The CIA's new year's resolution is to seek out a new breed of spies - ones hailing from all walks of life.
In an effort to further diversify its ranks, the CIA launched a new website Monday to find candidates who will bring a broader range of life experiences to the nation´s premier intelligence agency.
The days of all American spies being white male graduates from Ivy League schools may be behind us - the CIA director is a woman and women head all five of the agency´s branches, including the directorates of science and technology, operations and digital innovation.
But women remain the minority, just 39% compared to 61% men, while minorities make up just over a quarter of CIA staff.
Now the agency are hoping to attract a more diverse workforce that more accurately reflects national demographics.
The CIA launched a new website Monday in a bid to attract more diverse job candidates
The CIA is aiming to have its workforce be more reflective of the national US demographics. The CIA posted these job recruiting images on Instagram
The revamped website has links for browsing CIA jobs complete with starting salaries and requirements, sections on working at the agency, and a streamlined application process.
'We've come a long way since I applied by simply mailing a letter marked `CIA, Washington, D.C.,´' said CIA Director Gina Haspel, who joined the agency in 1985.
She said in a statement that she hopes the new website piques the interest of talented Americans and gives them a sense of the 'dynamic environment that awaits them here.'
Women head up all five of the CIA's branches and is led by CIA director Gina Haspel (left in 2018). The CIA's first executive for Hispanic engagement is Ilka Rodriguez-Diaz
The CIA has been focusing on recruitment as a priority since Haspel took charge in 2018. The CIA seal is show in CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia
Haspel has made recruitment a priority since she became the first female director in May 2018.
Since then, the CIA has started advertising on streaming services, launched an Instagram account and an online 'onion site,' a feature that makes both the information provider and the person accessing information more difficult to trace.
Last year, the CIA designated its first executive for Hispanic engagement, Ilka Rodriguez-Diaz, a veteran of more than three decades with the agency. She first joined after attending a CIA job fair in New Jersey.
'The CIA had never been on my radar,' she wrote in an op-ed in The Miami Herald after getting the job in October. 'I didn´t think I fit the `profile.´ After all, the spies I saw on TV were male Anglo-Saxon Ivy leaguers, not Latinas from New Jersey. Still, I went to my expert life coach, my mother, for advice. She said, `No pierdes nada con ir.´ (What have you got to lose in going?) So, I went to the job fair. The rest, as they say, is history.'
Across the more than a dozen U.S. spy agencies, including the CIA, 61 per cent of intelligence professionals in fiscal 2019 were men compared with 39 per cent women, according to an annual demographics report compiled by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In fiscal 2019, the intelligence community saw an incremental increase in the number of minority professionals - 26.5 per cent, up from 26.2 per cent. But that´s still lower than 37 per cent in the federal workforce as a whole and 37.4 per cent in the civilian labor force, the report said.
The largest minority or ethnic group at all the intelligence agencies, including the CIA, was Black or African American at 12 per cent followed by Hispanic at seven per cent and Asian at four per cent. Persons with disabilities represent 11.5 per cent of the workforce at all the U.S. intelligence agencies - up a point from the year before.
'Even with all the challenges 2020 posed, it was a standout recruitment year for CIA. Our incoming class is the third largest in a decade and represents the most diverse talent pool, including persons with disabilities, since 2010,' said CIA spokesperson Nicole de Haay.