Startup PR and Communications Recruitment Agency

While our agency headquarters are offices in London, we also provide our marketing and communications recruiting services globally. This includes Europe, North America and APAC.

We have experience supporting clients across the UK from the South-East to Manchester and up to Scotland, North America, from California to New York via Austin and Toronto.

We have worked with businesses in mainland Europe including Paris, Berlin, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Milan and Zurich.

We have also partnered with firms across Asia Pacific including in India, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland China and Australia.

It’s hard to offer definitives around exact timelines without understanding more information specific to your search as there are a number of factors we can’t control (people’s diaries being one of them!).

However, 6 weeks is a good rule of thumb to allow for the entire process to identify a top startup  communications professional.

This allows 1 week for us to do a good search to find and take time to get to know and assess candidates for the role as we are always actively searching against the brief to ensure the best fit for the new role versus those CVs we just have to hand. 

Typically, an interview stage process will then run over 3-4 weeks depending on number of stages – we would advise keeping this as compact and efficient as possible and so are happy to work to tighter time frames. 

Finally, around a week from job offer to acceptance with a buffer for salary, contracts and referencing completes our in-depth process to find you the perfect public relations and comms candidate.

We are able to and are experienced in working across all levels from entry level to senior positions like C-Suite, across all marketing, PR and Communications disciplines, but we find we are able to deliver the most value to our partners when you’re looking to hire candidates with experience.

We do work with graduates and passionate entry level candidates trying to get into the sector to progress their careers and are always happy to give them job opportunities and career advice. We take the time to help with their development, given we feel we have an important role to play in helping with their upskilling to help them land PR, communications, digital and marketing jobs.

However, we find it better to open up our networks on a case by case basis in this endeavour, versus charging our partners a fee as a successful placement is harder to guarantee at this level. 

We want to focus on helping a diverse talent pool of entry level candidates access opportunities instead of our fee being a barrier. 

We are always happy to discuss how we can best help with your recruitment needs, so get in touch and if it’s not a solution we can provide in house we’ll be sure to point you in the right direction. 

Simply put our process is Scope, Search, Engage, Interview and Offer but a little more detail on each of these aspects of our service can be found on OUR PROCESS page.

Beyond this, a number of our clients rely on our support for onboarding and beyond, which we are always happy to assist with throughout the process and afterwards, however we also understand some businesses have fairly tried and tested processes here. 

Like most recruiters, our fees are charged as a percentage of the first years’ compensation of the successful hire; however, the exact structure depends on several factors.

Given we work across a swathe of clients of differing sizes and shapes, industries and locations as well as distinct volume requirements, we understand that there isn’t one size fits all.

As talent specialists, we endeavour to be solutions orientated and design partnership terms based on each individual client for the best recruitment experience.

Our MO is to establish long lasting partnerships with the businesses we work with and be seen as their trusted PR, marketing and Comms recruitment experts, so charging the highest fee possible at every juncture is not in our nature. 

We work with our partners to ensure that our services are value-add rather than painful expenses and provide a long-term solution to talent challenges.

The fact is we offer all of the above; Contingent search (success based fee model); Retained search (strategic tailored search with an upfront commitment fee); and Exec search (specific to senior and strategic hires for very narrow talent pools).

All have merits when recruiting for startups, but the truth is that without information as to your specific needs and requirements, and therefore the talent pool in question, it is hard to say which approach may be best for your business.

What we can say however, being MarComms specialists and industry experts, is that in our experience an iterative or contingent search model tends to be effective in around 70% of cases, particularly where exclusivity is agreed.

As ever, there isn’t one size fits all and so we endeavour to be adaptive to each client’s needs and priorities. We take the time getting to know your business and the challenges you face, to provide an agile strategy that’s most likely to secure an efficient and successful outcome. 

What sets us apart from the typical marketing communications recruitment agency is our experienced team of PR and communications specialist recruitment consultants have deep knowledge across all sectors we specialise in.

We keep on top of ever-changing trends, requirements, competitive salary guides, qualifications and qualities required so we’re fully prepared to attract the perfect hire who is ready to hit the ground running and help your business thrive to achieve the growth it deserves.

This makes us leading startups recruiters for your company to find talent across the startups industry. Thanks to our expertise and diligence, we’re efficient and tirelessly seek the best candidate to fill your job role. We won’t stop until we bring you success in your choice of candidate.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) is a topic that has consistently been discussed and pontificated around, but is still seen by some as a tick box exercise and has made little progress despite the noise.

At Sapio, we realise we have a key role to play in changing that and we actively work to increase DE&I in our sector by influencing some key areas.

Please see our DE&I page to find out how we’re helping to foster inclusive cultures that facilitate the success of ALL employees and businesses.