Welcome to a slightly different PRmoment podcast. This week we're going to be doing a year in review of 2018. 

 The show will be divided up into three parts.

 First up, we have Alice Weightman, founder and CEO of Hanson Search, who's going to talk to us about the PR talent market in 2018. 

 Then we have PRCA director general Francis Ingham, who’ll be giving us a wider perspective about the health of the sector over the past 12 months. Finally, we have Taylor Herring co-founder James Herring guving us his perspective on the most interesting pieces of work over the past year.

Here’s a summary of what Alice and I talked about:

• The “busyness” barometer of the UK PR sector in the last 12 months
• The impact of Brexit on PR recruitment
• How the shift from retainer work to project work has affected the recruitment market 
• How 2018 started with a lot of focus on senior hires in PR, but this then fell away over the summer
• The trend of talent going client-side in 2018
• How the continuing divergence of PR practice is splitting the talent market in two
• To what extent management consultants are hiring in great PR talent
• The trend of PR firms hiring business consultants in 2018
• Alice reveals the types of positions that are in most demand in 2018
• Alice discusses the potential negative impact of a bad hire at a senior level
• Why independent firms are hiring different people from the larger groups
• Why hiring trends in PR are in a period of change and evolution
• Why the rise of freelancers is disrupting the business model for PR markets such as healthcare
• Why a lack of flexible working is driving people towards freelance work

And here is a summary of what Francis Ingham and I discuss:  

• A perspective on the financial state of the global PR sector
• How UK PR is powering ahead financially
• What have been the biggest challenges for PR in 2019
• How talent and evaluation have again been PR's greatest challenges in 2018
• Why the large, mid-size and small agencies have all had different types of problems in 2018
• Why mid-size generalist PR firms are having a tough time
• The advantages that independent agencies have over the holding companies
• Whether Francis thinks that PR is winning market share from the advertising sector
• Francis questions whether PR has overemphasised its over-servicing problem
• Why Francis believes there is an intrinsic link between PR's evaluation problem, its inability to charge more and its growth-limiting talent problem.

And lastly, James Herring co-founder of Taylor Herring, gives us his top five campaigns of 2018.