Fast-Changing CIA Puts New Emphasis On Recruiting

The agency is increasing its ranks of analysts and operations officers (better known as spies), but also needs engineers and professionals in finance, logistics and medicine.

Getting hired, of course, is not easy. The agency looks for people with language skills who have lived abroad and who are at mid-career with experience in industry. About 60 percent of recruits have overseas experience, and about 40 percent have advanced degrees.

Although a quarter of job applicants say they have foreign-language capability, CIA tests find that only 12 percent are proficient.

The hiring process takes nine to 12 months -- from the time a résumé is submitted until a letter of acceptance is sent, setting a start date. Employment offers hinge on receiving security clearances, and about 25 percent do not get them, Mullet said.

The hiring surge is part of a "strategic intent" developed by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden that includes an "analysts forward initiative," aimed at getting more intelligence analysts into overseas positions so they gain regional expertise more quickly, and a "leadership development initiative" to make sure the CIA has people who can manage its changing workforce.

Hayden also has called for enhancing diversity at the CIA, eliminating time in grade as a factor in promotions to put more weight on job performance, and requiring rotational assignments across directorates before promotions.

Senior officials are making progress on reshaping the workforce, Morell said. They have identified jobs that require foreign-language skills, and about half have been filled by officers "with significant language capability," he said. That's an improvement over the past four years, and Hayden has formed a group "to figure out what we can do to make it even better," Morell said.

The CIA is especially interested in hiring people who speak Chinese, Arabic, Korean, Farsi, Dari, Pashtu, Urdu and other "mission-critical" languages.

Efforts to improve diversity are paying off and should make it easier for the CIA to operate around the world, Morell said.

In fiscal 2006, 23 percent of new hires were African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans. The CIA also is hiring Arab Americans, Persian Americans and South Asian Americans, Morell said.

Half of the managers are minorities or women, a higher proportion than four years ago. Of Hayden's senior leadership team, 35 percent are minorities or women, Morell said. About 30 percent of station chiefs are minorities or women, up from 20 percent three years ago. "So the trends are in the right direction, but we need to do better," Morell said.

The hiring surge, he said, "puts a huge responsibility on this organization to hire the right people, to train them, to develop them." That, and "how well those folks do, will determine how well this agency does 10, 15, 20 years from now," Morell said. "So we are taking very seriously how we invest in them."

Even though employees must leave their iPods and cellphones in their cars while at work on the CIA campus near McLean, the agency has not had problems keeping younger workers.

"We have not yet seen the conventional wisdom of the last five years that Generation Xers and Gen Ys are going to job-hop," Morell said.

Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.