Minded Leader: Ensures campaigns are profitable and time-efficient.
• The People Manager: Motivates and mentors the team.

The data person is becoming even more important given the focus on data-driven campaigns.

Though be aware that cross-functional work is crucial to growth—the sales/commerical-focused skill is what a lot of hires lack.

Always test before hiring

James always recommends testing, because it helps gauge real ability—some candidates interview well but struggle in execution.

He also recommends paying candidates for their time on test projects.

Transcript

Here’s the slightly modified transcript of our chat:

How did you get into recruitment?

James Congdon: Yeah, it’s a fair question. Ultimately and it was actually when I was at Verve Search, so I joined quite early on. So one of the early kind of employees, certainly at the point when they were switching from general kind of outreach to more content marketing.

And I quickly realized that I needed to recruit for my teams. And I think speaking to recruiters was painful.

Let’s say when it came to, finding a recruiter that truly understood the nuances of what we’re looking for.

And that said. Let’s be fair, and especially back then, we’re talking six or seven years ago when outreach and digital PR and it was very much in its infancy.

And I think, understandably, many recruiters would default to this. Here’s a traditional PR person.

They’ve got 10, 12 years of experience. It’s going to work. And to be honest, I took it upon myself to start looking for my own approach.

Profiles of people, probably quite messily initially, but eventually worked out quite a good formula for one of a better way of putting it or certainly a good blueprint for who to look for.

So typically journalist grads or PR grads, but then. Beyond that, I started to think a lot more outside the box and looking at junior salespeople.

And of course they need to have a creative edge to them, but looking at those kind of profiles and slowly building the team that way. So ultimately that’s how I cut my teeth.

And I actually realized I enjoyed it. I think for me, the crossroads is when I realized I actually enjoyed it a heck of a lot more than being a hands on SEO and digital PR, to be honest with you.

So I think that was a turning point. I think, the founder Lisa at the time will tell you that I used to engineer every single way that I could to do the recruitment for the business.

I wouldn’t be hands-on anymore.

So it was a strange side business for a period of time, if I’m honest, and not a very well kept secret as well, because again that kind of the CEO at the time Lisa was great and supportive and she knew that I was doing it on the side, but it also benefited in many ways because it was helping me to build the network and meet more and more digital PRs, which would ultimately be great for the agency.

It was 2020 that I decided to take the leap really it got to the point where I realized, you know what?

I did a couple of spells at agencies like JBH and Novos and help them to build out their very, very early teams like with JBH, for example helping them kind of transition from what they were doing back then, which was less focused on SEO but I think after that, I just realized ultimately I want to do this for myself and never really look back.

There’s the life story there.

Vince: That’s great, man. Congrats. That’s a tough jump to make and it sounds like you’re you’ve landed on your feet. And yeah, let’s dig in, starting in 2020, that to me sounds like a potentially tough time to start going freelance, right? The pandemic and everything.

Yeah.

James Congdon: It wasn’t the finest decision.

Vince: How’s the market change since then? Have you noticed it as a getting more active, less active? Let’s dive into that.

How has the market changed since 2020?

James Congdon: I think going back to COVID when things first kicked off and we were in lockdown things were on freeze. I think it’s no two ways about that.

I think some people began to talk about things like it was end of days and it didn’t seem like the market was going to open up.

But I would say halfway through the lockdown, they really did. And they did with a vengeance.

Agencies started to boom, I think demand for digital PR and SEO as a whole.

People just generally started to spend a lot more started to respend on marketing, the money that they’d been sat on. It wasn’t necessarily that the budgets disappeared during COVID. They just weren’t spent.

It was fear as opposed to actually losing the budget. There was a period, I would say 2020 to 2022, maybe the end of 2022, that there was a boom agencies were growing doubling its size.

I think the bulk of what I was doing was digital PR during those those periods. I would say today, things have definitely quietened down, but there are opportunities to be had.

I think this year has been a funny one for everybody. I think from, let’s say, the beginning of the year up until May, there were roles, and I’m still working roles.

But there were less, but things are definitely opening up.

Interestingly, a lot more opportunities are cropping up within U.S. agencies.

So U. S. agencies turn into to U.K. talent as an option, not saying that’s they’re our only route, but looking at that with a view to them working remotely and Australia as well.

To be honest with you, I’ve got three or four. solid clients in Australia, all of whom have started digital PR departments within it over the last six to 12 months.

So I think there are opportunities, but they’re shifting. They’re shifting as to where they are. I think UK agencies, it’s not the UK agencies are hiring less but they’re hiring probably more of the mid range now and less than the entry level, which we’ll touch upon in a bit anyway, but less on the entry level and then less opportunities cropping up for heads of department and super senior individuals to a degree, but things are opening up, but I would say that my busiest period was definitely 20, 2020 to 2022 and towards the end of that.

