Why “professional development” matters

Having success in a public policy career depends on many different factors, some of which—like luck—are not fully under your control. But there are also plenty of things you can do to become more productive and improve your chances of excelling in the policy world.

One framework for thinking about the different building blocks of a policy career is the notion of policy-relevant “professional development”. Anything that helps you prepare for and excel in public policy work contributes to your professional development, including your (1) skills, (2) knowledge, (3) network, and (4) credentials. We briefly discuss each of these factors below.

Breaking professional development down in this way can be useful for a few reasons. First, it can help you zoom out beyond your current position to instead view your policy career as a long-term endeavor, one in which you’re constantly building up different kinds of useful attributes. With this perspective, you can systematically compare how different near-term opportunities might benefit your later options. You won’t always be able to immediately get a job that scores high on all the dimensions you care about, and thinking about what you want to set yourself up for in the future may help you prioritize between different options in the present. 

Second, this idea can help you make sense of other policy professionals’ career paths, which often involve numerous transitions between institutions, roles, and policy areas. Though all these changes might seem random at first, especially if you’re not yet very familiar with the policy world, you can over time learn to pick up on patterns in how people’s new roles tend to draw on their professional development from prior positions (such as specialized procedural knowledge, subject-matter expertise, or relationships). These patterns can help you decide how to approach similar transition opportunities down the road, and to ask more specific career questions of advisors.

Some of the key ways to invest in your professional development include your education (e.g. college and graduate school) and professional experience (e.g. internships, fellowships, and jobs). Your professional development in a given role is at least partly specific to your particular sector, organization, and position. So, if you want to develop professionally to work in public policy, the best opportunities to do so are typically policy-related, such as working in policy institutions like Congress, think tanks, and federal agencies—though it’s also possible to transition into policy using skills and other assets built up in sectors such as tech or business.

How much a professional decision (e.g. what to study, where to intern, what jobs to apply for) contributes to your development is an important consideration. To lay the foundations for a meaningful career, we recommend that early-career individuals carefully consider professional exploration and development when they look at job options. Those later in their career might reasonably shift their focus more towards other priorities, like the immediate impact of their work.

Components of professional development

Skills

The public policy world is vast, with different institutions and roles requiring highly varied skills—see our policy skills guide for more detailed advice, or the Aspen Tech Policy Hub’s Skills Wiki for a specific example tailored to technologists starting out in government. The skills and traits needed to excel as a think tank researcher are different from those of a legislative staffer in Congress, a manager in an executive agency, or an advocate working for a public interest group.

Still, there are certain skills and traits that are essential in various policy positions, regardless of the specific institution or role. This includes skills like project and people management, writing, and communication. Developing and demonstrating these qualities will help you get and perform well in policy jobs.

Also, don’t discount the importance of developing good workplace habits like conscientiousness, diligence, humility, and simple kindness. Though not “skills” per se, these traits are generally important in policy roles, which tend to involve a great degree of learning, teamwork, and coalition-building. 

Knowledge

There are different types of knowledge that may help prepare you for policy work, including (1) understanding DC culture, (2) institutional policy knowledge, and (3) domain-specific policy knowledge. 

You can build this knowledge in different ways, including through self-study of relevant resources; hands-on learning during internships, fellowships, or jobs; or completing a policy-oriented graduate degree—especially if you can take classes relevant to your policy issues of interest.

Understanding DC culture

The DC policy world has its own culture and language—in fact, in many ways it has multiple cultures and languages. It’s helpful if you can find opportunities to learn “policy speak”, including the many words, phrases, and acronyms common in DC (or a particular corner of DC) but uncommon elsewhere.¹ It also helps to understand the intellectual frameworks, reference points, and historical examples that provide shared context in the policy community.

Better understanding the culture of DC makes it easier for you to communicate with policy professionals and for them to take you seriously, particularly if you can show you “speak their language” fluently, jargon and all. 

Institutional policy knowledge

Knowledge about how government policy is made and implemented, is highly valued across the policy ecosystem. For example, this may include knowledge of: 

1. the US federal government: what are its different parts? How do they work and intersect? How are different agencies structured?
2. policy institutions: what are the most important executive agencies, think tanks, and Congressional offices/committees in your policy areas? What are their mandates and areas of competence? What are their histories and relationships?
3. policy processes: what are congressional appropriations? What needs to happen in the House and Senate to pass legislation? How do you get a security clearance? What are the main barriers to progress on important policy problems in your field? 
4. leverage points: which parts of the policy-making process seem most/least promising to intervene to improve policy outcomes? What kinds of research are (not) helpful to support particular decisions? How do think tanks or congressional staffers contribute to policy change?

