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As a junior in college, I begged my parents to let me study and intern in DC for a semester, my first real exposure to “big city” life. As my class was on its way to meet Congressman Tim Ryan, who was something close to a hero of mine, I dropped my phone in a pool near the Capitol and jumped in after it, drenching my slacks up to my knees. While everyone else went on to the meeting, I spent the afternoon sprinting home to bury it in rice. I missed it entirely and was devastated. Years later I wrote him a letter, which a friend who worked for him dropped on his chair, telling him he had inspired me to pursue political work when he visited my community mosque when I was eleven.

The first time I went to the NSC as a young staffer at the Center for American Progress, I wore what I thought was a perfectly respectable blazer. One of my bosses looked at me in the building lobby with disappointment and said, “Where’s your suit?”

As we walked to the White House, my other boss told me to brace myself for the kabuki dance we were about to witness. I stared back blankly, unsure of what he was talking about. Rather than explain, he showed me, on Pennsylvania Avenue, hands waving, twirling a little, dancing off the sidewalk and out into the street between moving cars.

I once had a boss with one rule for managing his team: if you do the work, you’re in the room. I had heard a lot of nice-sounding but rarely-enforced principles by then and assumed this was another one. It wasn’t. He put me in rooms I had no business being in, every time, because I’d done the work. I would later realize how rare this was, and promised myself to take the same approach with my own staff.

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At Vital Voices, I staffed a fashion show benefit where a woman was staged to hold two enormous globes over her head for the length of a musical performance. The song went on, and on, and on, and the globes stayed up. By the end you could see her arms shaking under the weight of the whole world while the singer, fully committed, refused to rush a single note.

A coworker invited me to the Virginia Gold Cup one spring and we somehow ended up at a rooftop afterparty at the Newseum, where a stranger challenged me to a push-up contest. I accepted. Down on the rooftop floor in whatever I’d worn to a horse race, I cranked them out while a second stranger, whom I had also just met, knelt beside me and fed me Chick-fil-A nuggets between repetitions. I never learned either of their names.

There was a breakfast at the Four Seasons where I sat with a former boss and a former director of the CIA while the man who had once run America’s notorious spy agency talked at length, and with real conviction, about his approach to carb intake. A few tables away sat what appeared to be a delegation of Saudi princes, eating breakfast and eyeing us with interest.

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In grad school at SAIS, my favorite professor once looked at me after class and said, “I appreciated your comments, but why do you keep mumbling when you speak?” I don’t think I have ever mumbled again since that moment.

I had one year from my Presidential Management Fellowship appointment to land a federal job, and with a week left I had no offer and had accepted I wasn’t going to get one in time. In that final week, a senior foreign service officer at the State Department cold-called me, telling me she had my resume in a pile on her desk and that she was calling to convince me to come work for her. At 29, it felt like a scene from a television show where the President calls the main character directly and asks them to serve.

In my first DOD job, I tweeted that working at the Pentagon was fun and was immediately reprimanded and told to never tweet about work again. Can’t say I blame my boss.

I worked a state dinner at the State Department, and at the end of the event a 100-year-old Henry Kissinger slowly hobbled past me on his walker. He looked over, smiled, and nodded at me. I smiled and nodded back while my head started reeling. I remember thinking, very clearly, what is my life right now?

As my time in the Vice President’s office came to an end, I found myself seriously considering escaping the rigid, hierarchical world of national security for full-time political work. I had all but made up my mind until, while sitting on the motorcade for the first time ever as it raced through Miami, I received a call from the Presidential Personnel Office offering me my first political appointment. I was of course bursting with excitement, but part of me thought, dammit, you came so close to getting away.

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In my role at the Army, I’d spent weeks pushing and coordinating a major posture initiative in the Philippines. On the morning I was set to brief the Secretary of the Army on it, my dress ripped. There was no time to fix it or figure out an outfit change. I asked a colleague to clip and strap me back together as best she could, borrowed another colleague’s blazer to cover the damage, and briefed the Secretary on force posture in the Indo-Pacific with a binder clip painfully digging into my spine the whole time.

At my goodbye ceremony from the Army I gave a speech and told the young people in the room to fight the man. My boss took the floor after me and told everyone, warmly, that I would be the man soon enough, and would have to live with my own advice. He was right. I knew he was right while he was saying it. I still meant the speech, and still believe in fighting the man.

