CIA Retools Web Site in Recruitment Push

Actor Daniel Craig from Great Britain, left, and Satsuki Mitchell, right, pose for the photographers prior to the Germany premiere of the James Bond movie 'Casino Royale' in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 21, 2006. (AP Photo/Michael Sohn) (Michael Sohn - AP)

WASHINGTON -- The CIA has scrapped its ho-hum test that steered job applicants toward mysterious careers and devised one that's cloaked in jest.

Invisibility or ESP? Jet pack or amphibious sports car? Walk the Great Wall of China or sip Champagne at a New York gala?

The results from the CIA's personality quiz are just a few clicks away, diagnosing test takers as daring thrill-seekers, thoughtful observers, curious adventurers, innovative pioneers or impressive masterminds.

The CIA wants to hire them all.

The agency's online personality test is the equivalent of a help-wanted sign, posted on the closest thing the agency has to a front door _ its Web site. The frivolous quiz is designed to encourage job applications while dispelling myths about the agency, some of them born of the James Bond stereotype.

For instance, the CIA wants you to know that everyone who works there does not drive a sports car with machine guns in the tailpipes. Successful applicants will, in fact, see their family and friends again. Also, "you don't have to know karate or look good in a tuxedo to work at the CIA," the personality quiz says.

All fun aside, the hiring push began almost immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and picked up steam in November 2004 when President Bush called for a 50 percent increase in the agency's ranks of operatives and analysts.

The president wanted twice as many scientists whose research combats terrorism and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. The agency hopes to meet those goals by 2011.

One in seven of CIA's current employees joined the agency in the past year, and nearly 40 percent of its employees began working at the agency after the Sept. 11 attacks _ statistics at once helpful and troubling.

"This is the youngest analytic work force in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency," Director Michael Hayden said at his confirmation hearings this year. "In more disappointing language, this is the least experienced analytic work force in the history of CIA."

The CIA had some stumbles as it stepped out of the shadows to recruit.

The agency started in 2002 with black-and-white ads. Last year, the agency's television ads during Washington Nationals baseball games were so quiet and unnoticeable that fans might have thought their cable went out for 30 seconds if they headed to the kitchen for a snack.