Trump admin uses Kid Rock and football to recruit young people to government

After a year spent cutting the civil service, the Trump administration is now launching a talent network to recruit early-career employees to work for the federal government. 

“Public service is one of the best ways to build real skills while making a real impact,” wrote Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor in a Monday X post announcing the initiative, which he said his agency will lead in collaboration with the White House. 

According to the portal, participants in the Early Career Talent Network can be connected with agency recruiters, who will send alerts about job openings across government to the potential applicants. Likewise, a website for the initiative spotlights internships as well as open entry-level contracting, human resources and technology positions. 

Visitors to the website are greeted with a message that agencies need America’s “best and brightest” as part of a minute-long video that features several non-governmental subjects, including football players and country singer and Trump supporter Kid Rock. 

The Partnership for Public Service, an organization that assists agencies with recruitment, argued that the new talent network “runs headlong into problems of the current administration’s own making.” Specifically, the nonpartisan nonprofit referenced last year’s mass firing of newly hired and promoted federal employees, which impacted many early-career workers. 

“Smoother entry points into federal service are welcome, but they won’t be enough if the job also comes with heightened instability, attacks on civil servants and the recurring threat of unpaid work during government shutdowns,” the organization’s president and CEO, Max Steir, said in a statement to Government Executive. 

The Partnership previously reported, based on federal workforce data, that the percentage of federal employees younger than the age of 30 went from about 8.9% to 7.9% over the course of 2025. Additionally, Trump has weakened job protections for newly hired civil servants who are in their probationary periods. 

Despite this recent history, the early-career website lists “job security” as a benefit of a federal job. 

The Trump administration also recently established Tech Force to recruit early-career technologists for two-year stints at agencies. 

The White House's National Design Studio, led by former Department of Government Efficiency associate Joe Gebbia, created the early-career website for OPM, according to the agency. Gebbia's team is working to reshape the design standards behind websites across the federal government and use artificial intelligence to implement them at scale.

Natalie Alms contributed to this report