Not long after, I ended up in a leadership role at Commerce, which came with a team and an absurdly large office. For years I had silently made fun of the kind of person who decorates their government office, until suddenly I was that person, requesting new furniture for a room with my name on it, embarrassed the entire time and doing it anyway.

When I was working at the White House, I brought my mom in for a visit and a tour. I was feeling pretty pleased with myself until she took a look around and said, “That’s it? I thought it would be more impressive.” Later that day I introduced her to a number of the most senior White House officials, and in the middle of one of these meetings she turned to me and said, “Why are you calling these important people by their first names? Call them Mr. or Dr.” My boss found this very amusing, which earned him a solid month of being called Dr. Phil.

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I didn’t plan to write any of this down, but fifteen years is a long time. These little moments have helped me reflect on the passage of time and look forward to the next fifteen years.

This piece will cover the period beginning about 1.5 years before election day (so in the upcoming cycle, after the spring of 2027).

18 months before Election Day

About a year and a half before election day, presidential campaigns begin seriously standing up their organizational and staff apparatus. This happens slowly and differently on every campaign. Some bring on volunteers and staff early and aggressively while others remain skeletal for months. There’s no standard model for staffing timelines, headcount, or internal structure.

By now, hopefully you’ve already considered whether you want to join a campaign in some capacity. You certainly don’t have to, but campaigns are one of the primary funnels for getting into — and that’s why you’re here, right?

We talked in Part II about aligning yourself within the party. This is the point where that abstract advice becomes concrete. If there are multiple candidates and multiple campaigns you could plausibly work with, you’re going to need to pick a horse.

The choice of a candidate is rarely perfect. It’s an educated guess based on who you think has the best chance of becoming the party’s nominee, your political views, where you already have relationships, and what access is realistically available to you.

Your choice can impact your prospectives of being selected for an appointment but rest assured that picking the “wrong” campaign isn’t fatal for most appointees (it can be more complicated for senior-level advisors). In recent cycles, as candidates dropped out, staff and volunteers often migrated to other campaigns. By the time the eventual nominee’s operation is fully staffed, many people have usually come on board from other teams after their candidate exited the race.

The question people most often ask is how, exactly, do you get involved in a campaign? The most honest advice I can give is to be so open-minded to opportunities that your brain might fall out, and tell people you want to help however you can. The other useful piece advice I received when pursuing these opportunities is “just show up at their doorstep and keep showing up.”

Start by asking around about who is involved. Read Politico coverage, use LinkedIn, ask friends, and gather intel however you can. Once you identify the right people, express your interest and be persistent without harassing them.

Getting in on the ground floor is always valuable, but it’s never too late to join. Campaigns need help throughout the cycle, and people who join closer to the election can still make meaningful contributions and build important relationships.

Campaigns need help everywhere: field and organizing roles, political and operations roles, finance and fundraising, advance, and policy support roles (unfortunately, jobs in the last category are mostly unpaid). There are also adjacent organizations doing allied work including developing policy proposals, fundraising, knocking on doors, and conducting media engagements in support of candidates.

In 2019, I got connected with Kamala Harris’s policy team and supported their early research efforts. When she dropped out, I leveraged my connections to join Biden’s campaign, first doing domestic policy fact-checking, then through a former boss doing foreign policy work. Soon after, I somehow found myself standing outside the Target in Columbia Heights in twenty-degree February weather, collecting petitions to get Joe Biden on the DC primary ballot. Later on, I was a field organizer in Ohio.

The lesson is to say yes to everything, not just the impressive-sounding jobs and not just the things you think align with your long-term brand. Campaigns remember who was willing to do the unglamorous work.

Fundraising is another important path. Aside from formal fundraising roles within the campaign, there is infinite appetite for individuals to raise money for candidates through whatever (legal, ethical) means work. Campaigns need money and people who can help raise it. If you work in the private sector and/or have access to donor networks, this can materially help you gain goodwill with the campaign and transition team. This is simply another form of capital, and candidates who demonstrate fundraising ability often find themselves on priority lists when hiring begins.

The Transition Period

After political parties hold their conventions and a nominee is officially chosen, the formal transition apparatus on each side begins to stand up. This is when transition teams start building organizational structures, identifying agency review team members, and beginning preliminary assessments of government agencies and staffing needs.