So I think that’s when digital PR boomed.

Vince: Yeah. It’s funny that you say that about the U.S. and Australia. I’m noticing that. Just in talking with people, I have someone coming up on the podcast and moved from the UK to Australia to work at a digital PR agency. And, she’s talking about how it’s not really big there, right?

Like it’s it’s a kind of a newer thing.

And it’s the same here with in the U.S. I think it’s more spinning out of link building, I think, and people realizing, maybe the traditional methods aren’t as successful.

You can’t scale them as much.

And to me, digital PR seems like where people are going to scratch that itch and fill some of those needs, but yeah, so you, you brought up the mix of levels and I’m particularly interested in like those entry level positions, right?

Because when we were at Siege Media, one of the things we tried to gravitate towards was, you can bring college level university graduates and kind of mold them, teach them the agency way.

This is how we do it. Then you start realizing like you miss some of those skills. Aside from the soft skills that come from just like having experience working at a job, right?

The, you have to. train them up on SEO. And there, there seems to be probably a bigger gap and to me, in hindsight, I would much rather hire people who are maybe coming from a more journalistic background or. Maybe publishers even, publishing background publisher sites because they at least have a foot in SEO a bit more too.

But yeah, I’d be interested to understand the entry level position. What does that look like? Is that even a viable thing these days?

Do entry level roles in digital PR still exist?

James Congdon: I would say that the entry-level roles are definitely still out there.

It’s an interesting one actually, because I think, especially at the moment as things are getting tougher economically for everyone, let’s be fair.

I think people are less inclined to use someone like myself for an entry level.

So there may be a bit of that pile into play when it feels like they disappear. But generally speaking, I would say there are a lot more entry-level candidates that will reach out to me, or I can see that they are in the market and looking for.

And I think a lot of that is down to, again it’s the economics, it makes sense to have somebody that’s got at least six to 12 months.

So there’s less time needs to be spent on them. I’m not saying I necessarily agree with this, but I think this is how some particularly agencies might be thinking right now in that it makes more economic sense to have someone come in with slightly less training required, less handholding and can get snuck into delivery a bit sooner versus kind of them being non billable for one of a better way of putting it for a period of time.

So I think there’s an element of that.

But also I think there’s more demand on digital PRs these days.

I think back in sort of 2015 to 2019, 2020, It was quite commonplace for agencies to almost, I don’t want to say production line in a negative sense, because I’m not saying it was like a workhouse I’ll get shot, but I think ultimately it’s It was commonplace to have teams of digital PRs which are very good at ideation, delivering the outreach, but didn’t necessarily need to be involved with client work, didn’t necessarily need to be involved in new business pitches, didn’t necessarily need to be strong reporters, because there was a luxury there to have the SEO team handle that.

Or, if it were founder led, have them take care of that.

But I think times have changed.

I believe digital PRs are expected to have a lot more, a lot quicker and understandably and I believe if digital PRs are going to progress, they’re going to need, for example, the ability to speak to a client.

If they’re going to progress and they’re going to become attractive for more senior roles going forward, and they’re going to need to be more commercially minded. To think beyond, okay, creative idea, outreach, get the link, put it in the spread, put it in the report.

See what I mean? It needs to be that commercial sense behind it.

The ability to make sure, work completed is.

Let’s be fair in the cold light of day for an agency profitable or efficient in done efficiently.

So I think there’s an element of that basically is my long winded way of saying that ultimately this is why a lot less agencies are looking to entry level.

It is, it’s very short sighted. I think back in the day, I think I’m sure it was the same at some of the agencies you’re at. But back in the day, let’s say for example—it was a different time—but we developed a profile of individuals.

So we go to journalist backgrounds, PR background good sales backgrounds.

And then we would bring them in and we’d have systems in place to exactly as you said, teach them the way of agency world to a degree and what digital PR is. And these are the tools. And, before you knew it, you’d have a good team of people that on average, 12 to 18 months in terms of experience, but we’re delivering really good work

But, I think there’s also a lot less time for agencies now to put those processes in place as kind of demand falls on agency.

I think especially, and I keep going back to the tougher times, it’s not all doom and gloom. Like things are getting a lot better, but I think there is temptation to take the work when it comes in and to start rolling as soon as you can.

And then, but then I think recruitment can come become more reactive and it becomes a habit to be reactive versus we’re going to say yeah.

And again, I know for a fact, there’s gonna be some agency owners that are going to be sat there thinking that’s not us and I get it.

And I think there are some agencies I know that are very good at planning and their capacity is run like a very tight ship, but you know what?

It’s also very easy to let that slip when the work comes in and there are brands that you’ve been looking for a long time and trainers are good and you’ve got bills to pay.

Yeah,

Vince: I want to dig into that because my next question was going to be like, what’s the ideal background for digital PR, but let’s get to that secondarily. I want to let’s address those.

