Looking For a Hill Job? You Need to Know These Facts About Offices You Might Want to Avoid

With the opening of the 118th Congress, hundreds of staff vacancies are being filled on the personal staffs of individual senators and representatives, as well as on the committee staffs of the Senate and House of Representatives.

If you are new to the Hill, you should know which offices have the highest staff turnover rates because they may be places you should think twice about if you are offered a position there.

Legistorm does a regular assessment of turnover rates and other factors that go into the index for rating the “Worst Bosses” on Capitol Hill. Be cautioned, however, that just because a particular senator or representatives gets low marks it doesn’t guarantee that you would be miserable if you worked for that person.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), for example, ranks number four on the Senate staff turnover list, but he also ranks in the top 10 among senators when ranked according to the average salaries of their staffs. Could it be that paying top salaries attracts top talents who in turn more frequently receive more attractive opportunities elsewhere? Maybe that’s exactly where you want to work if your primary goal is moving up the ladder.

But being among the “Worst Bosses” for whatever reason is definitely something you should give serious consideration to in evaluating job offers. Just for illustration purposes, check out this piece in The Intercept regarding the difficulties of working for Rep. Josh Gottheimer, the New Jersey Democrat, and this one from Politico on Rep. Victoria Spartz, the Indiana Republican.

And now for the envelope, please: