You’ve just hired a new recruit for your business and naturally, you’re buzzing. They’re a great fit for the role, have tons of relevant experience and you can already tell they’re going to make a huge impact in your team. You head straight to your laptop to rattle off a press release sharing your news to the world: surely everyone who reads it will be just as excited as you, right?
Wrong. (Sorry). When I worked as a staff journalist, nothing triggered a yawn like an email landing in my inbox from a company I’d never heard of, boasting of hiring a person I’d also never heard of. And yet they arrived, usually packed with jargon and acronyms totally indecipherable to anyone outside of the industry and replete with the same old cliches (why no one can come up with a synonym for delighted, I’ll never know).
The thing is, while I’ve no doubt this person will indeed be ‘an invaluable addition to the team’ who’ll ‘help drive your company’s mission forward’, most of the time it’s just not really worthy of a story. Companies hire employees, that’s just what they do. It’s not news, it’s self-promotion.
Now for some important exceptions to this rule. Some niche trade titles are definitely interested in people moves and some even have a dedicated section for it on their website (you can find out which journalist to contact by looking back at who wrote previous stories). Meanwhile, other publications might do a monthly roundup or include a few lines on key moves in their newsletter, like Sifted does in its weekly dispatch Startup Life (these are often brief so, if you want to be featured, sending a full press release is unlikely to be necessary: the key details of who’s moving where and what their previous role was should suffice).
And of course, hiring a big name will get a lot of attention. The mental health startup BetterUp was hardly going to stay quiet about bringing on board Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, as its new chief impact officer!
But even if you haven’t hired Kendall Jenner as your new creative director, that doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can do to publicise your new hire. In fact, there’s plenty of ways you can get the word out that are likely to be much more effective than sending a boring old press release.
If you’ve hired a new chief marketing officer (CMO), why not put them forward for the Forbes CMO network? Successful applicants become members, which means they can contribute their own articles to the platform, giving both them and your company a huge boost in credibility.
You could also put them forward for awards for top marketers. There are myriad awards out there for all kinds of different roles within your company and, for the most reputable, it’s really worth taking the time to apply. Even being shortlisted will get exposure for your brand and act as a trusted third-party endorsement.
Another way to shout about your new hire in the press could involve finding a link with the wider news agenda or any recent trends. Did the pandemic and its knock-on effect on mental health spur you to hire a head of wellbeing, like the accountancy software company Xero? Or have you hired a director of remote work as you implement a permanent work-from-home set up post-Covid? Even better, are you the first company in your industry to create such a role? Just like that, your news becomes a story, something of wider interest which tells us something about the world we live in today.
Of course, one place you can enjoy free reign to celebrate your new hire is on your own social media, and especially on LinkedIn. Social media is all about people, after all, and LinkedIn is precisely where people go to find out who’s changed jobs and which companies are hiring. It’s also a good way to expand your network too, as each new recruit will bring an awareness of your business to their connections on the platform.
For more sound PR advice, drop us a line: hello@tartlemedia.co.uk or learn more about Tartle Media's PR approach on our website.
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