Political campaign managers are the backbone of any political campaign as they are responsible to look after the administrative aspects of your campaign. The importance of campaign managers urges politicians to look for highly skilled people to run their campaign. Here is how you can find a political campaign manager who will lead your way to the public office.
You can find a political campaign manager using social media platforms like LinkedIn, ads on political campaign websites, recruitment agencies, google search, attending political events, and asking your friends for recommendations from within their circles.
How To Find a Political Campaign Manager
Here are some ways to find a political campaign manager while you are running for the office.
1. Utilize Relational Organizing for Hiring the Skilled People
The first thing you need to do is to spread the word about your political campaign manager opening. Relational organizing is perhaps the best way to find a relevant person for any of your campaign openings.
In this method, you tell your circle that you need a campaign manager, and your friends and family will spread the word in their circle. Eventually, your word will be spread to the masses, that too without any cost.
2. Going to Political Events to Find Political Campaign Manager
Attending political events, conferences and fundraisers will also help you in finding the campaign manager of your choice.
As a matter of fact, you will find plenty of campaign managers at these events who will also be attending these events to get connected with campaigns like you, which are finding their services.
3. Advertise on Relevant Websites to Find Campaign Managers
There are a whole lot of websites which are used by potential campaign managers. You can have your ad posted on those websites to reach out to them.
But always remember that you see the detailed analytics of the website where you want to put your ad to get the most out of your advertising campaign. Some of the important analytics to see are:
- The age group of the audience of the website
- Demographic data of the website.
4. Look for Candidates Who Can be Reached Out Physically
When you are finding a political campaign manager online, it’s important to hire someone who can connect with you in person.
Working from home might not be very effective for political campaign managers, especially during the early stages of the political campaign when you need to devise a holistic strategy for your campaign.
So, always clear things upfront that you will need occasional meetings with the candidates who are recruited as your campaign manager.
5. Using LinkedIn to Find the Best Campaign Managers in Town
LinkedIn is another important resource to find a political campaign manager. There are two ways to use LinkedIn for this purpose.
Firstly, you can search “Political campaign manager” or “Political campaign director” in your LinkedIn search bar and apply the necessary location filters to fine-tune your search. Here you will find plenty of campaign managers who will be willing to work for your campaign. You can either add them to your connections or connect with them via an in-mail feature of LinkedIn.
The second method is to post a free job on LinkedIn. Posting a job on LinkedIn is really effective, and multiple people end up applying to those job posts. Write a detailed job description of the political campaign manager opening at your campaign and let the game begin.
6. Use Freelance Platforms to Meet the Best Management Talent
Using freelance platforms can also help you in finding the best political campaign manager. Fiverr and Upwork are two such platforms where you can find skilful campaign managers for your campaign.
7. Use Job Posting Websites to Find Political Campaign Managers
Job posting websites are also beneficial in finding highly skilful campaign managers. These websites allow you to collect the resumes of various campaign managers and shortlist them as per your needs. Some of these job websites include:
- Indeed
- Google Jobs
- Monster
- Zip Recruiter
- Glassdoor
- Jora
The easiest thing you can do is to make an account on all of these websites and have your political campaign manager job posted on all of them.
Always continue checking these websites from time to time for updates or have email notifications opened when someone applies for your jobs. Sometimes people forget after posting the jobs on these websites, and they end up wasting important resources.
8. Connect with the Local Wing of Your Political Campaign
If you belong to a political party, getting connected with your party headquarters can also be an effective way to find campaign volunteers.
Most political parties have a whole inventory of campaign managers, from which you can shortlist the candidate of your choice to run a successful political campaign.
9. Using Google to Reach Potential Campaign Managers
Sometimes a simple google search is enough for whatever you want to do. Search for the following queries to find a skilful campaign manager.
Political campaign manager + “your state name”
e.g. Political campaign manager in New York
Or…
Political campaign director in New York.
This way, you will get relevant results from the campaign managers in your state.
10. Using the Job Fairs in Your Community
Look for the job fairs in your community and have your stalls set up there. As these events get a lot of potential job seekers with exceptional skills, you may find a campaign manager at these events.
If you have your own campaign website, have a job opening section there, so that potential managers know that you are hiring. And when you do Search Engine Optimization for your campaign website, you automatically get traction as doing SEO can do wonders for your campaign.
Prerequisites of Finding a Political Campaign Manager
But when you are finding the campaign manager, never forget to take care of these things:
1. Determine your campaign’s needs
Before you start looking for a campaign manager, it’s important to determine your campaign’s needs. This includes your budget, the size and scope of your campaign, and the skills and experience you’re looking for in a manager.
2. Be Realistic on Budget
If you are open to spending a good amount of money on hiring the campaign manager, you will find plenty of good options easily. But if you are tight on the budget, you will need to make a tradeoff at some point.
On a midsize campaign, you should expect to pay $3,000 to $4,000 per month to a capable campaign manager.
3. Look for the Size of Your Political Campaign
You might have heard the famous saying, “Size doesn’t matter.” Well, that’s not true when you are finding a campaign manager for your political campaign. Size of the campaign does matter a lot for political campaign manager hirings.
For example, if you are running for a mayoral campaign, candidates who have already managed a presidential campaign might not show any interest in your campaign.
So always ensure that you are targeting the right type of people while hiring the political campaign manager.
Skills to Look for in a Political Campaign manager:
Now once you have gone through all the procedures to find a campaign manager and have a handful of resumes at your desk, it’s time to know what you should ask them in the interview.
Whichever method you follow to find a political campaign manager, what’s important is that you follow a proper procedure of hiring the candidate.
For this, look for the following traits in the candidate:
- Relevant experience of the candidate. As a campaign manager is an experienced post, never risk handing over your campaign to a newbie just for the sake of it. It can give your campaign and your political identity long-lasting damage. Try to find a professional who has managed a campaign as big as yours at least once. This way, you will be sure that you are handing over your campaign to the right person.
- Leadership quality so they can lead your campaign even in times when you are struggling to attract voters.
- Ability to communicate among various wings of the political campaign.
- Knowledge of the working of the political campaign and the tactics to win voters.
- Skills to keep things organized and to use the available resources in the best possible way.
- Time management ethics to keep things under the radar, especially near the elections.
- Confidence to own the decision they take about your campaign.
- A creative mindset to devise new strategies to attract voters.
- Be able to think rationally and make data-driven decisions.
- Must not be reluctant to new technologies as voter dynamics are changing with every passing day.
Final Words
Finding a political campaign manager can be a cumbersome task, but employing the right tactics can make your life easy. As the internet is changing the way political campaigns work, looking for the candidates online can be the best method as it eliminates all the physical barriers that may stop you in campaigning the best way.
Making a simple google search about the candidates will also help you in finding the best talent. It’s a sad reality that many people do lie in their resumes, so you should search for all the candidates online to see if you are hiring the right person.
During your research, look for their experiences which they have put in their online profiles, their connections and their campaigning methods which they have shared on their online profiles.
As recruiting campaign managers is different from recruiting political campaign volunteers, you must not skip any step to get best results.
