A political campaign is an organized effort by a group of people to elect candidates or pass referendums. Campaigns can be at the local, state, and national levels, or centered around a particular candidate for head of government, such as a president or prime minister.
The term hustings may be used to refer to the physical platform from which representative candidates stand when presenting their views or casting votes before a parliamentary or other election body, or to any event on the campaign trail featuring a candidate or a group of candidate representatives, such as debates or speeches. Today, hustings is more often used to describe the process by which a politician campaigns for office.
Regardless of the level of political office, the staffing structure for a campaign will have an assortment of roles with different responsibilities. Larger campaigns will have more paid staffers, while smaller campaigns may be primarily volunteer-based. A campaign manager or general consultant oversees the project and budget management, fundraising, volunteer organizing, and voter engagement programs for the entire campaign. A finance director or call time manager manages the scheduling and planning for all fundraising calls, and a deputy campaign manager or volunteer coordinator manages the organization of volunteers.
As a career option, working on a political campaign can be an excellent way to develop a broad set of skills in a fast-paced environment. But it is not for everyone, and your decision to take a job on a political campaign should be informed by an assessment of your own career goals (including the kind of role you want to pursue post-campaign), your specific policy positions or ideas that you wish to advance, and the kind of party affiliation with which you wish to affiliate.