a good hiring campaign ad could be : do you want to occupy a position which was once occupied by Albert Einstein ?
A good ad campaign may help, but I doubt it will win the day. It isn't like patent examination is an easy job. It is actually quite difficult and may be one of the mentally toughest domestic jobs in government. So if someone offers a software engineer 20K more to work for a private company, why wouldn't they do it?
I'm sure you know this, but Einstein worked for the swiss patent office. He did it because no one would give him a job in academia. This illustrates my point quite well, which is, the patent office is the choice of last resort for many applicants.
I think Einsteins problem with getting a job was that he didn't like the politics of academic institution. When he finally got a job in academia he said, "I've now joined the guild of whores."
Another interesting fact is that Einstein's art unit at the swiss patent office was in clocks. This was the time period of the railroads and there was a lot of development in synchronizing time between trains. Had Einstein not been working at the patent office, he may never have fully baked his understanding of relativity.
