Automatically apply for jobs with Zippia

Upload your resume to get started.

Legislative analyst skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025

5 min read

Quoted experts

Brent Steel,

Michael Ettlinger

Below we've compiled a list of the most critical legislative analyst skills. We ranked the top skills for legislative analysts based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 10.8% of legislative analyst resumes contained policy issues as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a legislative analyst needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 legislative analyst skills for your resume and career

1. Policy Issues

Policy issues are key issues that influence the economic, social, and political life of a place where conflicts arise over the direction of government policy. Often the policy issues are general, dealing with broad approaches to problems, such as whether the federal government should increase spending on national defense or whether social security should be privatized in some fashion.

Here's how legislative analysts use policy issues:

Tracked, analyzed and interpreted regulatory proposals, legislation, and other policy issues.
Managed and responded to all constituent correspondence regarding pending legislation and policy issues.

2. Legislative Process

The legislative process is defined as a series of measures through which bills are examined and sanctioned. That is, the process of discussion, approval, and publication of laws. The legislative process consists of several mandatory stages that are important and occur in a specific order.

Here's how legislative analysts use legislative process:

Corroborated the legislative process until proposed bills related to both House and Senate Treasury Committees were signed as law or defeated.
Budget Analysis and Legislative Process: Analyzed budget and legislative proposals from the President, Senate, and advocacy groups.

3. DOD

Definition of Done (DoD) is a set of deliverables that are needed to devise software. These deliverables are valuable to the system and can be exemplified by writing code, coding comments, unit testing, integration testing, design documents, release notes, and so on.

Here's how legislative analysts use dod:

Update and deliver Department of Defense (DoD) appeals to NDAA legislative language heading into House and Senate conference.
Serve as point of contact for DoD offices and Congressional offices regarding correspondence between DoD and Congress.

4. Congressional Hearings

Congressional hearings refer to a meeting or session of a Senate, House, a joint, or a select committee of Congress, usually open to the public to get information and opinions on proposed legislation. It involves an investigation conducted to evaluate the activities of a government or an implementation of Federal law.

Here's how legislative analysts use congressional hearings:

Prepare senior leadership for congressional hearings.
Represented the firm at congressional hearings, legislative meetings and conferences of interest to our clients.

5. Legislative Issues

Here's how legislative analysts use legislative issues:

Research legislative issues dealing with all Educational aspect including Higher Education.
Collaborated on legislative issues with House and Senate committees from a variety of state agency and local governments.

6. Public Policy

Public Policy is refers to a public course of action created and seen-through by a government or government organization in response to a public issue, such homelessness, discrimination, poverty, other forms of bigotry, and public health issues like pandemics. The process of coming up with, and designing a public policy can alone often take quite a while, especially as governments may take quite a lot of time to notice public issues in the first place.

Here's how legislative analysts use public policy:

Provided detailed information about law and public policy for government and private sector.
Brief leadership on federal, state, and regulatory impact on public transit funding and public policy.

Choose from 10+ customizable legislative analyst resume templates

Build a professional legislative analyst resume in minutes. Our AI resume writing assistant will guide you through every step of the process, and you can choose from 10+ resume templates to create your legislative analyst resume.

7. Committee Hearings

Here's how legislative analysts use committee hearings:

Coordinated witnesses and helped prepare testimony for committee hearings.
Attended committee hearings, conducted interviews, and updated analyses as bills moved through the Legislature.

8. Federal Legislation

Here's how legislative analysts use federal legislation:

Research and analyze current federal legislation.
Tracked and reported on all proposed and introduced Federal legislation that would impact the performance and revenue of the company.

9. Legislative Proposals

Here's how legislative analysts use legislative proposals:

Communicated effectively with elected officials about legislative proposals, including with members of the House of Representatives.
Prepare written analyses of legislative proposals and recommend actions.

10. Regulatory Issues

Regulatory Issues refer to the potential risks that local legislations or regulations will change, which businesses must conform to. If a business does not comply with the changes made, there could be cause for legal action. Examples of regulatory issues include new stimulus bills, changes to workers' leave, and reforms to overarching issues such as healthcare.

Here's how legislative analysts use regulatory issues:

Analyzed and monitored all pertinent federal and state legislative and regulatory issues.
Utilized membership system to organize action on legislative and regulatory issues.

11. Federal Agencies

Federal agencies are specialized departments of government set up by the government to perform specific duties. They can have responsibilities such as management of resources, overlooking of financial position of industries, national security issues, and so on.

Here's how legislative analysts use federal agencies:

Gained familiarity with primary U.S. federal agencies.
Liaised between legislative personnel, the White House, OMB, and other federal agencies.

12. Pending Legislation

Here's how legislative analysts use pending legislation:

Collected and analyzed Pending Legislation to assess potential economic and social impacts concerning Gaming and Juvenile Affairs.
Visited New Jersey Assembly and Senate legislators to discuss impending legislation and their impact on New Jersey nursing homes.