Domain-specific policy knowledge

Simply put, gaining knowledge in particular subject-matter areas will improve your policy proposals and help you distinguish between good and bad ideas in your field of expertise. You’ll be able to contribute to policy discourse at a higher level, communicate with people from both technical and generalist backgrounds, and by better understanding your focus issue, you’ll be able to add momentum to projects that deliver better results. 

For example, it is important for AI policy practitioners to develop deep knowledge of their particular AI-related focus area (e.g. privacy and intellectual property rights), in addition to having some understanding of other AI policy-relevant issues (e.g. bias and fairness; safety and reliability; transparency and accountability; national security, etc.). Similarly, biosecurity policy might focus on developing domain-specific expertise in areas like medical countermeasures, nonpharmaceutical interventions, stockpiling of personal protective equipment, international governance mechanisms, or many other relevant topics.

Staff and senior principals in government often lack time to engage deeply with policy issues by reading reports and having extended discussions; this means it’s often very beneficial to build relevant expertise before entering government.

Network

As our networking in policy guide explains, having a strong professional network makes you more likely to get valuable advice, hear of relevant job openings, be successful when you apply, and succeed on the job (e.g. by collaborating with your professional contacts). While the process of “networking” can seem uncomfortable or daunting, making professional connections doesn’t have to be inauthentic, and it’s a trainable skill that you can improve with practice.

Credentials

Credentials are any kind of observable evidence for your training, competence or achievements—anything that serves as a good signal to future employers or collaborators (e.g. academic degrees, previous role titles, awards, or impressive work outputs).

Relative to other sectors such as tech, many DC policy organizations care quite a bit about formal credentials like degrees and experience working in established institutions. But different policy institutions also vary in their emphasis on credentials, as illustrated in this section describing whether you need a graduate degree to work in different types of policy roles. In general, think tanks and the executive branch tend to be more credentialist than Congress, but a lot depends on the specific organization and office.

Advanced credentials like graduate degrees are often necessary to get policy jobs. While credentials are a very imperfect proxy for the quality of your reasoning and expertise, and not everyone has equal ability to pursue such credentials (e.g. due to financial hardship), they nevertheless frequently matter for how seriously other policy professionals will take your ideas. However, before investing significant time and money in a credential (e.g. a graduate degree), we do recommend talking to a few advisors to see whether someone with your specific background will really need one for the roles that you are interested in.

Savings

If you’re able to do so, saving money can be important not only for personal financial security, but also for opening up professional opportunities—savings can be an enabling factor for building your skills, knowledge, professional connections, and credentials. For example, savings might give you more flexibility to engage in un(der)paid internships, pursue further education, attend professional events like conferences or workshops, and dedicate time to finding employment opportunities.

How do I advance my professional development?

There are several key ways to advance your policy-relevant professional development, including (but not limited to): 

1. Internships: Interning in a policy organization is a great early-career opportunity to gain professional experience, develop useful skills/knowledge, build a network, and gain a valuable credential. If you’re a student, consider participating in your school’s Semester in DC program (if one is offered) and applying for a remote, part-time internship with a government agency via the Virtual Student Federal Service (VSFS). As a student, you might also be able to build relevant experience through research or teaching assistantships (“RA” or “TA” positions) with professors working in relevant areas, which can be a great way to cultivate strong mentor-mentee relationships.
2. Fellowships: Policy fellowships are structured professional development programs, providing benefits like employment opportunities, networking events, and training for knowledge- and skill-development. There are dozens of US policy fellowships for people with different backgrounds and levels of experience; some programs aim to support recent graduates in exploring their fit for policy, while others target mid-career professionals from non-policy fields (e.g. STEM, business, or law) to help them pivot into public service.
3. Graduate school: Policy-relevant graduate degrees (e.g. master’s programs or law school) can equip students with valuable knowledge for careers in public service. They also provide training to let students develop important skills (e.g. writing, research, and time-management), including via dedicated professional skills classes. Enrolling in a graduate program also typically makes you eligible (or at least more competitive) for many policy internships, and fellowships such as the Presidential Management Fellowship. Networking is another key benefit of graduate education if you’re in a policy-oriented program, including the connections you make among your professors, classmates, and your school’s alumni. 
4. Jobs: Perhaps the best way to build your resume for policy work is to actually do policy work. Getting a foot in the door is the most important step for early-career individuals—and also often the hardest part. Given the large professional development boost that your first policy job will offer you, it’s often most important to just get started somehow—even if your first job at a policy institution isn’t perfect (e.g. not necessarily focused on your issues of interest). Keep in mind that the best jobs for learning typically involve you being pushed to improve and getting lots of feedback from mentors and colleagues.
5. Self-study: There is a lot you can learn through self-study that will help you prepare for or excel in a policy role. In particular, there are many great resources (e.g. books, newsletters, and online courses) to learn about different policy institutions, policymaking processes, and particular issue areas. 

Should I aim to specialize or become a generalist?

