CIA stops in Waynesburg
When the Observer-Reporter’s Katie Anderson reported Tuesday that the CIA had visited Waynesburg University, visions of trenchcoat-wearing, fedora-sporting, gravely serious spymasters danced in our heads, as they almost certainly did for many of our readers.
Were students lured into a darkened room lit by a single lightbulb?
Were they told some cryptic phrase, like “the speckled bird flies sideways” or “the midnight crow dies at dawn” and handed an envelope with papers written in invisible ink?
Um, no. From the sound of it, the CIA’s recruitment effort was not unlike any other company or agency looking for young talent. Students from Washington & Jefferson College and Bethany College in West Virginia made the trek to Waynesburg, and they heard about job and internship possibilities.
The students were “excited to be in direct contact with an agency that is otherwise pretty secretive or unapproachable,” according to Jim Tanda, a criminal justice instructor at the university.
Sure, the Central Intelligence Agency is not known for putting want ads in the newspaper, or promising great benefits and family-friendly hours. But an article that appeared on the Forbes magazine website in 2014 revealed that applying to the CIA is, in many ways, like applying for a job anywhere. There’s an online application, and résumés get scrutinized. For applicants who survive these first two hoops, online tests follow that “look at key competencies such as writing skills and problem-solving abilities. These tests also evaluate whether the person has the right ‘interpersonal fit’ to work at the agency.”
Another component of the CIA process: “For some occupations, candidates have to undergo a current events knowledge screening.”
So, W&J, Waynesburg and Bethany students, listen up: If you want to make inroads with the CIA, it would be best to be able to find Iraq on a map, know who Angela Merkel is and be able to offer a coherent sentence or two about Brexit.
The best way to do that? We don’t want to indulge in too much self-promotion, but subscribing to a newspaper, or subscribing to the websites of several reuptable news organizations, would be a good place to start.