U.S. Intelligence Agencies Experiment with Virtual Hiring
The PSLawNet Blog keeps its finger on the pulse of developments in federal hiring processes because we know that many law students and attorneys find federal careers to be attractive options. (And frankly, the federal government has been seen in recent months as an employment oasis, given the dearth of job opportunities with law firms, nonprofits, and in local and state government.) We maintain a robust library of federal career resources here.
Here, we’re just passing along a short article from the Government Executive newsletter which takes note of the success that the NSA – and subsequently, its sister intelligence agencies – has had by using virtual recruiting.
About 18 months ago, recruiters from the National Security Agency started attending virtual career fairs — online recruiting events hosted by such diverse entities as The Wall Street Journal and Monster.com. Lori Weltmann, manager of the Recruitment Services Division at NSA, was struck by how excited her employees were after working the fairs. “It was quick. It was easy. They felt like they were really connecting with candidates,” she says. “After we did about a half dozen of these I said, ‘Why can’t we do one of our own?'” The agency could tailor a fair to draw the kind of tech-savvy candidates it was seeking, instead of wading through the more generalized community of job seekers attracted to the virtual forums sponsored by other organizations and companies, she thought.
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Agency leaders liked the idea, and in February 2009, four months after Weltmann first pitched the idea, NSA hosted its first virtual job fair.It was so successful, Ronald Sanders, then the chief human capital officer at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, asked NSA to brief other intelligence agencies about the effort. In March, using NSA’s experience as the benchmark, nine agencies, including NSA, cooperated in hosting the first virtual intelligence career fair.