If somebody came to you, I know this isn’t exactly what you do, but say you are an agency and you are working in that kind of reactive mode, be it, probably a victim of circumstance, right?

Maybe a big client just dropped and suddenly a new, bigger client came on out of nowhere and you have to take it, right?

That’s usually, it’s not like the agency owners are out there trying to make things tough on themselves. So what do you recommend in those situations?

How do you hire in a way that’s smart and going to give you the best results in a short time?

How do you recommend agencies hire good talent if they need it quickly?

James Congdon: It’s a really good question, to be fair. I think there’s so many different ways of cutting it.

All I can do really is go back to and draw from kind of the experience that I’ve had as a hiring manager and on certain clients that I work with and it works well it’s that take that short term hit for what a better way of putting it.

Yeah, there might be a regular pipeline and you might be getting these clients in that it’s so difficult to say no to, but I think if there is that time out moment where you sit and you think, you know what, if I invest in three to four solid execs and give them the intensive time that they need versus avoiding that because you just don’t want to take time out, you don’t want to spend, then I think that is going to prevent those situations in the future.

Yes, it’s gonna be a little, it’s gonna be painful in the beginning because there are going to be clients that potentially have to say no to.

But I do think—having been in agency land for a while—and I’m not sure if you’d agree—but I think some of the most successful agencies that I’ve seen are able to avoid temptation of packing in as many clients they possibly can.

Because on the flip side of it, I know it’s not exactly what we’re talking about, but on the flip side of it, it’s it just really helps with retention as well. The amount of people that reach out to me and say, look, you know what, like this was my dream job.

I do like it here, but things are changing.

There’s a lot more client to person. I’m not going to get to be my most creative self anymore because now it’s just about trying to service six or seven clients at once.

And yeah, I honestly think that’s the only way really. It’s not easy, is it?

Vince: The other thing I’ve seen some companies and agencies do is partner with other agencies and set up like a referral, percentage.

So if you do have this instance where it’s going to put you over, utilization standpoint, and you’re taking that method that you’re saying where you’re going to pause and recalibrate before you take on this new client that might put you over you can cut or fill some of that, revenue stream by just throwing those clients over to another agency that you trust and getting some type of referral, 10%, 15% fee back from them that can help a little bit, obviously it’s not like taking on the whole client—but I’ve seen some agencies do that.

All so that was the easy answer. James, the easy answer is don’t do it.

If you have to do it what do you got? What do you have? Any tips? If you have to take on, you have to hire you. There’s no way you can say no to this client. Your business is going to fail, what’s the recommendation there?

Any other tips?

James Congdon: So I think I would look at your options as well with regards to freelance support as well, versus overly-reactive recruitment.

Cause that, that can come with repercussions, right?

I have seen agencies take on two people once because there’s a huge client, but they’re on trial with this client.

So they might take one to two people on, let’s say said trial, they give it their best.

Hey, stranger things have happened.

Let’s be fair. Like they might even meet the KPIs, but then said client no longer has budget, whatever it might be.

Yeah, they have to let people go. And I see that.

And of course, these aren’t things that any agency would want to do. I get it.

But it does happen.

So there is a really solid majority of them as well, but there are some really solid freelancers out there who are able to offer support.

Yeah, I think, and again, I know that’s not necessarily the ideal and that an agency will want to ultimately deliver their own work internally.

And I get it, but it does alleviate some of that pressure that cooker pressure environment that so many people reach out to me as a result of some people recommend that to companies that reach out to, here are,

Vince: Do you have a Rolodex of recommendations?

Do you recommend agencies build a list of recommended freelancers?

James Congdon: Oh, a hundred percent. I do freelance placements as well.

I tend to do a lot more permanent, but when that said, I wouldn’t necessarily do it as a placement, I’ll do it as a favour to both.

But also it just helps with pretty much what you were talking about before. You alluded to referring people and ultimately being able to keep semi control over what’s going on because you’ve referred somebody you trust.

And that’s how I like to do it really, because that way the client gets to see. And just that’s just one example, the trial scenario. That’s one example. Another example might be where they’ve taken on a particular client and they’re not 100 percent sure how many people is going to be required. It’s one of those situations.

So again, that freelance. And any freelancer worth their soul will be really honest with them, too, because no freelancer worth their soul deliberately sets out to retain that client forever because it shouldn’t be that way.

They’re really prepping them to get to a point where, okay, right now your execs can probably take some of this because I’ve got it to this.

See what I mean?

Vince: Yeah. Yeah.

James Congdon: So I think that’s another option.

Vince: Yeah. Would you say it’s probably good practice for agency owners to at least keep the freelancers out there close by, right? Like just maintain relationships. You’re not hiring them for anything, but to have a couple of calls, have a cup of coffee, that kind of thing.

