Looking for a job as a Congressional staffer?

So was Brad Hamlett, but instead of trolling campaign sites and 535 federal websites, he created workforcongress.com – one of the fastest-growing employment boards on the web.

The site compiles job openings from public sources, government websites and direct submissions to allow potential employees to apply for jobs after they pay a $5 monthly subscription.

“The main goal is to save people time searching for jobs so they can spend more time applying,” Hamlett, a student in the Graduate School of Political Management, said.

The bipartisan site has approximately 2,000 job listings, from a fall internship in the office of Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., to a communications intern for the Delaware Democratic Party.

Hamlett said he was inspired to create the site in 2008 when his own search for a Congressional job led him to various listservs and private mailing lists. At first, the site had about 3,500 unique users per month, and now, more than three years later, workforcongress.com has about between 15,000 and 20,000 hits per month.

Hamlett, a veteran of the Iraq War, is currently working as a space operations officer in the Army reserves, a job that helped with the technology aspects of running a website.

“A lot of people, when they think of the Army, they think of a guy rolling around in the mud with a rifle,” Hamlett said. “A certain percentage of the Army does that, but a lot of other parts deal with literally the most advanced technology on the planet.”

His time in Iraq also strengthened his work ethic and his connection to people around him, he said. Hamlett said the experience motivated him to care more for other people on a daily basis.

He has also begun work on two new web sites, republicanjobs.org and democraticjobs.org, which he hopes will provide a more partisan approach to the political job search.

“I think politics is getting a lot more partisan, so if I have two partisan job sites along with the non-partisan site, I can adapt to that sort of market shift,” Hamlett said.

Hamlett said he is proud to have created such a successful product, and he hopes his sites continue to serve as a helpful resource for future job hunters.

“It’s been a really rewarding feeling,” Hamlett said. “When you put a lot of work into something, it’s great to see that people like it and appreciate it.”