Every day new managers are hired or promoted because of "what they know". When they fail to thrive it's because of "who they are" or "how they go about getting things done". While there are many factors that contribute to these successes or failures, bottom line is that responsibility falls on shoulders of hiring manager. As a hiring manager, your credibility and reputation are on line.

Some companies have a series of training sessions in place for new managers. That's simply NOT enough! Every hiring manager needs a PLAN in place for minimizing risk and increasing chances of success for new manager. Here are some topics to get you started:

by Carolyn Moncel Do small-business owners always have to rely on large PR agencies to get attention from press? An entrepreneur recently asked me this question during a networking event for women business owners. Of course my answer was, "No," but not for reasons one might expect.

Ultimately, I do believe time comes when a company needs professional guidance from a PR agency -- be it a large or small one -- to secure media coverage. But I also believe that a really media savvy small-business owner, or a two-person marketing team can do a fantastic job in promoting an organization. Here's how I know it can work.

A few years ago during dot.com boom, I worked for a small online publishing company. We had a terrific technical team and staff, two great products, but no one knew company existed. As a start-up, it was crucial for company to gain awareness through media exposure because advertising was too expensive.

Since our marketing department only consisted of two people -- marketing director and myself, there was a bit of concern within organization as to whether we had enough in-house resources available to successfully get company much-needed ink. So company's executive team hatched an interesting plan. They offered our in-house marketing team chance to bid on company's PR project as if we were an outside agency.

My experience had always been in public relations, rather than product marketing. My boss' experience had always been opposite. We seized opportunity to combine our knowledge, skills and research.

Our tiny two-person team matched PR wits squarely against four established pros - including one former White House aide. Guess what? Our ideas prevailed, and company decided to ditch notion of hiring a big PR firm in favor of keeping in-house team.

Before long we were generating some memorable press for our company. Over a two-year period we placed stories on our company in more than 100 media outlets - from MSNBC and Forbes to Wall Street Journal and Wired News online. We did it by studying what big PR agencies did well, and also by using our department's "smallness" to our advantage. Here's how you can do it, too.

Research your company.