James Congdon: Yeah, for sure. And I’ve seen, you know what, I’ve seen agencies do this really well where, they’ll go as far as to invite some of the most solid freelancers to the Christmas party.

Or, there’ll be sent things as though they are.

And it’s just maintaining that relationship.

Everything we do is about relationships, right?

So obviously PR is all about it.

But with what I do, and yeah, I think people again who have experience in the industry will know they’re not going to be valuable all of the time.

So, therefore,, they’re not going to feel put out if they if you all of a sudden, can’t use them, provided you maintain that relationship.

And I think Yeah, that’s what a lot of agencies I’m seeing are doing really well.

And I know that not all of them. It’s such a funny one because not all of them will necessarily want to shout about that, but they use freelancers and I get it.

It’s your brand issue, but it goes on.

Vince: yeah. I love that. All right. So let’s get back to in the ideal workflow or onboarding of clients, you are going to be hiring on a regular basis.

What is an ideal background look like for a digital PR when you’re hiring and building this digital PR team, let’s say I want to do this a couple different ways.

Let’s say you’re already an agency and you want to hire to bolster your agency. We’re not starting from scratch here because that’s going to be my next question, but that you’re on ongoing agency. What do you look for in a background for when you’re hiring?

What is the ideal background for a digital PR?

James Congdon: Yeah. So, of course, it’s a huge caveat; obviously, it would depend on the kind of seniority.

I think, generally speaking, it’s as obvious as it sounds; people will look to businesses for that.

But that said, I think it’s more sustainable to hire and develop people for longevity. So, in terms of backgrounds, journalistic for sure.

We cover that quite a fit quite a bit already, but I think nobody can think like a journalist in the same way that a journalist can.

A journalist can articulate themselves in a way that a journalist will appreciate because let’s be fair, it’s not just our ticket is. It’s not just about articulating yourself well, which, of course, is important, but it’s also about not annoying the journalist, right?

Vince: And they’ll know what it’s like to be on the other side.

James Congdon: They’ll know how to present information in a way that a journalist will be able to digest in a concise manner, but that’s also persuasive.

So it makes sense, right?

It’s a no brainer.

And I think it’s definitely when I’m asked to find previously when I’ve been asked to find entry level people, I would, without a doubt, look at people who’ve recently qualified within journalism.

And of course there’s an element there of a job needed from me to educate those people on what digital PR is.

And I think that’s what kind of, I think I’d like to think sets me apart from a lot of recruiters in the sense that I can have that conversation because I used to do it day in, day out.

I was selling digital PR as part of agency world, right?

So I can paint the picture for them, set the scene as to not just the benefits right now, but ultimately what it looks like in terms of your career path and like the money, et cetera, which, which definitely helps because it is an abstract concept, right?

So if you speak to a lot of people that are outside of the industry, they just will say, wait, it’s PR, isn’t it?

You’re talking about PR, right? Yeah, I know what PR is, but obviously it’s beyond that.

That’s an obvious one.

Vince: Sorry, can I ask if you get pushback too? I just spoke to someone from previous podcasts right before this, who mentioned he was a journalist, and now he runs an age digital PR agency.

And he was like, it was, I felt like I was stepping into the dark side. Do you get any pushback from that from journalists where they’re like, I don’t know if this is for me, I’ve been on the other side of this and it feels.

Are former journalists hesitant to get into digital PR?

James Congdon: Yeah. I do. I do.

And I think that to, to be honest, that’s when I speak to experienced journalists because understandably experienced journalists, this is so to be clear, I think, and not everyone would agree with me.

Still, I think finding a trained journalist that hasn’t quite yet got into the industry is a far better bet than somebody that’s been in the journalist industry, journalistic industry for years.

It’s twofold, right? Because yeah, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be jaded to PR, right?

To a degree, not everyone, that’s a bold statement but some people can be.

But then on the flip side, and quite understandably, they’re very proud of their craft, it’s what they want to continue with, they’ve achieved, they’ve accomplished.

To step back, in their mind anyway, and I get it, I would be the same.

It’s a bit of a tougher sell, but I think somebody that’s trained within journalism is somebody that you can mold that little bit more if you want a better way of putting it, and explain that ultimately everything that you’ve just been trained in is going to be useful and more, then you’re going to learn skills on top which are going to make you even more future proof and like even from a salary perspective, it’s, yeah.

So yeah. I would say definitely say journalistic.

There’s nothing wrong with traditional PR individuals moving into digital PR. Many have made the transition and done it really well.

I think my experience in the early days as a digital PR was that very seasoned traditional PRs are slightly tougher to win around to the concept because, understandably, right?

It’s a slightly different remit.

Ultimately, and again, I may be short here, but there’s a there’s an argument to say that traditional PR is slightly tougher in the sense that you’re selling a brand, you’re selling a a brand message as opposed to specific content that’s been created of interest for for the radius anyway.

