Archive for May, 2024

Tips for Working with a Recruiter from a Republican Jobs Perspective (Part 2)

Read Part 1 here.

• Help Us Help You – Don’t Make It Harder for a Recruiter to Refer You

Many times, I’ve seen someone fail to find success because it took them a week to get back to us, and the role was filled by then. If a recruiter has to hunt you down, they’re likely to move on. The same way you shouldn’t ‘put all your eggs in one basket’ in a job search, recruiters can’t put ‘all their eggs’ on one applicant. If someone doesn’t respond quickly to a recruiter, might they also ghost an employer or be slow to respond? A recruiter refers applicants based on the recruiter’s reputation, and someone who might embarrass them or annoy a client won’t be referred. 

A recruiter helps refer you, an applicant, to a role based on our reputation. Don’t embarrass us. If an applicant is acting unprofessional, we generally have to remove them from consideration, the same way an employer would if they were handling the first part of the search directly. 

Make sure to provide us with updated resumes, salary requirements, and timely answers to any questions we may need from you. Sometimes we need additional information clarified on behalf of a client—don’t make us wait, as other talent will respond more quickly. In political recruitment, sometimes someone less qualified will get the role simply because they can start faster. Time is the most valuable resource in this industry. Be responsive, if you can’t get to something sent in immediately, at least acknowledge receipt and give a timeline so the recruiter can help stall a search until they can get your information updated. 

Also, ensure your resume is ATS (Applicant Tracking System) compliant. Learn more here. I can’t tell you how many applicants I’ve had to give up on because they gave negative responses when offered advice on what was needed on their resume. “I don’t understand why this resume doesn’t work.” If you’re making it harder for a recruiter to help you, or if they have to spend too much time overexplaining with an applicant about what’s wrong with their resume, there are likely other red flags, and they’re going to move on. Generally, we see this issue more with overqualified talent.

tt (should) go without saying, no recruiter is under any obligation to work with aggressive or unprofessional talent, and they will not do so. How an applicant acts with a recruiter, is a sign of how they will act with their clients. Luckily at Republican Jobs, most of our applicants are awesome and excited, but as they say, ‘there’s always one’.

• What Do I Do If a Recruiter Does (or Doesn’t) Find Me Work?

If a recruiter finds you a successful placement, make sure to thank them and pay it forward! Recruiters build their businesses on referrals, so if you appreciate working with a recruiter, be sure to tell other great talent and companies about them! Republican Jobs is fortunate to receive daily referrals from references, and we always appreciate it!

What if you don’t get work? First and foremost, don’t burn bridges—especially in politics. Having personally interviewed tens of thousands and placed thousands throughout my recruitment career in politics, I can tell you that talent comes back around. One of my favorite success stories involves one of my first placements: a guy who was a touring drummer. I got him onto a campaign, and he did amazing work. Six years later, after founding Republican Jobs, I was able to place him as a VP of Digital at a national Republican consulting firm. On the same day I write this, a canvasser I interviewed five years ago, whom I initially didn’t place, has just been secured in a top statewide campaign position in his home state through Republican Jobs. 

Remember, don’t take it personally. We want to help everyone we can, but we don’t create the jobs (although we do help open opportunities through networking!). However, no one is in a position to guarantee employment. We’ve interviewed 13,000 live applicants and have only had the pleasure of placing 2,300. While that may not sound like a lot, most recruiters rarely break 5%. 

• When a Recruiter May Not Be Able to Help You

Remember, we can only help with the jobs we currently have at the current moment. Sometimes, it’s a matter of timing. I can’t tell you how many people I wish I could have placed, but they found work a week before the perfect role opened—sometimes even on the same day a job became available!

Our talent is excited for openings,, but an opening isn’t always available when at the time of application or an applicant’s unemployment window. Jobs are often about timing.

We recommend applying to Republican Jobs even if you don’t see an opening, because we’ll be able to alert you quickly and refer you the same day when there is a job opening that is a good fit. If you’re waiting for the perfect fit, you’re not only missing out on private searches that we can’t advertise, but you might also miss them given how quickly they open and close. We can’t alert you if we don’t know who you are! 

