On Sunday, Mr. Trump chose as his chief of staff Reince Priebus, chairman of the Republican National Committee, who is a good friend of Mr. Pence and of Paul Ryan, the House speaker, and who has good relations with Congress. He is better than the other possible choice, Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News, Mr. Trump’s campaign chief and Pied Piper of alt-right conspiracy theorists. It’s ominous that Mr. Bannon will be chief strategist and senior counselor, in an arrangement billed as “equal partners,” with Mr. Priebus. And while the flashier jobs have been garnering Mr. Trump’s attention, who is thinking about labor or the F.C.C.? What about the critical assistant secretaries? Will Mr. Trump, a micromanager who practically bounces quarters on the beds in Trump hotels, become bogged down in résumé minutiae, or entrust hiring to others? Will he shuffle and reshuffle his team, as he has his campaign staff?

Reassuringly, some experts have been sighted. The Partnership for Public Service, an advocacy group for effective government that has analyzed generations of good and bad transitions, and its Center for Presidential Transition have been working with Mr. Trump’s team. The transition team has hired some experienced transition leaders from the George W. Bush and Romney teams that the center recommended. The center’s suggested hiring timelines even appears verbatim on Mr. Trump’s transition website, GreatAgain.gov. But Mr. Trump’s layering of its team with family, friends and hacks is worrying. The inclusion of lobbyists flies in the face of his “Drain the Swamp” refrain. The big donors on the team, like Rebekah Mercer, are also unnerving, a sign that the new government may be further in debt to superwealthy backers.

A successful transition needs professionals able to challenge the boss if necessary, and separate qualified from unqualified job-seekers. As Clay Johnson III, George W. Bush’s director of presidential personnel, put it at the time, “The president appoints, and I disappoint.”

Such a manager could guide Mr. Trump on his rumored cabinet choices, helping him decide, for example, on a secretary of state from candidates like Mr. Gingrich, the ethically challenged former House speaker, and Zalmay Khalilzad, George W. Bush’s former United Nations ambassador and a Muslim. And on whether to nominate as Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, the Trump campaign finance director and a former Goldman Sachs executive, or Thomas Barrack Jr., chief executive of Colony Capital, a private equity and real estate investor. Such a manager could help estimate the chances that the Senate would confirm Sarah “Drill, Baby, Drill” Palin to lead the Department of Interior, or Joe Arpaio, departing sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., anti-immigration hard-liner and lawsuit magnet, as homeland security secretary.