That’s why I digress.

But that’s why that can be slightly more challenging.

But people with PR training that are still at that relatively junior level are good angles, obvious angles, but good ones.

Ultimately, again, creatives know what constitutes a story.

Or are certainly well-equipped to be able to present the story in a way that a journalist will be able to digest a very busy journalist that can digest in it very quickly.

But in addition to that, something that I found, and this is more in the last two or three years, really a lot of universities and there are training courses in data viz.

So really strong data viz people.

And the reason I like those that I have placed those across the UK and a little bit in the US actually into agency and brand side roles, actually, it’s because they’re trained in dealing with complex data sets, which is more and more something that digital PRs are having to do, right?

It’s used to be an option or like a, Okay. almost like a form of digital PR.

Now it’s almost quite integral.

So there’s that it’s understanding the data first and foremost, but then being able to tell stories from even the most mundane data sets.

So again, they’ve got that because that’s what they’ve been given training it.

So in theory, yes, they’ve been trained to almost like mini graphic designers in a way, because they’re beautifully presenting things.

They would still require the education piece on what digital PR is, but for the benefit of their training is that ultimately they can present things again in a way that’s super digestible.

But it’s that story piece, it’s that ability to persuade, articulate and present things in a way that will catch the eye, even if it’s mundane.

And let’s be fair.

And I’m only saying this as an ex-digital PR, like not every campaign, not every client is exciting, right?

But, and that’s the same with the data viz that they’re pulled in to deal with even the most mundane of datasets.

So that’s another angle.

And it works pretty well.

Salespeople as well. Believe it or not. No, I’m not saying somebody with 30 years of sales experience, all of a sudden you put about the sales floor and there you go, but somebody relatively junior provided they’ve got a creative edge. But the reason I like good salespeople with, they have to have that creativity.

So obviously it wouldn’t work, but it’s the ability to persuade. and articulate, but it’s also tenacity because the thing with PR as well, I often find that people often say to me what is a well balanced digital PR team?

And I think the honest answer is if you can afford the luxury, yes, creativity.

Yes.

Somebody that’s super organized. Yes.

Somebody that’s good with clients. Yes.

Somebody that can deal with data, but also you need that tenacious, dog with a bone person, and sometimes they’re not the most creative people.

And I can say that, so I hold my hand up and say, I think as a digital PR, I think one of my strengths was that some might say pigheadedness, but I would say just, when I say that, what I mean is that, yeah somebody refuses.

So you keep going with another target. You reframe it, you reshape it. You, whereas I think and this is again, this is a sweeping statement, but some of the best creatives that I’ve ever met will tell, they’ll say themselves that they don’t deal with rejection very well or the negative feedback.

They just don’t.

So, sometimes if you had a team populated with those people, I don’t know if you get very far.

You have some great work, but I’m not sure if the world will be seeing it right.

So yeah. Okay.

I think that’s why salespeople work, and then they grow into people that can get better with digital PR, but really, as long as they’ve got some good content, which, again, you need to lean on the rest of the team for.

Sky’s the limit as long as they’ve got that ability to really chase the targets. So that’s why I think junior sales people are pretty, pretty good.

And again, these are the types of people that I would look for if someone came to me and said, look, I want to avoid that merry-go-round of taking people from this agency, that agency, because I think over the last five years.

There has been a merry-go-round of let’s say that the same seven or eight agencies and people; they are progressing as they’re doing it but you know the same CV and the same logos are popping up on the same LinkedIn’s, right?

So I think in order to avoid that’s what I would do.

But again, going back to what we were talking about that I think it’s a great idea not everyone’s able to do this.

Sometimes they need to just jump on.

But that’s what I would do anyway.

Vince:

So it was like sales background, traditional background journalism. So three dataviz.

Do you recommend that people, or do you do any testing? Here’s a test project.

That’s what I mean by testing.

Yeah, like before they come on, I want to see what you can do.

Because most of these people don’t have that.

And that’s what I found is the toughest thing. Like we would do trial periods, right? It’s like a three-month trial period or whatever. And sometimes, you get a tough project and they’re not, they’re not able to perform well because within that three months, cause they were put on a tough project.

So you can’t really tell exactly. So I always go back to the test project thing, and we at Siege, I think we went back and forth with some of that and other agencies I’ve talked to go back and forth.

Some of them love it. Some of them are like, but I know they do that in many other industries, too.

But what’s your take on testing?

Do you recommend having potential hires complete a test project?

James Congdon: I think it’s important. I really do.

Yeah. It’s so important, and I think I advise people to do it, and then what I do in order to appease that as, as odd as it sounds is I pay that person for their time.

So I’ll say to them, look, let me know if this took half a day or whatever.

And I’m happy to do that out of my pocket because, to be honest, it weeds out people who weren’t necessarily that invested anyway.

