This insights post is a summary of the blog post published by McDougall Communications. View the full article at: Hiring New PR Talent in the Age of AI.
The rise of AI tools has raised the bar for early-career PR candidates — and reset it for the hiring managers evaluating them.
When Laura DiCaprio, APR, recently set out to hire an entry-level PR coordinator, she noticed something striking: every resume was polished, every cover letter precisely aligned with the job description. Candidates who last cycle might have stood out on paper now blended together. The culprit wasn’t a lack of talent — it was AI assistance that had leveled the presentation playing field entirely.
Writing quality, grammar, and structured experience — the traditional signals hiring managers have long relied on — are no longer reliable differentiators. As DiCaprio notes, candidates aren’t misrepresenting themselves; they’re using the same tools they’ll use on the job. That shifts the responsibility to PR leaders to rethink how they evaluate talent from the start.
Rethinking the evaluation process
With polished application materials no longer serving as meaningful filters, DiCaprio’s team leaned harder on interviews — particularly phone screenings — as early-stage evaluation tools. They revised their questions to prioritize real-time reasoning over rehearsed responses, asking things like: What makes a story newsworthy today? or What recent headline caught your attention — and why? Questions without perfect answers, designed to surface curiosity, media awareness, and the ability to connect ideas under pressure.
She also recommends addressing AI directly in interviews. Ask candidates how they used AI in their application process and how they’d use it day-to-day. The strongest candidates, she found, treat AI as a starting point, not a final product. In addition, candidates can articulate where it falls short in tone and accuracy. In PR, judgment matters as much as execution.
The qualities that still set candidates apart
Beyond skills and AI fluency, DiCaprio found the final hiring decision came down to qualities harder to manufacture: genuine curiosity about industries and media, initiative beyond the required, and honest self-awareness about what they still need to learn. These traits, she argues, signal long-term success more reliably than any cover letter — AI-assisted or otherwise.
The takeaway for PR hiring managers: the tools have changed, and the process needs to keep up.
Read the full article on PRsay at: Hiring New PR Talent in the Age of AI.
