The Counter Cultural Fit

PR has seen a change in hiring strategies over the last couple of years. It’s been pretty subtle, but definitely there. Agencies are starting to think outside of the box when hiring. In fact, they are proactively hunting for people who were never in the box in the first place. I’ll elaborate…

Four years ago, a recruitment brief was pretty standard.
"We want an account manager, with media contacts in this area from a similar or larger agency (preferably one of our close competitors)".
Essentially, everyone wanted a carbon copy of their other members of staff – and this is in fact what most people were testing for in interviews and misunderstanding as ‘cultural fit’. After all, the thinking went, candidates like this require less training, may add to the pool of journalist’s contacts and will understand the modus operandi of their new employer from day one.

But there are problems with this approach. In an agency of clones, the work becomes stale and lifeless, creativity suffers and morale drops. Furthermore, if you are looking for someone who comes from a rival agency, where they have created a similar clone culture – what incentive will that target candidate have for coming to you, beyond a hollow and short-term pay rise?
The other issue with this mindset is that it excludes people who are not a perfect match to the description – including anyone working slightly outside the particular sector or sub-sector, anyone from a smaller agency, and certainly anyone from an in-house role.

Perhaps some people realised this four years ago – but the status quo had such a powerful gravitational pull, nobody wanted to take a risk by hiring in a different way. Instead, the market itself changed.

We all know about the rise of digital communication bringing in cross-disciple talent form branding consultancies and marketing/ advertising executives. But above and beyond this, as one of my client MDs pointed out recently, PR has been changing from a purely press relations role into more of a targeted community engagement role, and strategies, instead of ‘get as much media coverage as possible’ have moved into more creative brand-building areas. In today’s fat cat despising, economically challenged times, the traditional salesperson is less trusted, and the printed media itself is in retreat. In addition, the candidates have been more nervous about moving unless there’s a real change to their day to day.

So increasingly, over the last year, we‘ve been asked to keep an eye out for unusual people. People with the right skills of course, but the catch-net is a lot wider. Candidates from in-house are being more readily considered at junior to mid levels and are being given more of a chance to change from one sector to another (with more focus on core PR skills rather than current contacts). There has been a renewed emphasis on personality and on any extra insights and skills candidates might bring, rather than just filling another seat in the office with another clone. Candidates too now expect more variety, rather than the same dry release selling spread over 4 or 5 clients.

This can only be good for an industry that has for some time suffered from a fresh creativity deficit and certain exclusivity at the same time. Real cultural fit, in terms of the way people from unparallel backgrounds come together as a team, is now being more carefully considered and tested for.