But also, Iit gives them that opportunity if it’s the first time they’re doing it right, it gives them that opportunity to see if it’s for them.

Because you honestly, like the amount of people that start doing the task and then they’ll send me a message and go, I don’t know if this is for me or on the flip side, they’ll send me a message, go, Oh my God, I’m so pleased I’m doing this because now this is the job I want because they realize they’ve got a passion for it.

But then from the employers perspective, you have to, because you get people that are very good at selling themselves.

You get people that interview really well. You get the most personable individuals. It doesn’t make them the strongest strategist.

And it’s you just have to, and that’s across the board.

I recruit for SEO as well, paid media, and content. And yeah, I always recommend it.

And I’ll work with my clients as well to put it together if need be.

Vince: What does that look like for a digital PR? Let’s say, I feel like most digital PR firms or agencies now have that SEO component.

So what does that test look like for across those two boards?

What do those tests look like?

James Congdon: Yeah. So it depends on the level, but I think let’s just say if we take entry level, I think what they will want to do is see how they think, see how creative they can be and ultimately how articulate they can be because at entry level, that’s what you’re going to be doing.

Let’s be fair: you’re not going to be reporting yet.

You’re not going to be.

So they will give them a client.

Or they’ll just give them a fictitious industry, whatever it might be and say, look, come up with a campaign and what they want to do is they want to see.

What they perceive to be a campaign anyway, because there is no right or wrong.

They know they’ve not done this.

Of course, this is the beauty is where I can come in as well.

So I will very subtly coach that individual. I’m not saying that I do it to the point where, you know, ultimately, you’re doing the task for them. So that’s wholly unethical, but it’s just to clear up any gaps or whatever.

So that, and let’s say if it’s a manager role, then it would probably be some ideation again to see how they think if required in the role, but it would largely focus on their management side of things.

So, potentially it would be a top line view of how they would level up an underperforming team in the first three to six months or wherever it might be and giving them free reign to say.

In order to do this, I need X, Y, Z. I need this tool.

I need this training.

I need that.

It just, and then if it were, for example, yeah, it’s along those lines.

It’s dependent on the on the role, really. If it were a head of department, then it would be a lot more in depth and a lot more commercial.

So it’d be tell us how you’d help us grow the department over the next six months, 12 months, whatever it might be.

In addition, let us tell us how you would empower your managers to ensure they’re team ops and so forth.

So it’s basically taking the job description, to be honest with you, and putting it together in a way that is a fast track version and tell us how you think.

And it is so important, but it’s important on both sides, really, because as I say, many people, and I’ve lost count in the amount of people who say to me, look, I really love this role and this is what I wanted to do, but actually, based on what I’m doing now, I don’t think it’s quite right for me. Or again, on the flip side, they’ll look at it and go all in because they’ll realize it’s what they want.

Vince: Yeah. Yeah. That’s great insight. Okay, so I mentioned, I worked on a couple notes here. Let’s do this one management level. Do you ever have any concerns hiring director level in so much as since they have so much experience, especially an agency? Agencies have their vibe. They have their, ideology on like how you should approach clients.

SEO is such a nuanced thing, right? Like Google, nobody knows exactly what Google wants. So I feel like agency heads and agencies have their theories of this is how we do things. Is there ever any butting heads or like concern about that when you’re hiring more of a management level?

Like they’re just, it’s harder to slot into. The agency kind of machine that you’ve built.

Are senior or management level positions harder to hire?

James Congdon: Yeah. So if I’ve understood you, you meanspolitical butting heads that based on their own experience versus the way the new agency is working.

Vince: Yeah. Not like the way that you run an agency, but more of ideologies and how digital PR should be done or how, you can the more experience you get, obviously you have all that experience, personal experience, and the thoughts about how things should be done.

Correctly or how they’ve been done effectively.

Yeah. Does that ever come across have you come across those problems where you’ve hired or gotten somebody hired and it doesn’t, they kind of buttheads.

James Congdon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

More than you realize, I think it does. It happens a lot. And I think I always say that there’s a bit of a grace period.

So when I place people, particularly at that kind of level, I’ll always check in check in how things are going.

And generally speaking, the first few weeks are always great because people have bedded in.

And I always think it’s usually from month two that if it’s going to happen, I’ll get the odd WhatsApp or the odd kind of message saying, ah, just a bit worried or et cetera.

So I’ll get on the phone with them and trying to work out what it is.

I think invariably it will be around cost, it’ll be around believe it or not, some directors will feel that agencies are charging too cheaply for what they’re doing, because it’s going to limit you and any digital PR listening to this will, I’m a hundred percent sure they’ll agree is that KPI is a very contentious.

So one person might have come from an agency where I’m always very careful about how I work because I never want to go into how people run agencies, right?

