What skills are necessary for public policy jobs?
Anyone working in public policy must have excellent communication skills, both written and verbal. Because of the fast-pace of the policy scene (a committee may call a hearing on a topic and ask for testimony to be delivered in the matter of a few days), policy professionals must be able to quickly synthesize information and prepare written reports on demand (sometimes within hours). Congressional staffers sometimes have less than an hour to prepare talking points for their boss to use in a phone call with an important constituent (CEO of a logging company, for example); as a congressional staffer, the author of this webpage once had less than 20 minutes to prepare talking points for such a conversation.
