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CIA hiring took 700 days
Under William Burns, who directed the CIA from 2021 to 2025, recruiting people was one of four stated priorities. A wait that long meant the agency could not compete with anyone else for talent, so it digitized a process that had been mostly paper and put more resources into it.
The payoff came in the final year of the effort, when the CIA drew its largest number of applicants since the year right after 9/11. Recruiters went after candidates across all fifty states and aimed for a wider range of thinking, beyond gender and ethnicity.
The reasoning was that an agency where everybody looks, talks, and thinks alike is far less effective. China and Russia operate on a very diverse international landscape, and the CIA needs to compete on it.
Why do security clearances take so long?
A clearance for a sensitive job involves a background investigation that reaches back years into a person's life. Investigators interview references, former employers, and neighbors, and they check finances, foreign contacts, and travel. At the CIA the process also includes a polygraph examination and a psychological evaluation. Each step depends on other people and offices responding, which is why the waits stretch into months.
How did 9/11 change intelligence hiring?
After the September 2001 attacks, the CIA and the other intelligence agencies expanded their workforces sharply. The 9/11 Commission, which reported in 2004, found that the agencies had failed to share information and recommended reforms. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 then created the Director of National Intelligence to oversee the whole community. A large share of today's intelligence workforce joined after 2001.
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