Because it’s just not, it’s not, I’m not qualified, but having worked in agencies and seeing it all, I got views. But I think there are some agencies, for example, that will promise the earth and that’s how they win the new business and potentially somebody’s not used to that when they come in, right?

They’re used to potentially having their CEO or founder or whatever it whoever it is dealing with the sales managing expectation.

Or, you know under-romising and over-delivering it.

So, there is a bit of that.

The KPI is very contentious.

I think people disagree on what should be agreed and what shouldn’t be agreed, I think.

And on that note, sales generally, right?

If they’re used to, if they go into an agency, it’s a funny one, right?

Because when people are recruited, it’s usually very transparent that the agency they’re going to is high growth, or they want to grow, they want to continue to grow, they might even want to sell, and it’s exciting because you can be part of this or whatever, and they might buy into that initially until they get in there, and then they realize, ah, yeah, slightly different from where I was, because things become about sales.

So therefore our compromise is made on the types of clients you work with at that point, so yeah, I think it’s perfectly natural because somebody at that level would have been used to a certain way and have been working pretty closely with the founder of that business.

They’re used to that.

They’ve come up in the ranks there and around that, and then they’ve moved to a different ideology.

So yeah, basically, yeah. And people do leave because of it?

Certainly, there are issues in the beginning, for sure.

Vince: Is the fix then to, or the way to mitigate that is just to talk more transparently, in the onboarding process?

Is transparency the best way to mitigate that risk?

James Congdon: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think my best clients do, and they give me that ability to then be transparent in turn.

It can be disappointing sometimes because you think you found someone amazing, they’ve got all the right skills, but when you get to explain to them what it’s going to be like it could be high growth environment, whatever it might be, or, you might say to them, you’re going to be heavily incentivized, but it’s going to be a lot of sales.

How do you feel about that?

And at that point, they might pull out, but it’s fine because at least we know now, right?

Whereas there are some red flags for me sometimes.

I have on occasion had to walk away from a role for that reason, you could just smell something.

You could, that something’s not quite right.

They might be very quick to make an offer.

Like after one stage, for example, you think this is great for the traditional recruiter would be all over this.

And they would just say, me like looking at it. It’s hasty. Why is it hasty?

Why? Why have you?

So yeah, it’s just all, yeah, you’re right.

It’s basically about transparency and unfortunately, making myself unpopular sometimes if I ask the difficult questions and I’ll just say to them, look, tell me why has it been a problem to hire for this?

Truly?

Are they gonna come in and actually, is it a bit of a factory in here?

I might not say it in that word, but Yeah. Try to get that out of them. Yeah. Yeah.

Vince: Yeah. Okay. The other note I wrote down is okay. Say you’re starting out from scratch, right? You’re building a digital PR team. I feel like that’s like you said that’s going to be a lot of people nowadays in the U.S.

Maybe you are even a traditional PR agency or I was in Brighton. A lot of people will come up to me and say I, I’ve heard about digital PR. Yeah. I know I got to start doing it, but I don’t really know much about it. What is BuzzStream, right? Cause we had a booth there, but so yeah, there’s going to be a lot of people doing this now, I think starting leaning into digital PR.

How do you recommend they structure a team? Let’s start there. And then we can get into we touched on most of what to look for in hiring, but yeah, let’s start there.

If you were starting from scratch, how would you structure a digital PR team?

James Congdon: Sorry. And I always say, a huge caveat. Not everyone has the luxury of this.

In fact, it’s rare that they do, but I think if you have a balanced team, it goes back to what I was saying before.

And that you definitely need that tenacious individual, that person that’s target driven, that person that will just go hook and for crook till they achieve the results.

It’s so key.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, you do need that creative ideator.

Now, whether that be blue sky thinking larger content marketing campaigns, which contentious are slightly diminishing but or reactive either way, there will still need to be the ideator.

And then in addition to that, if you were to have only one person in the business that can do it, have them within the digital PR team for yourself is that data individual, that person that can help to clean the data when research has been done, data isn’t for everybody.

Some of the best digital PRs are completely intimidated by numbers.

And to be honest, I’m again, holding my hands up. I was that guy.

And yeah it’s frowned upon sometimes when I’m recruiting, I will get some people saying to me, listen, if they’re scared of data, don’t bother.

And I get it.

I think they’ve not necessarily got the luxury of having a data person, but when I was at Verve, we did and it helped no end.

And I think, since then I’ve always recommended that people.

Ultimately, at least have one person that can clean the data, can organize it in a way that their stories can be extracted, can present it in the right way.

And then in addition to that, definitely, you definitely need that commercial mind.

Now, whether that be one of the managers, but you need the, you need someone with the ability to make sure that, it’s not really isn’t uncommon for digital PRs to later focus on the output and their creativity and the beauty of the work, which is. Brilliant.

And that’s why they’re good at what they do.

But the flip side of that is accounts can get overburnt and they need to make sure that’s not happening.

