Inside the CIA’s recruitment process

Jennifer Garner’s Alias character looked like she had a pretty cool job at the CIA.

But the CIA is (apparently) made up of more than just spies. The agency employs HR professionals, engineers, writers, and more, and had a booth at SXSW this week to recruit (as it’s done since 2017) and dispel myths.

Nicole (who, for security reasons, did not use her last name at the conference), handles recruitment and employer marketing for the CIA, and has been with the agency for over 15 years. She told HR Brew that conferences like SXSW are an opportunity to change perceptions.

“It’s helpful for the agency to come out…for the public to be able to come up and see us and talk to us,” Nicole explained. “We are always recruiting, so we’re always trying to build that pipeline of potential applicants to come on board. And then we want to partner with technology companies, industry, academia to make sure that we're staying on top of advanced technology, and we can't do that if we kind of stay within our own walls.”

While a lot of companies and government organizations use technology to help weed out applicants, the CIA is old-school, relying on humans instead of algorithms. “I think a lot of people have learned to put in 20 buzzwords…but for us, it’s not buzzword bingo.”

Instead, interested applicants submit a short application, along with their résumé, and then recruiters choose who should fill out a full application, which is a long, involved process, according to the agency.

Despite the volume of paperwork and due diligence required of background checks and security clearances, the CIA has managed to shorten its hiring process over the last decade in order to remain competitive with private-sector employers. (While the timeline varies depending on position, Nicole said her hiring process took about a year.) “We’ve worked hard internally to partner with security and medical to make sure that that process is sped up but still very, very involved.”

The agency also relies heavily on a skills-based hiring model to help it identify the best candidates for roles. “The jobs are so broad, and we don’t have any certain requirements,” Nicole told HR Brew.

To that end, it recently started piloting a platform that job seekers can use to determine how their skills might lend themselves to the CIA’s different STEM jobs. “We threw something out there on a trial basis…we’re evaluating that now, [and] we’ll probably be doing a deeper dive into that.”