Having a competitive salary is important but, I think, the main thing is to hire people the way that you actually hire people. When your employer is hiring for a new lawyer, you don’t get together all of the plumbers, IT geeks, housewives, HR reps, and etc. in or related to the company, to hold a popularity contest that’s almost purely based on what questions were asked to the candidates by gossips and entertainers that the candidate chose on his own to go talk to. That would not be a good system.
In general, you’re going to try and get other lawyers and skeptical sorts to get into a room with the candidate and put the screws to him, to verify his personality, experience, and field knowledge. You’re going to employ a 3rd party to perform a background check on him. As the output of that process, maybe he’s accepted.
Personally, I advocate a system of bottom-up placement. You issue duty summons to citizens, regularly. Many of those will go to jury duty. If they’re accepted for a jury then they’ll all spend time together in debate on a serious topic. They’ll get a sense for each other and who seems like a reasonable and reliable person. If they don’t get accepted for jury duty then you send them to perform some other community service - picking up litter, painting fences, or whatever. Make them sit together and ask questions that are meant to get to the bottom of whether that’s a smart person who tries to do diligent research and answer problems honestly.
These groups, after having served their time, elect someone to go serve on the government hiring panels.
The hiring panels will 1) review requests for positions by X local government, 2) decide the offering wage, 3) post ads and perform headhunting, 4) review resumes, 5) hold interviews, 6) hire background check companies, and 7) hire folk. They interview the candidates like they’re normal job applicants and decide who to hire. Maybe for the top level candidates like Governor or Secretary of State, they act more like a primary committee, headhunting and recommending a few options who will be elected by the general public at large.
In all cases, candidates apply for the jobs like they’re jobs. You send in a resume and either you get called in or you don’t. Or, alternately, you’ll get a call from the hiring panel asking if you’d be interested in switching careers.
Ultimately, there’s no politics to it. You just get professionals doing their job, hired by apolitical panels, based on proper, in-person vetting.