Key Traits to Look For When Staffing Your Mail Program

Your mail and communications program will make or break your success on Capitol Hill. Even the most cutting edge communications technology doesn’t eliminate the need for smart, passionate staff to manage your relationships with constituents.

According to Keenan Austin Reed, “How an office communicates with constituents is super powerful, and it’s one of the things that the Member can hear about at a town hall or just bumping into folks at the gas station. You always want to stay on top of it, so it’s really important to have people that you trust to run those systems.”

Keenan is a former Congressional Chief of Staff with over a decade of experience in directly building and managing staffs as well as consulting for teams on the Hill.

Pulling from her experience setting up a new Congressional office, Keenan has identified three essential qualities that she looks for when hiring for her mail and communications programs.

Strong Writing and Analytical Skills

“Everyday you’re taking vast amounts of information and pulling it into a single letter that is both factually accurate but also easily readable, and most importantly in the Member’s voice.”

Obviously, the individuals that staff your mail program must have a strong grasp of spelling and grammar. It is also important that they are able to boil down complicated topics into a succinct response that conveys the Member’s position on a given issue.

Good Time Management

In Congress, there are so many priorities. Between the issue of the day, your caucus or conference responsibilities, and the million little things going on behind the scene, staffers have to be able to process that noise while still running a tight ship.

A big part of time management within the structure of a Congressional office is knowing how to efficiently coordinate with those around you. It’s important for a staffer to be comfortable:

Managing down - “If you pull in intern help or other junior staffers to support the mail program, you want that person to be a clear and effective communicator so that the junior staffers or anybody else that is helping them understands their job.”

Managing up - “These communications frequently need to be approved by someone other than the writer. We can’t let log jams happen in the program. The staffer needs to be checking in and making sure that the approvals happen and that the letters are getting out so that we remain responsive.”

Willingness to Adapt

So many young people come to work in Washington because they have a keen interest in a specific topic. But in reality, no two days or weeks are the same in Congress. Your office can’t afford to have a staffer with a background in agriculture that grumbles every time they receive messages about gun control.

“We are of service to our constituents. We are public servants who have to be responsive in many different areas. And so you need a staffer who is adaptable and recognizes all of that.”

Although there is nothing wrong with hiring an individual with expertise around a certain issue, it is much more important that the staffer you choose recognizes their primary objective: to reflect the position of the Member with empathy and tact.

The right candidate should be fully prepared to put equal care into every response, no matter their personal interest in the subject.

Equip your new staff with the tools they need to succeed!

Get in touch to learn how Indigov can help your staff provide best-in-class customer service to constituents!