Professional development can range from the highly specialized, meaning it’s valuable only in a narrow set of roles and institutions, to the highly general, in which case it’s valuable in a broad range of positions.

For early-career individuals, we generally recommend focusing on investing in fairly general policy-relevant professional development and exploring different types of policy work, institutions, or issues. This can mean (1) prioritizing policy experiences that are broadly valuable for policy work even though they generally don’t allow you to specialize (e.g. congressional internships), and (2) pursuing diverse policy experiences for exploration (e.g. by interning in a federal agency and a think tank).

Specializing too early poses a real risk, particularly if you choose the wrong topic or career path for you due to a lack of context. This could lead you to neglect opportunities for exploration that could aid in making more informed decisions later, such as those regarding graduate school or full-time jobs.

But we have seen some people succeed in policy through specializing early, building particular knowledge in a niche policy area (e.g. how the government can help build better medical countermeasures in anticipation of disease outbreaks). We recommend this high-risk, high-reward path only for those who possess a strong aptitude for research, robust self-motivation, broad prior learning, and a sustained interest in focusing deeply on a specific topic for extended periods. For those people, it can be valuable to try to develop early specialized expertise that few other people in the policy world have. This can make them uniquely suited for roles where their particular expertise is needed, and it can allow them to make useful contributions soon after (or even during) their academic studies.

What to specialize in? Issues, levers, and institutions

To identify relevant topics to specialize in, it’s helpful to speak to field experts and ask what topics they see as particularly important and underexplored. It’s easy to waste time barking up the wrong tree, and conversations with experts are often the fastest and most reliable way to get feedback and guidance. If you’re interested in emerging technology policy in particular, you can look for potentially important novel topics and for underexplored intersections of important topics.

One helpful framework for deciding what to specialize in is to consider building specialized expertise in a particular 

1. policy area (e.g. AI) or sub-area (e.g. AI monitoring and evaluation, AI impacts on the labor market, AI and intellectual property), or 
2. policy lever (e.g. budgets and appropriations, regulatory policy, technical standards, taxes and subsidies, diplomacy, industrial policy, government procurement, export controls).

Policy levers can be applied to many different issues. For example, if you become an expert in export controls, that knowledge could allow you to contribute to policy discussions in a wide range of technology areas. There is a long history of export control development and use, many laws and regulations governing export controls, and various organizations involved in their implementation (e.g. different federal agencies and international bodies). Learning to understand all these factors well is a valuable form of policy expertise, which is broadly applicable—whether for limiting the spread of dangerous nuclear, chemical, or biological materials, advanced semiconductors and supercomputing equipment, or items used for cyberattacks and espionage.

You can also create a niche for yourself by combining a specific policy (sub-)area with a specific lever. The more specific your niche, the fewer people will be working on it, making it easier to reach the frontier of knowledge. For example, while the number of AI policy professionals is surging, there are relatively few experts in specific niches like AI and diplomacy, so you might be able to become a world expert in such a niche if you fully dedicated yourself to it for some time. Of course, there is a risk of pigeonholing yourself by specializing in an overly narrow topic, so you want to ensure that whatever niche you pick is actually relevant to solving the problems you care about.

To illustrate this approach, the following table highlights some possible niches relevant to emerging technology policy. Following the above, you could aim to specialize in a row, in a column, or even a single cell of the table. The more you specialize, the quicker you will reach the frontier on your specific issue; if you want to pivot, your knowledge and network would probably transfer most straightforwardly within the row or column of your prior specialization.

You can work on any of these niches in various different institutions, such as think tanks or (specific parts of) Congress and the executive branch. In addition to specializing in certain policy areas and levers, people develop “institutional expertise” over time, as they build a deep understanding of the (sometimes arcane) processes and structures in their institution. So, you can imagine adding a third dimension for institutions to the above table, with one column for each of the major institutions. A more fine-grained version of this would further sub-divide each of these institutional categories—the executive branch in particular is so enormous that the institutional expertise you build in one (specific office within a) federal agency (e.g. the State Department) will likely only partially transfer to another (e.g. the Department of Commerce).

Most policy careers involve several pivots—switching to a different policy area, lever, or institution—but it’s common (and often easiest) to make these pivots while maintaining at least some of these specializations (e.g. pivoting to a new lever or institution within the same policy area). Our guide on testing your fit for policy careers, gives the following example:

you might start your career working on drug development regulation in a think tank, then transition into a congressional staffer role where your portfolio includes healthcare, science, and technology policy, and from there, you might move into the National Science Foundation to work on science funding broadly.

Over time, many policy professionals develop several domains of expertise as they pivot between topics, roles, and institutions. You’re not generally locked into any particular niche, though we still advice you to choose carefully since there are often path dependencies. For more details on common policy career paths, see our full-time policy jobs guide.

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Networking in policy

Policy skills

Security clearances

Partisan affiliation

Policy career resources

Footnotes