How to choose a recruitment PR agency: the questions to ask first

Over the past few months, I've spoken to agency leaders who have noticed something strange. Their website traffic is down, and their SEO agency is telling them one thing, while their marketing team is hearing something else. Meanwhile, everyone seems to be talking about AEO, GEO, AI visibility and generative search.

The reality is that search is changing. People aren't just Googling any more, they're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and other AI tools for recommendations, advice and supplier suggestions. And those tools don't just pull information from your website, they collate content and resources from across the web, and prioritise that over your own content. Which means being talked about by trusted third parties has never been more important. In other words, PR has suddenly become a much bigger conversation.

The challenge is that many recruitment agencies have never worked with a PR agency before. They know visibility matters, they know they need to build authority, and they know AI search is changing the rules.

But they have absolutely no idea what they're supposed to look for in a PR partner. After our recent webinar, Who do the robots recommend? The age of AI search, one of the most common questions I received was essentially: “How do I know if a PR agency is any good?”

So, whether you work with BlueSky PR or somebody else entirely, here are the questions I'd be asking.