WhiteHouse.gov's Political Appointments: Finally Get Your Foot in the Door at the Abe Lincoln Commission
BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, February 12 2009
Still hoping for a plum job in the executive branch? Well, WhiteHouse.gov has just unveiled a revamped version of the job application tool that debuted on Change.gov. Only this time, it seems, there's a much better chance of actually matching supply with demand. Applicants are asked to indicate which departments and job functions they're most interested in and suited for. If memory and Google serves, that's much more detail about which jobs applicants are angling for than the Change.gov application process allowed. (Have a copy of the Change.gov application, or a good memory of it? Let me know. The Wayback Machine is providing no help.) From the White House blog:
We're happy to announce that the jobs application feature is now live on WhiteHouse.gov. The Jobs Application feature enables people everywhere to apply to be considered for a political appointment in President Obama's Administration. You can get to it by clicking on the "Jobs" link at the very bottom of each of the pages on WhiteHouse.gov.
Applicants have a shot at actually letting the Presidential Personnel Office know which jobs their best suited for, from State Department gigs to those coveted slots on the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. Speak Arabic, of either the Najdi or Sanaani varieties? There's a place to indicate that, along with detailed questions on your past government or non-profit service.
A White House spokesperson said that the Presidential Personnel Office is in the process of filling between 3,000 and 4,000 of the 7,000 jobs listed in the Plum Book, to be filled at the pleasure of the president. Those jobs are actually a sign of the power that Obama wields : the PPO was created in the late 20th century to wrest away from political parties the rather valuable things that are these political appointments.
Now, folks -- perhaps most notably, Ana Marie Cox -- criticized the come-one-come-all jobs' process on Change.gov as being wholly methodologically unsuited to the task of filling thousands of government jobs. Does that change with the more targeted application? I've got a question into the White House about whether letting applicants target specific positions routes around the PPO bottleneck to let agencies and departments deal with their own applicants.