Key Points:
1. Hemorrhaging job losses in the financial sector make recruiting easier for the CIA’s financial counter-terrorism division.
2. The agency should experience short-term success with a combination of decent pay, patriotic appeals, and challenging work.
3. Long-term image problems remain, however, and the CIA must act to retool its image to retain its young and talented financial agents.
Out of a job in the financial sector?
The CIA wants you. And it knows it’s got your attention.
Times are (comparatively) tough for freshly minted Ivy League MBAs. Hopes of six-figure investment banking careers are gone; this new crop of grad students has entered a brutal Wall Street job market.
To put it in real terms, the Financial Times reports that over 130,000 financial sector jobs have been shed in the past 12 months. And as employment is often a lagging indicator of economic growth, this summer’s (and this fall’s) graduates had better keep their options open.
As (comparatively) sad as this situation may sound, the news is music to the ears of hiring managers at the Central Intelligence Agency.
Many of us tend to think of the CIA as the home of James Bond and Jason Bourne—slick and suave, traveling the world to take down bad guys in the middle of the streets of London, Paris, or Moscow.
But the truth is, a vast majority of the time, much more mundane. The CIA puts it bluntly: Global terrorism is our nation’s biggest threat. And terrorism is crime. A global, cross-border crime, but crime nonetheless. And crime, to succeed, must be financed. And it is the financial trail—if properly followed—that will lead you to the bad guys. To put it more simply: Follow the money.
For years, the CIA has had trouble recruiting the type of talent it needs to do just that. People skilled at unraveling complex financial transactions. People who understand shady financial tricks. Precisely the people now out of work, or newly minted and looking for work.
Now to the marketing challenge—both short-term and long-term.
First, the immediate concern: Recruiting.
In what must be called a classic application of opportunistic advertising, the CIA is reaching out to displaced and un-placed financial types with a combination of decent pay ($48,000 to $120,000 annual salaries), the promise of “patriotic” work, and the lure of “tough” cases to sink their teeth into.
And, by all rights, this should work quite nicely. The pay may not be hedge-fund quality, but it is a solid middle class wage. More to the point: It’s better than nothing. Secondly, patriotic appeals clearly work on a decent slice of the business graduate community—traditionally conservative, the appeal of serving your country (while not quite going as far as active military service) strikes home for many. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, is the appeal of the work itself. The CIA Web site—revamped exactly for this purpose—presents a picture of the work as global, far-reaching, and very, very challenging. That’s like dangling intellectual candy in front of the MBA toddler.
While the CIA will likely enjoy success in the short run, I am much more concerned about the CIA keeping its new talent.
That’s the long-term challenge. When the economy roars back, and the investment banks are hiring again, will even the most dedicated civil servant be tempted by triple the salary and executive perks? Undoubtedly, yes.
But this is not just economics (although money does play a key role).
The real problem is much more endemic: The CIA continues to struggle against a long-standing image-management issue.
You could sum up the problem in two broad points: First, the CIA as part of the “government” apparatus, and second, the CIA as inherently dangerous and un-American.
Famous quips from Ronald Reagan (“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help,’” and even better, “Government is not a solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”) summarized the resentment and distrust of a generation disillusioned by years of post-war government meddling and waste. While that may be true, those words have effectively transformed the image of the “government worker” into a bumbling, ineffective, and sloppy bureaucrat. In other words, you wouldn’t spend the time and energy to get a Harvard MBA and then go to work for Uncle Sam.
Stemming from that negative image of government as a whole is perhaps an even worse public perception of the CIA itself. One could argue the issue dates back to the founding of the republic and the resistance to a national police force. In more recent history, CIA secret prisons, harsh interrogations, rendition, and wiretapping all contribute to an image of an organization that views itself above the law and morally questionable.
Whether “right” or “wrong” is hardly for me to decide, but the fact remains: Long-term talent retention at the CIA will depend in large part on the reshaping of its public image.
Now to the big question: How?
The Web site rework is a great start, but the CIA needs to go one step further. Think of who the agency wants to recruit: A new breed of investigators. A 20–something. Who's good with numbers. Who's even better with technology. Understands the global picture. This is a person raised on an image of “law enforcement” as decoding Internet phishing schemes and avoiding online stalkers rather than the “beat ‘em up” police world of “Law and Order” on NBC. To reach these new agents, the CIA should build its new image of the agency around the image (the “characters” in the drama, if you will) of the agents themselves.
Salary aside, it all comes down to a battle for the hearts and minds of the best financial talent to serve their country in an area of critical need.
And image management can help the CIA win.
Related Links
In-Depth: Job Cuts in the Financial Sector
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