The other reality is sometimes we or the client simply have someone more qualified. We have to give every qualified applicant the best objective referral we can, but understand that there are other talent in the pool we are also working with, and our clients are also receiving referrals from other sources (although they prioritize our referrals, obviously!).

Also, if you have unrealistic salary expectations or aren’t open to constructive criticism, we won’t be able to help. If you have one year of experience and are demanding $150,000 for a senior hill position (yes, we see this weekly), you may be unemployed for quite a while. While we appreciate the ambition, it’s best to leave the ego at home.

And one thing to remember… the best resume won’t get placed with an unprofessional attitude. 

• Working With a Recruiter on the Process for Best Success

Our best talent ensures they provide us with updated resumes, keeps us informed about how their interviews went, and communicate with our team respectfully. If it’s been a week and you haven’t received an update, that’s a good time to reach out. If you’re blowing us up daily, it’s often seen as aggressive. We wouldn’t want you doing the same to our clients. 

The best applicants I’m working with point out a role they saw on the website, and they’ll send me three to four reasons why they’re a good fit. They’ve clearly read the description and know how and why they’re qualified. This makes our ability to refer them easier on the off chance we do miss a good match. Good applicants know how to provide us with brief, but direct details about their work experience. 

And of course, never under any circumstance, circumvent a recruiter. We’re your partner in the job process, and it’s a two-way street.

Tips for Working with a Recruiter from a Republican Jobs Perspective (Part 1)

Every week at Republican Jobs, we work around the clock to help the best political talent find work as quickly as possible. We regularly collaborate with fast-moving talent and rapidly changing job markets, manage our clients’ evolving hiring needs, and spend every waking moment on the phone or responding to emails. While we love what we do, it often feels like we’re in the middle of the NY Stock Exchange most days.

While 95% of our interactions are positive, and we strive to help as many people as possible (with almost 2,300 placements and counting!), we, like any recruiter, can never place 100% of our talent. This sometimes leads to a few angrily worded emails from disappointed candidates. Consider a sports team holding tryouts where 100 athletes compete for one spot. Is the coach slighting the other 99 when only one makes the team? Of course not! 

• Understanding the Role of a Recruiter/Headhunter

While Republican Jobs is a private, mission-focused business dedicated to ensuring that Conservative and Republican organizations secure the best possible talent, it’s important to recognize that we are not the hiring managers; we do not directly hire or contract talent. Our role is to assist our clients—the hiring or contracting entities—in finding their ideal candidates. Many firms engage a recruiter or headhunter to lead their job search, which can expedite the process, ensure privacy, and provide access to talent who are discreetly seeking new opportunities without wanting their resumes circulated on job boards. They also trust our judgment and rely on our expertise to save time during interviews, thus saving precious time they rarely have. 

At the end of the day, Republican Jobs can advocate for talent, but we are ultimately bound by the requirements our clients set. Sometimes, a good fit involves more than just meeting job qualifications; it also includes meshing well with the company culture. Recruiters often experience the disappointment of being excited about a candidate only to find that the client is not interested. It breaks our hearts, but this is usually beyond our control. We can advocate, prepare an applicant, and swing a job search in an applicant’s favor, but we do not have the final say.

• Does a Recruiter Increase Your Odds of Placement?

At the end of the day, our clients have the final say on a job. But this raises an important question: ‘does a recruiter increase my odds of getting placed?’ If we’ve decided to make the referral, absolutely. Instead of being lost in a giant pool of resumes, you may only be in a pool of a dozen or less. It’s not a guaranteed home run, but compared to applying on a job board, your odds would be significantly lower. You’ve probably heard that many people who are placed come from a referral. It is said that 30-40% of hires are made through recommendations—and a headhunter is one of those recommendations!

