Honestly, my biggest recommendation would be just getting a job in policy! You’ll get to see what “everyone knows”, where the gaps are, and you’ll have access to a lot more experts and information to help you upskill faster if you’re motivated.
You might not be able to get a job on the topic you think is most impactful but any related job will give you access to better information to learn faster, and make it easier to get your next, even-more-relevant policy job.
In my experience getting a policy job is relatively uncorrelated with knowing a lot about a specific topic so I think people should aim for this early. You can also see if you actually LIKE policy jobs and are good at them before you spend too much time!
Agree, basically any policy job seems to start teaching you important stuff about institutional politics and process and the culture of the whole political system!
Though I should also add this important-seeming nuance I gathered from a pretty senior policy person who said basically: “I don’t like the mindset of, get anywhere in the government and climb the ladder and wait for your time to save the day; people should be thinking of it as proactively learning as much as possible about their corner of the government-world, and ideally sharing that information with others.”
Honestly, my biggest recommendation would be just getting a job in policy! You’ll get to see what “everyone knows”, where the gaps are, and you’ll have access to a lot more experts and information to help you upskill faster if you’re motivated.
You might not be able to get a job on the topic you think is most impactful but any related job will give you access to better information to learn faster, and make it easier to get your next, even-more-relevant policy job.
In my experience getting a policy job is relatively uncorrelated with knowing a lot about a specific topic so I think people should aim for this early. You can also see if you actually LIKE policy jobs and are good at them before you spend too much time!
Agree, basically any policy job seems to start teaching you important stuff about institutional politics and process and the culture of the whole political system!
Though I should also add this important-seeming nuance I gathered from a pretty senior policy person who said basically: “I don’t like the mindset of, get anywhere in the government and climb the ladder and wait for your time to save the day; people should be thinking of it as proactively learning as much as possible about their corner of the government-world, and ideally sharing that information with others.”