Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Headhunter to Conservative Think Tanks

How do think tanks get top talent from a large pool of candidates?  At least for conservative think tanks, they have a secret weapon: the recruiting firm called Talent Market.  Here is more from The New York Times:
Over the last year, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a Milwaukee group that has financed decades of research into curbing the power of public sector unions, hired three new staff members: a fund-raiser, an administrative aide and a program officer.

It enlisted a recruiting outfit called Talent Market, which helps staff free-market advocacy groups, think tanks and foundations.
Unlike many long-established job placement services on the right and the left, which devote most of their efforts to posting ads or advising job-seekers, Talent Market is essentially a full-time recruiting operation.
...Talent Market says it has helped over 160 organizations find personnel since its founding in 2009, including prominent ones like the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Charles Koch Foundation.
Job-matching networks that serve a particular ideological niche have been around since at least the 1980s, when the Heritage Foundation created what became a widely trafficked database of jobs with conservative organizations and politicians.

Talent Market currently lists a number of think tanks openings, including at the Acton Institute, Mercatus Center, and a number of state-level think tanks.