Don't believe the narrative. Good PR talent is still hard to find.

Why a cautious market hasn't made the best candidates any more visible.

There's a story going around about the PR job market. It goes like this: the past 18 months have been tough, agencies have cut headcount, and so the talent pool must be better stocked than it's been in years. There are people out there. Hiring should be easier.

I talk to PR people every day — candidates, hiring managers, MDs across the London market — and I can tell you that story isn't holding up.

The redundancies were real. But look at where they actually landed. Senior leaders with high fixed costs, exposed when clients got nervous and margins tightened. Back-office teams caught in the crossfire of agency mergers. Real people, real impact — but not the Account Manager or AD talent pool most agencies are trying to hire into.

The people who kept client relationships going, managed the junior teams, held campaigns together when things got difficult? They mostly kept their jobs. Because they were too useful to cut.

Most of them are still employed. Most of them aren't looking. And if they are open to something, they're not going to signal it by uploading their CV to a job board.

Most of the hiring activity we're seeing right now is in the mid-level — AM to SAM has been the busiest space for the past year, and we're starting to see a bit more movement at AD level too. But wherever you look, the same thing is true: the best people are the hardest to find.

They're heads-down on a pitch or a campaign they care about. They'll move — but for the right opportunity, the right team, the right next step. And usually because someone they already know rang them up, not because a role showed up on LinkedIn.

The strongest placements I've made this year didn't come from applications. They came from coffees six months earlier, referrals from people who knew people, conversations that didn't look like recruitment at all until they did.

Post a role and wait, and you'll meet everyone who isn't busy enough to stay where they are.

In London's PR market, the talent is there. It's just not waiting for you to find it.

Gavin Watson is MD of PR CROWD, a specialist PR and communications recruitment agency based in London. PR CROWD places comms talent from junior to director level, primarily across the London agency market.