Who Staffs The Agencies — The PR Recruiters Who Matter

Edited on Jun 17, 2026.

The recruiters that move senior communications talent across the agency and corporate world. The AI Communications hiring boom is rewriting their order book.

Senior PR talent is the most contested hiring market in marketing services right now. Holding-company consolidation creates exits. AI Communications creates new roles that did not exist eighteen months ago — Head of AI Visibility, Head of GEO, Chief AI Communications Officer.

The recruiters below are the ones agencies and corporate comms teams actually use.

Heyman Associates

Founded by Bill Heyman in 1989. New York. The dominant retained search firm in communications. Senior corporate comms officers, agency CEOs, IR-comms hybrids. Maggie Cohen is President.

Joel Paul Associates

New York, founded 1990 by Joel Paul. Long-standing PR-only retained search. Strong agency-side practice. Senior account directors through agency CEOs.

Karen Tripi Associates

New York. Boutique PR search firm led by Karen Tripi. Mid-to-senior agency placements and corporate comms. Long-standing relationships across the holding companies and the independents.

Travaille Executive Search

San Francisco and New York. Communications, marketing, and public affairs. Strong tech-sector PR placements — useful in the AI Communications hiring cycle.

JBC

Creative and marketing executive search with a serious PR and brand-comms practice.

Lipman Hearne / The Lipman Group

Communications search with strength in education, nonprofit, and corporate marketing leadership.

Ascendo Resources

Contract and full-time PR placement across mid-market and corporate comms. Faster cycle than retained search.

Capitol Communicator Job Bank

Washington D.C. PR and public affairs talent layer — not a retained recruiter, but a deep talent pipeline for the PA market.

Higher Group

London. PR, public affairs, and corporate communications across the UK and EMEA. Strong on agency CEO and MD placements.

Taylor Bennett

London. One of the longest-running communications search firms in the UK. PR, internal comms, public affairs.

VMA Group

London-headquartered, global. Communications, marketing, and digital. Strong corporate-comms officer practice.

Where The Hiring Heat Is

First: AI Communications roles. Heads of AI Visibility, Heads of GEO, AI-fluent senior account leaders. The roles are new. The candidate pool is thin. Every retained recruiter on this list has at least one of these searches open right now.

Second: holding-company exits. The Omnicom-IPG consolidation, the WPP Burson combination, and the Stagwell restructuring have all created senior practitioner movement. Independent firms are the buyers. See PR's Second Wave — Six Months After Omnicom-IPG.

Third: corporate Chief Communications Officer searches at AI companies, fintechs, and post-IPO scaleups. Anthropic's external comms build under Sally Aldous, OpenAI's open CCO search, Lovable's commercial growth — every flagship AI company is hiring.

The recruiters above are where those searches sit.

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