You need to make sure things are profitable, right?

If there’s one particular campaign that’s really design heavy, I remember back in the day, probably being a bit guilty of this, to be fair with the ideation is that if the campaign was very development heavy, so back to back in the day when interactive pieces were all the rage and the cool kids were doing that.

I don’t believe many of them were ever profitable.

Controversial.

I’ll probably be probably strung up for that, but it was very difficult for them to be without compromising somewhere.

So whether that be you put all the time into that and then limit your outreach time, which is ironically the results end of the business, right?

So, again, I’m digressing, but it’s keeping an eye on that efficiency and profitability; you need that person in there.

And if it can be the same person or a different person, you definitely need a people person.

You need somebody that can get the best from people because again, you get the best specialists out there.

They might not necessarily be good at motivating junior members of the team, mid weight members of the team when people are struggling, how are you going to deal with that?

So I would say those are the key.

Vince: Are you envisioning this in the best agencies that you’ve worked with and placed in?

Do they typically break up the role so that one person’s doing the ideation strategy, the other person’s doing the promotion the other, another person doing writing, like where do you draw those lines between that for the digital PR kind of life cycle of a project?

Do the best agencies break up their businesses in that way?

James Congdon: The honest answer to that is it will depend on the agency, and I think the majority, to be fair, of the independent, more fluid agencies now, the way that they deal with that is that they just make sure everybody’s got a large proportion of all of that now.

And it was going back to what I was saying right at the beginning that things are changing, but that would be my optimal team if you had the luxury.

James Congdon: No, sorry, just for clarity. If you could have. If you had the luxury to have that data person, have that idea, I think the benefit certainly back in the day was the headspace, right?

Cause I think there’s a lot of over, there’s a lot of burnout at the moment in agency world.

There’s a lot of people who leave roles due to overworking, which is such a shame because it used to be their dream role.

And some of that. Some of that can be linked with needing everybody to do everything if I’m honest.

So that would be more optimal.

But I’m also fully cognizant of the fact that it’s not realistic in all the time, particularly not in certain size businesses.

So typically, what agencies will do is make sure that people have a good proportion of some of it, so it might be or certainly double up on skills.

So you’d have Aomebody that’s good with data that can also do the outreach as well.

You’d have somebody that’s good with client and most people now really worth their soul and future proofing themselves a client facing.

I think there was a period of time where some agencies still do it and they do it well, but it’s not necessarily future proofing is that they would have.

It’s almost a bit of a production line, for want of a better way of putting it, of the good outreach people.

They’re doing the good outreach work and keep them separate from the commercial, the account management, and the client relations.

And from a business perspective, it makes sense because you’re giving them freedom just to do their thing, but the problem is when it comes to future employability and you get to a senior level or perceived per senior level in your mind, but you don’t have that client facing skills, you have the ability to put together a digital PR package for a client.

You haven’t got the ability to sell it commercially.

You’re going to restrict yourself, but you’re going to be frustrated because in your mind, understandably, you’ve worked your butt off for four or five years.

I think the way that agencies do it now, so I just go back to your question is that they’ll just make, they’ll make sure people have as much of it as they can.

And I think when I’m recruiting and a lot of the feedback I’ll have on people will be based on it.

They’ll say, do you know what? They were great from an ideation point of view. We’re just a bit worried that we can’t put them in front of a client.

Or I can see how they’d be awesome with clients, but their task wasn’t that strong, and we can’t afford to have just a client person when you say.

They would just, yeah, I think that in this day and the way things are at the moment, if I can offer anyone any advice, it’s just to try and pick up things you don’t have.

So if you’re not typically exposed to client relations, see if you can shadow somebody if possible, because it will benefit you in the future.

If there’s one person responsible for putting packages together, such as commercial packages, and presenting those to clients, have a look at what they’re doing.

Ask the questions like, okay why are we doing it like this?

You might think that’s not enough outreach time, but there might be a perfectly commercial, sensible reason why there isn’t.

So, ask the questions and that will make a bit more sense.

And that’s what’s going to future-proof people.

Really. I think gone are the days of just being able to do your craft.

Yeah, because even the house, you need your senior stakeholder.

Vince: I know plenty of successful agencies that have it very split, right? The outreach team is one team, the ideation team, whatever the writers. But for me personally, what, that’s how we did it.

Siege was everybody would own a project end to end from the ideation all the way up to the outreach.

And that I think enables that type of growth that you’re talking about and at least gets people who can come in even as an intern, make it all the way up to a manager and director level and what have you, obviously they got to be able to.

They got to want to put in the work to do it, right?

But I think it just makes you stronger and understand the bigger picture.

If you can at least be part of those conversations from the beginning to the end and being involved. Yeah, James, this has been great. And I let’s end here. I don’t want to overload people here.

I think we could talk about this for hours.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

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Website: https://buzzstream.com