Post job

Explore jobs

Find specific jobs

Explore careers

Explore professions

Best companies

Explore companies

OverviewJobsResume

Skills

EducationCertificationsDemographicsJob DescriptionHow To HireBest CompaniesRemote JobsJob OutlookComparePart Time jobsEntry Level jobsFull Time jobsWork From Home jobs
zippia ai icon

Automatically apply for jobs with Zippia

Upload your resume to get started.

Public affairs internship skills for your resume and career

Updated January 8, 2025
5 min read
Quoted experts
Dr. Julia Beeman Ph.D.,
Christopher Gehrz Ph.D.
Public affairs internship example skills
Below we've compiled a list of the most critical public affairs internship skills. We ranked the top skills for public affairs interns based on the percentage of resumes they appeared on. For example, 10.6% of public affairs internship resumes contained public affairs as a skill. Continue reading to find out what skills a public affairs internship needs to be successful in the workplace.

15 public affairs internship skills for your resume and career

1. Public Affairs

Public Affairs refers to the relationships a company has with its investors and stakeholders. Depending on the size of the corporation, multiple departments may be required to balance the various aspects of public affairs, including any media interaction, government relationships, strategic information reveals, and discussing and managing any company problems.

Here's how public affairs interns use public affairs:
  • Gained insight into the internal and external communication processes and business practices associated with Caterpillar s Corporate Public Affairs department.
  • Supported international programming activity for a membership based organization serving public affairs executives representing over 600 companies and organizations.

2. Press Releases

Here's how public affairs interns use press releases:
  • Provided support for the Panama Canal Authority team including compiling daily international media report and developing press releases for new projects.
  • Compiled press releases using Federal case information and did media outreach that generated national media placements.

3. PowerPoint

Here's how public affairs interns use powerpoint:
  • Researched methods of increasing museum attendance and presented recommendations to the External Affairs Department through a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation.
  • Researched education assistance opportunities for veterans and created a PowerPoint presentation that was presented at veteran meetings.

4. 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 public affairs interns use public policy:
  • Summarized newly published academic articles concerning public policy, economics and politics in Mexico.
  • Promoted healthy public dialogue concerning public policy and provided venues of interaction.

5. Regulatory Submissions

Regulatory Submissions offers a readable and clearly written road map for effective submission of documents for required regulatory reviews during product development.

Here's how public affairs interns use regulatory submissions:
  • Prepare and maintain U.S. regulatory submissions for product approval and/or marketing clearance.
  • Interacted cross-functionally to obtain pertinent information regarding regulatory submissions and/or documents.

6. Community Outreach

Here's how public affairs interns use community outreach:
  • Grant writer for special projects and organized community outreach events for public safety and education.
  • Developed marketing and advocacy strategies to broaden community outreach and strengthen support for Planned Parenthood.

Choose from 10+ customizable public affairs internship resume templates

Build a professional public affairs internship 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 public affairs internship resume.

7. FDA

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services that regulates the production and sale of food, pharmaceutical products, medical equipment, and other consumer goods, as well as veterinary medicine. The FDA is now in charge of overseeing the manufacture of products like vaccines, allergy treatments, and beauty products.

Here's how public affairs interns use fda:
  • Reviewed regulatory documents to ensure compliance with FDA requirements, agreements and regulations.
  • Review of site visit reports, FUL (follow up letter) by sponsors, discussion of US FDA warning letter.

8. Twitter

Here's how public affairs interns use twitter:
  • Helped create and maintain a database of municipal and transportation facts and images for the Department's Facebook and Twitter pages.
  • Support the office's social media strategy, identifying appropriate content for Facebook, Twitter and the office's website.

9. Facebook

Here's how public affairs interns use facebook:
  • Conceived and managed social media publicity campaign that tripled Embassy Facebook fans.
  • Managed Embassy Facebook page doubling the number of 'likes' from 2000 to 4000+ in two months.

10. Event Planning

Here's how public affairs interns use event planning:
  • Perform administrative duties and assist with speaker/event planning and execution.
  • Facilitate event planning, implementation and evaluation.

11. 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 public affairs interns use fact sheets:
  • Curated and wrote fact sheets, blog posts, news releases, and letters that were used internally or later published.
  • Collected and organized background material for CCM+E Digital town hall meetings and developed fact sheets for potential interview topics.

12. Photoshop

Here's how public affairs interns use photoshop:
  • Gained skills in Adobe InDesign and Adobe Photoshop as well as Final Cut Pro.
  • Created or edited materials for distribution in hospital departments on Adobe Photoshop and Indesign.

13. Medical Devices

Medical devices refer to apparatus for use in medical procedures.

Here's how public affairs interns use medical devices:
  • Screened the status and the validity of regulatory documents for the medical devices that are planned to sell in Africa region.
  • Registered 11 Core Product Medical Devices in Latin America, the Middle East, and Non - European Union countries.

14. 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 public affairs interns use policy issues:
  • Provided advice on policy issues on trade initiatives
  • Researched government and international policy issues, and planned events around these issues to educate member companies.

