We're Building a Hiring Guide for Our Movement And Want Your Input
This is a community-powered effort to rethink hiring, staffing, and talent support across campaigns, firms, and organizations.
I think about hiring more than most, but I think it's something many people have to deal with.
Right now, I’m hiring across multiple fronts, trying to build teams, reviewing candidates, setting up systems (or realizing where we don’t have them), and running into all the same challenges I’ve seen across the field.
I also see more job postings in our space than even the most aggressive job seekers. Every day. Campaigns, firms, recruiters, nonprofits, PACs, party committees—you name it.
So I come to this from a few different perspectives:
As someone actively hiring
As someone watching the ecosystem in real time
And as someone who has been part of this work long enough to see the same patterns repeat
Despite my knowledge and experience, I’m still not getting it right, and I know most others aren’t either. That’s why we’re working on this project and hope you’ll help.
We hire fast.
We hire under pressure.
We hire for roles we don’t fully understand.
We rely on resumes that don’t actually tell us what we need to know. We default to networks that feel broad to us but are often anything but. We rush processes that should be more thoughtful, and then slow-walk things that should be faster.
And then we’re surprised when:
The hire doesn’t work out
The team feels off
People burn out
Or we’re back-filling the same role again weeks later
Over the past week, Joe Lestingi has written two pieces that really get at the structural side of this.
In one I co-authored, we discussed how the progressive movement doesn’t have a passion problem—it has an infrastructure problem. And one of the clearest places that shows up is talent: we’re struggling to hire and retain the mid-level people who actually turn strategy into execution.
In the other, Joe breaks down something we’ve all seen but don’t always name: the way we’ve patched together employment structures—like putting staff on state party payrolls—can create real risk, confusion, and lack of accountability for everyone involved.
Both pieces are really about the same thing:
We’ve been solving hiring and staffing problems in the moment rather than building systems that actually work.
And that’s where this becomes more than just a “we should do better” conversation.
That’s why GAIN Power and MPX are partnering in a real way.
This isn’t just about posting jobs or filling roles. It’s about building actual infrastructure around hiring, employment, and talent—so that:
Employers can hire better and faster
Workers have more stability and clarity
And we stop reinventing the wheel (badly) every cycle
But here’s the thing:
We’re not going to solve this just by writing about it.
We need to hear from the people actually doing the work.
So we’re building two new guides:
👉 A Hiring Guide for employers
👉 A Job Seeker Guide for applicants
And we want them to reflect reality—not theory.
That means we need input from:
Hiring managers
Campaign staff
Recruiters
Consultants and vendors
Freelancers and content creators
Job seekers
Because the truth is, some of the most useful insight comes from people who have been on the receiving end of broken systems.
And there are a lot of thoughts—and a lot of feelings—out there.
We’ve put together a form—but it’s not really a survey.
It’s an invitation.
To share:
What you’ve seen go wrong
What actually worked
What you wish people understood
What needs to change
We’re asking about:
Hiring practices
Evaluation and screening
Tools and systems (or lack of them)
Onboarding (or absence of onboarding)
But we’re also asking something just as important:
👉 What do you need when it comes to hiring or staffing right now?
👉 What’s making this harder than it should be?
👉 What would actually help?
And directly:
👉 What should GAIN Power and MPX be doing more of to support this work?
A quick note before you jump in, because it is long, and because we know your time is valuable:
You don’t need to answer everything.
If you have one strong insight, one frustration, one thing you wish people understood—that’s enough.
Short and specific is better than long and vague.
You can submit more than once if you have different ideas or perspectives.
You can be credited—we’d love to lift up your work—or you can stay anonymous. We are asking for contact info so we know who's submitting, but you’re in control of how (or if) you’re identified.
We’re aiming for an initial release at the end of May, so we're asking for your submission by April 25th.
But this will be a living document—updated over time, shaped by ongoing input, and used to build additional tools, resources, and support.
We’ll share some in other formats too.
I know that everyone who has ever hired someone has thoughts about this.
And I know that job seekers have a lot of feelings about this.
We want both.
👉 [Link to Hiring Guide Form]
👉 [Job Seeker Guide Form coming soon]
If we’re serious about:
Winning campaigns
Building strong organizations
Expanding who gets to do this work
Retaining good people
Then we have to get better at hiring.
Not just faster—but smarter, fairer, and more intentional.
I’m working on it myself.
And with this partnership, we’re trying to build something better.
Let’s figure it out together.