Consider this: for every one applicant we decide to interview, there might be ten resumes that we received but didn’t have time to interview or felt they weren’t qualified enough. A recruiter’s time is limited and valuable. Time spent speaking to one person means potentially not placing someone else. If we’re spending time interviewing and trying to place you, we obviously believe you’re potentially placeable, unless we’re proven otherwise. 

• I’m Overqualified and a Recruiter Won’t Refer Me? Why? Doesn’t That Make Me Perfect for the Job?

We get this question a lot: “I don’t understand, I’m overqualified. Why wouldn’t they hire me?” Consider the costs involved for a company to hire someone, especially in politics. In politics, most revenue for private firms, or mission success for nonprofits and legislative organizations, occurs within a very narrow window of time. If someone leaves in the middle of an election or legislative cycle, they cannot be easily replaced and goals won’t be met. As President Reagan once said, ‘personnel is policy.’ If someone is overqualified, they are often considered a flight risk, whether it’s the case or not. Imagine you’re qualified for a senior-level salary but take an entry-level job. If a senior-level position that fits your skill set opens up later, wouldn’t you be likely to leave that entry-level role? Additionally, there are too many stories of overqualified talent not taking a job seriously, compared to someone who is ready to work hard for their next step up. With rising costs and increasing regulations on employers, making the wrong hire is costly.

• Why You’re Being ‘Ghosted’—Are You Actually Being ‘Ghosted’?

There are many reasons you might not have heard back from a recruiter. If we spent all our time speaking with talent or responding to emails every time they got excited about a role that wasn’t a match, we’d have no time to open new roles, manage clients, or close jobs. The worst offenders who don’t receive a response are the ones who send an email ‘do you have any openings?’. If you don’t take the time to read the website, I’m going to spend my time helping someone who did. 

Some applicants are known to ‘spam apply’, and they are a recruiter’s worst nightmare. While we hate to tell someone no, it is part of our job. Some applicants do not read job requirements or think they are merely suggestions (with recruiters, they rarely are; at the very least, you need to meet 90% of them!). If you’re applying for every job without reading the job requirements, you’re not going to hear back. I can write another blog post about all the red flags on that one. 

While we love helping people advance in their careers, and we pride ourselves on doing so at Republican Jobs, we need to place you in a job for which you’re qualified at the present moment. While you’ll be a campaign manager someday, if you just graduated from college, you probably need to start in an Organizer role.

Some applicants like to ask for daily updates as if afraid we’re not keeping tabs on their search, or because they’re very excited about the role and wanting a quick update. Recruiters, driven not only by the goodness of our hearts and belief in the mission, also earn referral fees from hiring firms. If nothing else, we have a financial incentive to reach out to you as soon as possible with an update. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be in business. Trust any recruiter, whose entire job is to successfully place people: if a client wants to interview you, we will not be shy of trying to get a hold of you as quickly as possible. We spend most of our day trying to move a referral forward into an interview. That’s the main part of our job – and we won’t ‘forget’ to do it. Firms that are hiring, tend to be understaffed, and sometimes will take an extra day or two, or even a week or two, to give an update which means a longer response than initially expected. You’re likely not being ‘ghosted’, but it is common for a search to take longer than we originally anticipated, even for a company that moves as fast as we do. 

• Is It the Recruiter’s Fault I Didn’t Find Work?

If a recruiter is taking the time to speak with you, it’s because we have an interest—which matters even more so given our finite resource of time.

Sometimes a job search does not work out, and it may take multiple referrals to find success. In politics, it’s not uncommon for us to make four to five referrals for an applicant to secure one to three interviews, and then hopefully one to two job offers. If you’re in a hard-to-hire location and you’re only looking for remote opportunities, it could take ten times as many referrals to find success, as you are competing against a lot of qualified talent as anyone in the US can apply which expands the talent pool significantly.

While we’re trying to find you work, you are free to apply on your own and do commit to your own job search. We don’t guarantee success, and sometimes there isn’t an opening that fits at the time you’re on the market. This leads us to our next point for Part 2 next week.

“Help Us Help You – Don’t Make It Harder for a Recruiter to Refer You”