15. Administrative Tasks

Here's how public affairs interns use administrative tasks:
  • Created order by completing a multitude of administrative tasks including agendas and meeting minutes.
  • Performed various clerical and administrative tasks as directed.
top-skills

What skills help Public Affairs Interns find jobs?

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

What skills stand out on public affairs internship resumes?

Dr. Julia Beeman Ph.D.Dr. Julia Beeman Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Chair and Associate Professor, Belmont Abbey College

The skills needed during the pandemic are the same ones needed before: strong communication skills, the ability to use data to problem-solve and be flexible, and the desire to work with people for the betterment of society. Our Criminal Justice majors (a small graduating cohort this year) are on their way to law school, policing, and graduate school. Several more are in the application process for various police departments in the southeast. In spite of the difficulties in the field, our students have learned that society flourishes when law enforcement and communities develop relationships that empower both to work for the benefit of law abiding citizens, aid the vulnerable, and provide avenues for transparency. Their senior thesis projects have prepared them for real-world research and policy decisions. They are excited to move forward, in spite of the dangers and uncertainty, and are committed to serving cities and towns across the US.

What public affairs internship skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?

Christopher Gehrz Ph.D.Christopher Gehrz Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Professor and Chair, Bethel University

In one sense, almost any gap year activity could be helpful, since one of the skills that Aacu they value most highly is the ability "to work independently." It's hard to make the transition from K-16 education, where so much of your time and work has been structured for you, into a work environment where supervisors will expect you to set priorities, accomplish tasks, and manage time on your own. So a gap year of any sort might give you a chance to hone such skills. COVID permitting, a gap year can also be a time to travel, to develop more of the intercultural competency and facility with languages that are increasingly important in an economy where your bosses, coworkers, customers, and clients might live halfway around the world, or at least come from a very different background than yours.

What type of skills will young public affairs internships need?

Warren von Eschenbach Ph.D.Warren von Eschenbach Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Associate Vice President and Assistant Provost for Academic Affairs (ND International) and Associate Teaching Professor, University of Notre Dame

Critical thinking and communication skills, information and quantitative literacy, teamwork and problem-solving abilities, ethical reasoning, and intercultural competency-all hallmarks of a liberal arts education-will continue to be essential skills for the future. But because of the rapid pace of technological, economic, and social change, graduates will need to possess an ability to continually learn anew, to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty, and to anticipate future trends or issues.

The pandemic has also shown that many of the big issues we are facing are complex, multi-faceted, and interdisciplinary in nature. Graduates who can integrate various paradigms into a larger framework will have a distinct advantage.

What technical skills for a public affairs internship stand out to employers?

Marty Jordan Ph.D.Marty Jordan Ph.D. LinkedIn profile

Assistant Professor, Michigan State University

To be sure, the skills that employers seek in public administration graduates still include critical and analytical thinking, excellent verbal and written communication skills, an understanding of the interdependencies across institutions and networks, ingenuity and tenacity, a commitment to evidence-based decisionmaking, among others. Nonetheless, employers are demanding more and more that students have experience working with, managing, analyzing, and making inferences from data. The "big data" revolution is here to stay, and employers will rely more and more on making decisions using data. Students should seek to enroll in courses that provide them with opportunities to work with and understand data, to simultaneously recognize the power and pitfalls of data. These quantitative and empirical skills will serve students well regardless of the sector they decide to engage.

What soft skills should all public affairs internships possess?

David Cunningham

Professor, University of Maryland

Graduates should have strong interpersonal communication and time management skills. As more telework options are offered, managers need to be confident that employees can handle their responsibilities with less direct supervision than might have previously occurred for recent graduates.
Do you want to know more?
Read more about what experts have to say about public affairs internship

List of public affairs internship skills to add to your resume

Public affairs internship skills

The most important skills for a public affairs internship resume and required skills for a public affairs internship to have include:

  • Public Affairs
  • Press Releases
  • PowerPoint
  • Public Policy
  • Regulatory Submissions
  • Community Outreach
  • FDA
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Event Planning
  • Fact Sheets
  • Photoshop
  • Medical Devices
  • Policy Issues
  • Administrative Tasks
  • Writing Press Releases
  • Data Analysis
  • Government Agencies
  • Research Projects
  • Press Conferences
  • External Communications
  • Blog Posts
  • EU
  • Climate
  • SharePoint
  • Congressional Hearings
  • IND
  • Linkedin
  • Instagram
  • Promotional Materials
  • Community Events
  • Community Relations
  • NGOs
  • Writing Articles
  • News Articles
  • Government Officials
  • CMC
  • Veterans
  • Clips
  • Biographies
  • Federal Agencies
  • Market Research
  • Committee Hearings
  • Public Events
  • Website Content
  • News Stories
  • Press Kits
  • Internal Newsletter
  • Feature Stories

Updated January 8, 2025

Zippia Research Team
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 arts, entertainment, sports, and media jobs