(This post is also cross-posted with editing at Danger Room. A follow-up post at DR was linked to by Boing Boing.)

The National Security Agency employs around 30,000 people worldwide (according to their website) and a lot of those employees make their home and in the Baltimore area. This post details the recruiting pitches used and the information currently discussed in NSA information sessions at colleges and universities. Specficially, the details in this post come from a recent information session at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC.)

The representatives of the agency made frequent mention of their Careers website and it is essential to the process of being hired. In addition to all of the job postings and application information, it includes the latest recruiting commercial. The recent information session at UMBC, sponsored by the school’s Career Services office, provided a great deal of information.

The 3-hour session started at 11 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Two people from the NSA recruiting office were in attendance for all three hours. One of these was a 30-something female in a pantsuit who apparently only worked in recruiting while the other was a 40ish male who is an engineer (in slacks and a NSA golf shirt) assigned to a tour in recruiting. Students in attendance range in dress from college student casual all the way up to the job interview uniform of a suit. The room is a meeting room in The Commons, which is one of the newer buildings on campus and is the center of most student life. Tables are arranged hotel meeting room style and the food for lunch is already on tables on one side.

The first hour’s presentation deals with a general background of the agency and includes a PowerPoint presentation. Both recruiters are involved in this presentation. After an initial video in the slideshow that isn’t really heard because there are no external speakers set up, a slide with movie posters and book covers is shown. Titles include Enemy of the State and Digital Fortress. The male recruiter (the engineer) asks if students are familiar with these works and most of room raises their hands. He then proceeds to tell everybody that the NSA is not like it’s presented in those works of fiction and that the media doesn’t get it right a lot of the time (something that will be heard again later.)

The fact that the agency works for providing intelligence information for the warfighting branches of the military is emphasized and then some of the specific career fields are mentioned. Intelligence analysis, languages and science/engineering are the main areas discussed with other areas mentioned or listed. The government benefits packages are listed as well as all the other perks of working for the NSA. Security clearances are mentioned only briefly in this presentation, since the 2nd hour is nothing but clearance information.

College internships, scholarships and cooperative education programs are discussed as well as full-time employment. One point brought up during this session and the technical session is the fact that people interested in doing research can do research that they won’t find anywhere else in the world. This seems to be a major part of the pitch toward people studying sciences and engineering. The fact that the NSA hires people in almost any career field to do various jobs was mentioned a few times during the rundown of the diffeent career opportunities. Political science and history majors were both mentioned as possibilities for jobs in intelligence analysis. Non-romance languages were emphasized for jobs in the languages, as long as the speaker is an American citizen. Areas including information assurance and sigint were discussed relating to engineering and sciences.

After the first presentation finished up about 10 minutes before noon, lunch was served and the two recruiters answerd questions and collected resumes from a long line of students. Lunch was provided by Sodexho on campus and included sandwiches, chips, pretzels, cookies and lemonade.

The second hour’s presentation was made by the slightly balding male engineer, who has been with the NSA since 1980s. He discussed the initial screening process for new hires that involved a phone interview and the decision to proceed with the clearance procedures after that. It was recommended throughout the day that anyone interested in any type of work at NSA, including interns or co-ops, should apply 4-6 months prior to the expected start date. There are further interviews after filling out questionaires (I assume a SF-86 or something similar to it) and then there is also a polygraph procedure done at a facility near BWI airport. Some people who were hired have taken as many as 4 or 5 trips to be polygraphed. When a student asked exactly what was asked on the polygraph, the speaker mentioned that when he took his initial one it was so long ago that sexual orientation was still being asked about. There is also a psyschologial test given in conjunction with a screening by a pscyhologist. The actual fieldwork of checking your references and your responses to the paperwork are going on during this process as well. After everything else is completed, the final stage of the process is adjudication.

It was mentioned several times that the adjudication process is based on the “Whole Person” concept that weighed all of the positives and negatives as they relate to the applicant. Adjudication involves 2 different people who look at all of the results and use a 13-point test to determine whether the applicant should be granted a clearance. The speaker pointed out that the 3 items that came up most often for college students were drug abuse (especially prescription drug abuse), alcohol abuse and illegal use of information technology (hacking and illegal file-sharing.) It was mentioned that people who had done a lot of illegal file sharing were turned down and told never to apply again. The adjudication process can also result in an applicant being told to re-apply again at some point in the future after being turned down.

As most people who have done anything involving a clearance know, recent Peace Corps service is a definite bar to a clearance. During the first hour, the female recruiter had couched it in terms of the Peace Corps and the NSA have conflicting missions, but it was later pointed out that the travel and the problems in doing background checks were a factor. The line about the media not getting things exactly right again came up. As the second presentation closed, lines formed again as students asked questions or handed in resumes.

The third and final hour of the session dealt with a technical presentation provided by three members of the Information Assurance Directorate of the NSA who all attended UMBC. The first person to speak was a black female in professional dress in her late twenties or early thirties who has a degree in information systems or management. She also has a master’s degree if I remember correctly and was in a developmental program that sounded like it was a management track one. She had been in various office working on different projects, including one posting at the Pentagon. She was in the process of a change of station to England to a facility there. (All of the various work locations were mentioned throughout the day with emphasis on the fact that most new hires end up at Fort Meade. Hawaii (Field Station Kanea?) and Augusta, Georgia (Ft. Gordon presumably) were also mentioned.)

The second technical speaker (white female in jeans and a sweatshirt and probably 24 or 25) was a recent Computer Science graduate of UMBC who has also been working in a developmental program (usually called an internship but not the same as summer interns who aren’t full-time yet) with most of it being in the technical arena. She mentioned the red cells and the blue cells that sometimes are working for the same DoD customer simultaneously — which means one group is trying to shore up the network defenses of an agency or unit while the other is testing it and trying to get into it. The final speaker was probably the most interesting one since he had been there the longest.

The final technical speaker had his B.S., M.S. and PhD. from UMBC. His current assignment is at a defense-oriented think tank. He was dressed in slacks, dress shirt and a navy blazer and looked and sounded like a stereotypical Baltimore native. He mentioned that he was about to meet with banking and financial leaders in New York to discuss how to help secure their networks and systems better after both parties assumed the other would know how to do the job better. He then produced a few show-and-tell items.

The first item was a hollowed out piece of 2×4 that had been used somewhere to prop up a water cooler. Inside the hollowed out section was a bug. He also produced a shoe that a U.S. ambassador had sent out for shining that at some point had a bug put in the heel. This bug appeared to be either from a country that wasn’t that advanced or it was really old since it had 5 or 6 hearing aid batteries in the heel as well. He then talked about generals or other officers wanting secure communications that were convenient and pulled out a cellphone before pulling off the battery and putting on a device that encrypted all of the phone calls that slid onto the back of the phone. Then, he mentioned that one customer of the NSA needed secure portable communications but didn’t want a cellphone. That customer was the President (he didn’t say which one.) He then pulled out what appeared to be a black desk phone with a Presidential Seal on the back of the handset and a mass of wire hanging out of one end. A secure cellphone was embedded in the middle of the larger part of the device and it was installed in the Presidential limousine.

As the program came to a close, the few people who had been able to stay for the full three hours milled around and asked more questions of the technical people and the recruiters.

The next event in the area for those interested in government service is a Government and Public Policy Fair at UMBC on April 18 from 3-5 p.m. in UC 312. Prior to that, the U.S. Intelligence Community will have a panel discussion for those interested in intelligence careers from 12-1:30 p.m. in UC310. The NSA website has a list of its upcoming college events around the country.