What are the 10 steps to developing a new hire press release?

Announcing a new hire within an organization is one way to keep your firm’s name top of mind. This should be a regular component of your public relations activities.

When your firm has a new hire, you can send the information about their position and their responsibilities to local print and digital outlets in addition to placing the announcement on your company blog. Here are a few tips to help you do that.

10 Steps to writing and sending a new hire announcements

• Gather background information. Including their CV and previous position information which you will need when drafting the press release.
• Obtain a few quotes from them. These should address something about their new responsibilities within the firm. You may also want to gain a few quotes from them about the community in which they will be living, especially if they are new to the area.
• Obtain a quote from the C suite executiveto whom the new hire reports. This is good to do when you have a new hire who is an executive. For example, you might write, “Acme CEO Greg Jones said of Mrs. Smith’s hiring, ‘She brings a wealth of customer service experience to this newly created position overseeing every aspect of customer service.’”
• Get a good headshot. If you are taking the headshot be sure to photograph the subject against a plain, light background with no 
  furniture, windows, or antenna sprouting from their head.

  Examples of new hire bad, better & best headshots

  

You’ve all seen the head shots where it looks like something in shooting out of the top of someone’s head, or their scalp is bouncing back so much light, that part of the photo is “burned out”(first image on left above.) In years past all headshots were formal (middle image above.) Today we see more personality in headshots (shot of the guy with glasses). While this is good, consider the outlet that will include the image and make sure there is congruence between the outlet’s style and the style of photo you send them. Provide the headshot either as an attachment or more preferably, as a downloadable file from your media area or from an online media room.

• Make a list of media outlets. Create your list before you need it. Take note of the outlets where you find announcements. For example, most daily newspapers have a weekly column that accepts announcements of a new hire. There are many online local business newsletters and sites as well as professional associations that also accept new hire press releases.  If your industry has a trade specific journal or magazine, many of these also accept new hire press releases. Create a spreadsheet of the information required by each outlet including the image file format and desired image size as well as submission preferences. These days most outlets prefer to receive releases via e-mail, but every now and again, there will be an outlet that prefers postal mail or even fax.
• Write your press release. If you don’t know how to write a press release, Google it. There are many online resources about writing press releases to help you.
• Gain approval from the appropriate people at your firm.
• Distribute your release in accordance with all the requirements you’ve noted.
• Monitor all the media outlets for inclusion of your release.
• Save copies in a clipping file for your reference in the future.

We use this new hire questionnaire to gather information and are sharing it with you for your use.

If you need help writing and distributing your new hire press releases, give us a call. We offer an all inclusive fee for the writing and distribution of a release to the outlets in your community which accept releases.

Want to develop a new hire press release distribution list?

Follow the steps in this article.

Thanks to flickr creative commons for allowing us to use these headshots.

Photo credits to: (l to r) johnnyryan1, Freddie Murphy, stickwithjosh