13. Fact Sheets

A fact sheet is a short, typed or handwritten one-page document that contains the most important information about a specific topic, product, substance, or service in the least amount of space. The aim is to convey key facts and points on a topic in a clear, concise, and easily understandable way and to communicate the most relevant information effectively.

Here's how legislative analysts use fact sheets:

Prepare fact sheets and other materials required to effectively support agency positions.
Analyzed and produced daily, weekly, and monthly legislative and conversation issue briefings and comprehensive fact sheets for the Member.

14. Federal Government

The fеdеrаl gоvеrnmеnt іѕ a ѕуѕtеm thаt dіѕtrіbutеѕ power between a strong national gоvеrnmеnt and ѕmаllеr lосаl gоvеrnmеntѕ. It consists оf thrее dіѕtіnсt brаnсhеѕ: legislative, executive, аnd judісіаl, whose powers аrе dеlеgаtеd bу thе соuntrу'ѕ constitution, the president, аnd the fеdеrаl соurtѕ, rеѕресtіvеlу.

Here's how legislative analysts use federal government:

Monitored and analyzed activities, bills and new policies established by local, state and federal governments.
Managed 16 interns, 2 per quarter, as part of the Federal Governmental Relations Internship Program.

15. Legislative Analysis

Here's how legislative analysts use legislative analysis:

Assisted the City Solicitor with legal research and legislative analysis of bills, statutes and ordinances.
Selected Accomplishments o Trained six employees and drafted training manuals in subject indexing and legislative analysis.

5 Legislative Analyst resume examples

Build a professional legislative analyst resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 5+ resume templates to create your legislative analyst resume.

Create my resume

Build a professional resume in minutes using this template.

What skills help Legislative Analysts find jobs?

Tell us what job you are looking for, we’ll show you what skills employers want.

What legislative analyst skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Brent Steel

University Distinguished Professor, Oregon State University

Beginning a career in public policy analysis requires strategic networking and seeking mentorship from experienced professionals. Attending industry conferences, workshops, and events can help build a robust professional network. Continuous learning is essential; staying updated on current events, policy changes, and emerging trends, as well as pursuing additional certifications or advanced degrees (e.g., Master of Public Policy), will enhance your knowledge and skills. Gaining practical experience through internships, volunteer opportunities, or entry-level positions is crucial for applying theoretical knowledge in real-world scenarios. Additionally, developing soft skills such as communication, negotiation, and presentation, as well as the ability to collaborate with diverse teams and stakeholders, will be invaluable.

What type of skills will young legislative analysts need?

Michael Ettlinger

Director, University of New Hampshire

Analytic, communications, and political skills are all sought after. A graduate need not be highly skilled in all three to be successful. Still, even a pure public policy analyst will be more successful if they understand the political environment with which their analysis will interact and effectively communicate their research. Similarly, a communicator, or one who operates mostly in the political realm, may not need to be able to do high-level analysis. Still, they need to understand research and tell useful comments from the lousy study.

What soft skills should all legislative analysts possess?

Elizabeth Sasser

Teaching Assistant Professor, Interim Director of Experiential Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Employers tell us that they value teamwork, strong written and verbal communication skills, and sound time management skills. Our Public Policy Department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill helps students hone these soft skills through an experiential education course where students work with a non-profit or government client on a real-world policy problem. In this class, students also sharpen their professional etiquette, leadership, and problem-solving skills, which are crucial for pursuing a career in public policy.

Do you want to know more?

List of legislative analyst skills to add to your resume

The most important skills for a legislative analyst resume and required skills for a legislative analyst to have include:

Policy Issues
Legislative Process
DOD
Congressional Hearings
Legislative Issues
Public Policy
Committee Hearings
Federal Legislation
Legislative Proposals
Regulatory Issues
Federal Agencies
Pending Legislation
Fact Sheets
Federal Government
Legislative Analysis
Legislative Session
Government Officials

State Legislators
Legislative Research
National Security
Position Papers
Policy Analysis
Press Releases
Congressional Inquiries
Policy Research
Human Services
Legal Research
State Agencies
General Assembly
Analyze Legislation
Data Collection
Local Government
Legislative Committee
Public Hearings

Legislative Action
Economic Development
Public Health
Legislative Hearings
Budget Proposals
Legislative Summaries
Legislative Changes
Budget Issues
State Government
Press Conferences
Veterans
Caucus
Medicaid
Legislative Bills
Medicare
Environmental Issues

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Team

Editorial Staff

The Zippia Research Team has spent countless hours reviewing resumes, job postings, and government data to determine what goes into getting a job in each phase of life. Professional writers and data scientists comprise the Zippia Research Team.

Updated January 8, 2025

Browse business and financial jobs