Transitions operate in parallel with the campaign but are legally and structurally separate. There are formal firewalls between campaigns and transitions, and in practice, people have to choose between staying on a campaign and joining the transition. I don’t have strong feelings about which path is categorically better, though I suspect transition roles give you an edge. Being on an agency review team gives you early insight into staffing landscapes and upcoming roles, and being involved with the personnel effort gives you a unique form of capital. Many transition roles go to former political appointees, which can make them harder to access if you’ve never served before, but it’s worth trying to get on anyway.

During this pre-election phase, agency review teams begin preliminary work, and a centralized personnel function starts aggregating names from many sources including transition team members, outside recommendations, Congress, advocacy organizations, former appointees, informal networks, and online sign-up forms. This is when the spreadsheets and lists of candidates begin.

You’ll often hear that hiring will start later or that junior roles aren’t being considered yet. That’s generally true but not completely accurate. Some people I know who were involved in transitions began having conversations as early as the summer, asking prospective appointees what they wanted to do and who they hoped to work for. Do not be convinced by those who tell you to wait until November or later to even start thinking about jobs. The earlier you can start to have these conversations, the better.

After the election is won, everything speeds up. The transition spins up to full operating capacity and begins moving out on hiring, and the centralized personnel function continues building out candidate slates and begins reaching out to candidates for interviews.

The Personnel Process

During the transition period, the transition personnel team is your primary focal point. All efforts should be directed toward getting them to want you or prioritize you. It’s hard, if not impossible, to work other levers at this stage since you probably don’t know yet who is going to fill senior roles and may want to hire you. Transitions usually begin to announce senior-level hires over the coming weeks, and that’s when you can begin to reach out to them directly.

But hiring senior people and Schedule C’s often runs in parallel, and senior people don’t always get to hire their own people. The higher up, the more influence they have—for example, a cabinet official gets to pick a few special assistants. For a Deputy Assistant Secretary or even Assistant Secretary, forget about it. They can help recommend you to the transition team, but it’s mostly out of their hands.

By the time interviews begin, transition personnel teams already have lists upon lists of prospective candidates. In the last administration, the team referred to groups of candidates being considered for a specific role as “slates.” A slate might include one or two people, or twelve.

This is, hopefully, where your earlier work pays off. Some candidates are treated as priorities, formally or informally. That can be because they worked relentlessly on the campaign, because they’re seen as especially strong, or because they have powerful sponsors advocating for them. Priority candidates are often interviewed first and sometimes for multiple roles at once.

If you’re not a priority candidate, you may still be contacted because you caught someone’s attention. You might receive an email from the transition team asking to interview for a specific role, or you might not hear anything at all. The actual interview process varies wildly: some people hear back within days, some go through multiple rounds of interviews over weeks, and some are literally ghosted.

If you don’t get contacted during the transition period, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it, that’s not the end of the road. The next piece in this series will discuss the post-transition era and how to recalibrate and make another pass.

If you do get contacted, these interviews are serious, and you should prepare intensely. Many of us prepped together, running mock interviews and sharing questions as we heard through the grapevine what was being asked.

The interview process is treated as highly confidential. We were explicitly told not to tell anyone, and that doing so could jeopardize our chances. This confidentiality serves real purposes, such as protecting the administration from risk, including the possibility that the press learns it was considering someone who later fails vetting.

That said, “don’t tell anyone” doesn’t mean don’t tell a single soul.

I interviewed within days of the election and made the mistake of telling absolutely no one. I later learned that the person who ultimately got the job had leveraged support from members of Congress, donors, and professional contacts.

The lesson isn’t to broadcast your interview; it’s to be thoughtful. You should carefully choose a small number of trusted people—ideally individuals with real standing in the community or ties to the campaign or transition—and let them advocate for you.

If you move forward in the process, you’ll undergo a vetting process. This includes questions about your professional and personal history, reviews of your public and social media presence, financial disclosures, and legal reviews. Vetting happens near the end of the process and you won’t receive an offer unless you pass.

Three Critical Imperatives

Network Like Your Life Depends on It

During this period, especially election years, you should be networking constantly. Go to all the events, all the fundraisers, and all the informal gatherings. Organize an aggressive drumbeat of coffees with people within your political party’s apparatus. Talk to people until you’re so tired of human contact that you want to hide in your home for a month, then talk to some more people.

Never Put Your Eggs in One Basket

The single biggest mistake I see people make is hitching their wagon to one senior individual and assuming that person will bring them in. I saw many people do this with extremely influential figures who ultimately didn’t hire them, either because they chose someone else, they got distracted, or they didn’t have the sway everyone assumed they did.

