Hiring the right staff will be more complicated this cycle compared with the pre-COVID and pre-recession periods. For starters, there’s a shortage of qualified candidates. But even in this age of staffer scarcity, you can still find the right person.
Having worked extensively with firms and campaigns to help fill their staffing needs, I’ve developed a unique perspective on the industry’s hiring trends. Here is some essential advice for consultants looking to hire internal candidates or for managers looking to staff up a campaign in 2024.
The longer your search, the harder it is to find your best person.
The top talent in a market shortage is already seeking work elsewhere, getting interviews with potential employers, and is constantly solicited by your competitors. In the first week of February alone, we placed a creative director who started their job search just four days earlier. That applicant already had three offers.
Our client was able to act quickly, and we succeeded in placing their top choice. Some firms take so long to make a decision that our top talent finds work outside the client’s scope. Sometimes, it’s as simple as quickly hiring a person who meets 95 percent of your standards. In a talent shortage, my happiest clients were the ones who moved on the best person quickly, instead of overthinking it and (overly) prolonging the interview process.
The double-edged sword of pursuing absolute perfection.
Hiring overqualified candidates carries the risk of them being lured away by bigger offers later in the cycle, especially during a talent shortage. It might sound counterintuitive for a headhunter to say so, but I don’t sugarcoat the reality in times of hiring scarcity. That said, we have strategies to meet a client’s specific needs.
If you hire someone for a congressional campaign manager role who has worked a similar role previously, there’s a chance more prestigious statewide positions could tempt them. Conversely, under-qualified individuals, such as a former political director of a high-profile race, may put in double the effort, showcasing their exceptional competence and drive. At my company, our thorough vetting of references and deep understanding of our candidates’ reputations have led to some of our most successful placements.
We place candidates who are qualified and highly motivated to excel. There’s a reason clients return in those situations for more placements. In situations where you might consider hiring someone who appears under-qualified on paper, a recruiter’s reputation is at stake if we make the referral. Therefore, we’re committed to only recommending candidates we believe will meet our client’s needs. There’s more to an applicant than just their job titles.
When all else fails, search for competence.
This brings us to our next point: In a market shortage, sometimes having someone who is motivated and possesses a strong reputation is more important than having someone with the exact experience. Many grassroots organizations, for example, understand that it’s better to have someone you can train correctly than someone who has been trained incorrectly. Too often in the digital and communications space, political consultants don’t adhere to this philosophy. Moreover, in times when there’s not only a market shortage but also a market shift towards the digital space, this becomes a reality for a political cycle or two. There isn’t enough experienced talent (yet!) to fill many of these roles. In periods of talent scarcity, competence becomes crucial.
Investing in talent pays off.
In the midst of a talent shortage, the value of investment in salaries is clear. A negotiation gap of $5,000 to $10,000 in salary could determine whether you secure your top candidate or lose them to a competitor. A good recruiter or headhunting firm will know current market salary expectations and often help clients find solutions to make attracting and securing their preferred talent easier. Most times, a recruiter helps facilitate those awkward salary negotiations with both the client and the applicant.
Don’t wait until the last minute to hire.
They say the most important resource in politics is time. In the past, many firms could afford to wait until the fall to hire their talent. But even in January, a time when there used to be dozens of candidates available for positions such as graphic designers or senior account managers, many of our clients now find themselves able to choose from only a handful. We anticipate that this trend will worsen by the fall.
Don’t be passive in your search.
A job board is effective when you have ample time to hire and the talent is unemployed (employed talent doesn’t always want their resume floating out there somewhere like a job board). However, the reality is that many consulting firms resort to last-minute hiring when large, unexpected contracts come through or when they have exceeded their capacity. At that point, time becomes a precious resource that a firm doesn’t have.
Recruiters are a unique group who enjoy the interviewing process—a task for which most of our clients simply don’t have time. Additionally, they serve as a third-party validator for you, offering an external perspective on your firm to an applicant who may have multiple offers. When applicants have multiple job offers, it’s the role of a recruiter to act as that validator for your firm and to help obtain a more honest answer from an applicant on why they might be considering a competitor’s search over yours.
Recruiters and headhunters can also help build talent pools, ensuring that your firm has a curated list of talent ready to go when the need arises. Something we like to say around our office is: “You don’t build an army the day you need it.”
Dustin Tropp, founder of Republican Jobs, has successfully placed over 2,000 political operatives, ranging from organizers to chiefs-of-staff. He collaborates with a diverse array of consultants, campaigns, non-profits, and government agencies at state and local levels to source their talent.
