Second, there's the White House Liaison Office. Each department and agency has a White House Liaison Office (WHLO) that exists to deal with political appointees and to liaise with the Presidential Personnel Office (PPO). You can usually find out the name of the senior official in each WHLO; they're generally listed on department and agency websites (depending on the agency, their staff may also be listed).
The White House Liaison is the go-between: Agency officials tell WHLO who they want to hire, or what kind of candidates they'd like to see for an open position, and WHLO communicates this to the Presidential Personnel Office. It goes the other way, too: PPO tells WHLO that it's trying to place certain people in agency jobs, and WHLO communicates PPO's preferences to agency officials. WHLO also helps handle the logistics of appointments once top candidates have been identified, shepherding them through the often lengthy and complex process (which can include everything from the need to get a high-level security clearance, to the need to beg for or reclassify SES and Schedule C slots, to, in the case of very senior appointees, getting confirmed).
Finally, there's the Presidential Personnel Office, also known as "White House Personnel." To outsiders, PPO's structure is opaque, but former PPO staffers tell me the office is organized into five substantive "clusters": there's a domestic issues and agencies cluster, for instance, as well as an economic affairs cluster, an energy and environment cluster, a national security agencies cluster, and a cluster for independent boards and commissions. Each cluster is headed by someone with the rank of special assistant to the president, and that person is assisted by one or more directors and one or more staff assistants.
Who are these people, you ask? My sources said they'd have to kill me if I told you, but you can ask around as you network. Alternatively, if you're a good Googler you can probably track down some names. Look through the (publicly available) salary list for White House personnel, see if you can find people with "presidential personnel" in their titles, then get Googling. Who knows? Some of these folks may have Facebook or LinkedIn profiles; you may even discover that you already have a connection to them.
In addition to the five substantive clusters, PPO has an internal "priority placement" staff. This, at least, is what it used to be called; I'm told it has some opaque new name along the lines of "outreach and engagement." Regardless of the label, this internal office consists of staff charged specifically with taking care of those who "need taking care of." That is: campaign staff, candidates with Hill backing, current or former appointees looking to shift to new positions, people backed by advocacy groups, and so on. Each week, the PPO directors in charge of these "priority" applicants meet with the cluster staff and "pitch" their candidates, trying to match priority candidates with open jobs.
The balance of power between agencies and PPO varies from administration to administration, and can vary within administrations, as well. In the Obama administration, c. 2013, PPO has a lot of power, and even extremely senior officials can find themselves forced to accept candidates selected by the White House for "political" reasons. "As far as I can figure out the only way to get an appointment now (and for the past 2 years or so) is if the very small and very insular National Security Staff team views one as an insider/dependent and NOT from any other networks to whom the appointee might be loyal, responsive, or credible," one former official told me in an email.
A former State Department official agreed: "There is very little appetite for new blood" within the White House right now, "very little -- they are much more interested in career folks who know how to take orders -- at least on the foreign policy side. And the White House wants its own folks embedded [at State]." For job hunters, that means that "while it's always good to have someone [in an agency] who wants you on their staff, good White House connections are key."
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