Your goal is a distributed approach with multiple sponsors, multiple pathways, and multiple people with access to the transition team who can advocate for you. This isn’t about hedging your bets or being disloyal. It’s about recognizing that the process is chaotic, unpredictable, and no single person controls outcomes.

Build relationships broadly, let multiple people know what you’re interested in, accept that some sponsors will be more effective than others—and you often won’t know in advance who those will be.

Keep Other Paths Open

Even if your goal is a political appointment, it shouldn’t be your only plan. During this period, you should be thinking about other ways into government including contracting roles, career civil service, the foreign service, fellowships, internships, and IPAs. Your ultimate goal is to get in, and you may prefer a political appointment, but that isn’t the end all be all. I actually managed to find my way in via a contractor role and fellowship first before becoming a political appointee later.

The feeder dynamics from Part II still apply. Capitol Hill remains one of the strongest levers but advocacy organizations, fundraising entities, and party-adjacent institutions also matter.

Next Up

Once the president is sworn in, responsibility for political hiring shifts from the transition team to the White House Presidential Personnel Office. That marks the beginning of a new phase, with different rhythms, incentives, and gatekeepers.

The next chapter in this series will focus on the post-transition era and cover how hiring works once the administration is fully in place, how people enter the pipeline late, and why many Schedule C appointments happen well after inauguration.

In Part I, I talked about what Schedule C roles are and how they’re generally filled. If you’re new to this topic and haven’t read it, I recommend starting there.

I received a lot of thoughtful feedback on that piece, and there’s one thing I want to address upfront. Written out like this, the process of positioning yourself for a political appointment can sound concrete and calculated. That’s misleading.

What I’m doing here is reconstructing the logic in hindsight so the system is easier to see from the outside. This advice reflects real choices and bets I made as I tried to get into the political appointee pipeline, but I didn’t experience them as a tidy, step by step plan at the time. The postgame is always clearer than the game itself.

With that out of the way, this piece is about positioning yourself a few years out from an administration and building the capital necessary to secure a political appointment down the road.

Alignment Without Overcommitment

There are camps within any political party. A democratic socialist will draw from a different set of networks and sponsors than a centrist Democrat. Early in your career, especially in your twenties and early thirties, a degree of flexibility is normal and useful. You’re still solidifying your values, and no one will hold you forever to every view you expressed at 25.

You don’t need to lock yourself into a single lane too early, but you should have a sense of where you fall on the spectrum and be able to signal that when appropriate. This becomes particularly relevant during primaries, when you may have opportunities to join specific campaigns or align more visibly with certain factions.

A few years before a presidential election, start paying closer attention to potential presidential candidates. Take note of where they stand, the coalitions they might build, and how their past positions align with your worldview. Around 2018, I began doing this systematically and developed my own preferences among the potential candidates.

The goal here isn’t to contort yourself to fit a future administration, but to begin aligning lightly before election season fully gears up.

The Basics of Networking (and Capital)

As discussed in Part I, this system runs on capital. At this stage, you should focus on banking as much of it as you can.

The first 2-3 years after an administration change is one of the best possible periods to build relationships and position yourself.

You should, of course, network widely with people who are influential and well-connected. A good place to start is former appointees, because there is a higher probability they will return to government than anyone who has not yet served. You may even want to keep a spreadsheet of people you meet and their contact information as a way to track your network and remind yourself who to stay in touch with. I did.

I cannot emphasize this enough, but you should also invest in relationships with peers and even people who are younger/more junior than you. They can be just as important in your path to an appointment as more senior figures.

Just as importantly, give capital to others. Some people operate as if capital is something to be hoarded or spent sparingly. I’ve come to believe the opposite. In my experience, giving capital freely tends to generate more of it over time.

Showing up for people, making introductions, advocating for someone when it costs you a little, and doing unglamorous favors without keeping score all adds capital to your bank. People remember who helped them when it mattered. And in a system as small and recursive as Washington, generosity often comes back in ways you can’t predict, sometimes from people you didn’t expect to be in a position to help you later.

Finally, networking is most effective when it’s genuine. Resist the instinct to treat every interaction as transactional, and don’t use every encounter to ask for favors.

Identifying Sponsors

As discussed in Part I, Schedule C hiring is fundamentally a sponsorship-based system. Someone has to believe you add value and be willing to put your name forward.

