Recruiting the competent lobbyist: Career options and employer demands in Germany

Abstract

Germany likely employs Europe’s largest national lobby labor force. This article presents a comprehensive study of German lobbyists’ workplaces and employer expectations of competencies. It provides insights into emerging requirements for a qualified workforce in a diversified job market. Drawing on multiple sources of statistics, surveys and cases, the first section examines staffing and entry routes for the main employer types – associations, corporations and consultancies. The job market offers a broad range of career options. This includes an emerging set of junior training programs. German employers have devised fully paid apprenticeship models as structured practical learning schemes where rotating workplace assignments alternate with seminar learning. Some employers partner in training alliances. Traineeships are tailor-made and unregulated, but their existence points to a growing employer interest in formally developing a talent base and professionalism. The second section offers a job market snapshot based on 189 advertisements from 2012 to 2014. Job ads can be assumed to be an objective measure of employers’ articulated intentions and expectations for a quality pool of applicants. The survey tabulates preferences for experience, academic degrees, knowledge areas, personal, social and method competencies, and specific political expert skills. Results demonstrate a complex interplay of qualifications and requirements. Ads also show great variety and ambiguity, suggesting that lobbying lacks standardized job classifications and a stable common vocabulary. Findings show that organizational settings influence task and competency combinations expressed in job ads. While all employers appear to follow similar recruiting patterns in regard to some qualifications, they also differ. For example, associations and businesses place more emphasis on policy concepts, organizational participation, coordination, administration and direct representation than do consultancies, while the latter stress advisory roles and strategizing. Corporations get less involved in campaign advocacy. Associations focus on members. Consulting firms tend to recruit younger, less experienced staff, and to less often request domain knowledge. Highlighting commonalities and differences, this article may help stimulate discussion on explicating employers’ competency-based human capital management and recruiting practices. The results may help develop guidelines for apprenticeship schemes, continuing education, organized efforts of professional bodies and university curricula.