To have a realistic shot, you need people who know your work well enough to advocate for you when tradeoffs are involved. Coffee meetings help build a network, but over time the most important relationships are the ones where someone has seen you deliver under pressure, exercise good judgment, or navigate difficult interpersonal situations. Those experiences are what turn relationships into sponsorship.

People also talk about “hitching yourself to someone’s wagon.” In layman’s terms, this is identifying someone who’s likely to rise through the ranks and riding their coattails. I saw people hitch to many wagons. Some hitched to extremely influential ones and rose quickly, sometimes landing as special assistants to cabinet or deputy cabinet secretaries on day one. I also saw many young people rely too heavily on a single person, only for that bet not to pay off.

I took a more dispersed approach. I worked to cultivate several sponsors rather than intentionally hitching myself to one person, though in hindsight I probably did hitch to specific individuals more than I set out to. Sometimes it happens organically because you genuinely like and work well with someone.

Your approach to building sponsors matters so much because even strong advocates face limits. A senior official may have limited influence over hiring decisions, or may not choose to take you with them into government. This is why having more than one person willing to vouch for you matters.

At a minimum, aim for three to five strong advocates, plus as many medium-level sponsors as you can manage. Diversify them across institutions and policy domains: Pentagon types, State Department diplomats, political operatives. The broader your network of sponsors, the better your odds.

Administration “Feeders”

Alongside relationships, it matters where you spend your time. Certain environments consistently feed personnel into administrations because they produce people who are already familiar with the political and policy ecosystem and aligned with a party network.

Capitol Hill is one of the most reliable feeders. Hill staffers are known quantities to staffing teams and are often assumed to understand how to operate in politically sensitive environments.

Campaigns are another major source. If your circumstances allow it, working on a midterm, gubernatorial, or presidential campaign builds strong networks and establishes credibility within a political party quickly. Even internships and volunteer activities help.

Choose these opportunities strategically based on your professional interests. For example, it made sense for me to work for national security–focused Democrats because my goal was to join a national security agency. If your focus is domestic environmental policy, look for candidates and members of Congress who are well regarded and well networked in that space.

Think tanks, advocacy organizations, and consulting roles can also function as feeders, particularly those closely tied to a party ecosystem. The key is not prestige. The most important factor is to gain proximity to people who are likely to enter government and develop opportunities for them to see how you operate.

Personal Branding

You should spend some time thinking about how people categorize you and cultivating a professional brand. When hiring decisions happen quickly, people rely on shorthand. An archetype comes to mind: campaign operator, speechwriter, policy wonk, chief of staff type, budget nerd.

My view is that for prospective junior and mid-level appointees, the most effective approach is often to have an archetype that comes to mind without boxing yourself into a single function. With only about 1,500 Schedule C roles in an administration, being able to fit into more than one lane can be an advantage.

This doesn’t mean avoiding specialization. If you have a strong passion or aptitude for a particular role, lean into it. But at this level, a recognizable professional identity paired with some flexibility often expands the range of roles you can realistically be considered for.

Managing Reputational Risk

Political appointments are sensitive to risk. This becomes more pronounced as you move into more senior roles, but it applies at every level. Part of positioning yourself well is being thoughtful about how you show up publicly.

This doesn’t require silence or blandness, but it does require judgment. Assume that what you say publicly may be read later, sometimes out of context, sometimes by people deciding whether to bring you into a politically exposed role. Aim to be more intentional about which debates you engage in and how you engage in them. This includes social media, written products, and group chats.

Showing Face

Outside of active hiring windows, the goal is not constant visibility. You want people, including your potential sponsors, to remember you without feeling overwhelmed by you.

One simple way to do this is an annual update. Once a year, a short note to a curated list of contacts with a few bullets on what you worked on, professional updates, or publications is usually enough. It keeps relationships warm without making them transactional.

Another is to just show up at roundtables, happy hours, and other gatherings for your community. This all contributes to being viewed as a member of the team (which, as mentioned in Part I, is one form of capital in itself).

Part III

In the next part of this series, I’ll turn to election years and transitions. We’ll talk about how hiring actually unfolds once things start moving, and how you can navigate that period.

For the uninitiated, “in” means government – or more typically, serving in a presidential administration. In the months and years leading up to a potential transition, Washington’s policy and political class pre-position like the U.S. military for that possibility. The entire community begins to orient around a future that may or may not arrive.

I did eventually go in four years later, first as a civil servant and then as a political appointee. It was the most rewarding professional experience of my life. It was also extraordinarily difficult to get there, even with strong credentials, supportive mentors, and more luck than most. I watched many people who were just as capable never make it through the door, and that stayed with me.

I promised myself that if I ever truly understood how Schedule C hiring worked, I would try to make it less opaque for others. I will not pretend the system is fair or straightforward, but my goal is to lower the barrier to entry by explaining how the system actually functions.

This series is written with young professionals in mind, particularly those hoping to enter government with the change in administration in 2029. It is broadly applicable regardless of political party, though different administrations have different processes and approach hiring in unique ways. The underlying structure of Schedule C roles, however, remains consistent.

I don’t claim to know everything about how Schedule C appointments work, but below are my observations.

What is a Schedule C appointment?

Formally, Schedule C positions are political appointments within the federal government for positions that are deemed policy-determining or confidential in nature. In practical terms, they are often roles like special assistant, senior advisor, chief of staff, or desk officer. If someone holds one of those titles and is in their twenties or thirties, there is a good chance they are a Schedule C. There are roughly 1,500 such roles in a typical administration. To get a sense of their distribution, it is worth looking at the Plum Book, which captures the majority of political appointments, and scanning agency listings for positions designated as “SC” under the “type of appointment” column. (If you have a friend who was a political appointee, you can also ctrl + f to search for them by name).

Unlike civil servant roles, which are (ahem) supposed to come with serious, legally mandated protections, Schedule C’s serve at the pleasure of the president and administration. They rotate in for however long they are wanted or needed, and are expected almost without exception to leave when there is a change in administration.

The most important thing to understand is that Schedule C hiring is not based on merit in the traditional sense. There is no real rubric, no quiz, and virtually no logic to how or why someone is chosen. That does not mean administrations are indifferent to talent. Many Schedule C appointees are exceptionally capable, but capability alone rarely opens the door. What opens the door is political capital.

Political Capital: The Coin of the Realm

People get Schedule C appointments for one core reason: they hold some form of capital that an administration values.

That capital can take many different forms.

1. They worked on a campaign to elect the president, a governor, or a senator, either as staff or in a serious volunteer capacity.

2. They have strong networks and connections with influential people and organizations. They are well known within political or policy circles, and people can place them easily as a member of the community.

3. Sponsorship is another form that derives from your network. Sponsors may be senior appointees, members of Congress, or influential organizations, including identity- or affinity-based groups.

4. Finally, there is general goodwill. Being seen as aligned, reliable, and part of the broader team often matters more than any specific credential.

In an ideal world, you will have all four forms of capital. That is not strictly necessary, but it can go a long way in maximizing your chances of making the cut in a highly competitive process. If an administration is evaluating two individuals and one is generally well connected but another has an influential senior sponsor AND did full-time campaign work, in many cases the latter is more likely to get the role.

Skills do matter, but usually in a supporting role. At the Schedule C level, particularly for junior and mid-level positions, functional competence tends to outweigh subject matter expertise. Writing clearly and quickly, exercising good judgment, managing logistics, and understanding how Washington works are often more valuable than deep specialization. A niche expertise can help you land in a specific office, but it rarely substitutes for capital.

Unlike career civil service roles, which operate on a relatively structured ladder with standardized evaluation criteria, Schedule C hiring is inconsistent and highly contextual. You may be evaluated against no one, or against several candidates, or against an internal benchmark that changes from day to day. You might interview for one administration role or multiple at a time. The same person could be brought in at very different levels depending on the agency, the office, the moment, and the attitudes of the people involved. Titles on paper do not always reflect how roles function in practice.

There are, however, some common expectations. Schedule C appointees are generally politically aware, even if they have not worked directly in politics before. They are expected to exercise discretion and sound judgment. They are assumed to be aligned with the president’s party and priorities. They are also expected to tolerate long hours and ambiguity in ways that would be unreasonable in many non-political roles.

If you’re thinking this all sounds confusing and borderline ridiculous, that reaction is appropriate. Washington is a city of gates behind gates, and few processes are as difficult to see from the outside as Schedule C hiring. Understanding the system is the first step to being able to navigate it.

In the next part of this series, I will focus on how to build the kinds of capital that matter most, particularly in the years before an election, when the gates are lower and it’s critical to lay the foundation for a future appointment.