This year university career fairs across the nation will include the CIA. With the CIA recruiting on campus, UNCW may produce the next 007, otherwise known as James Bond. Pop culture has increased the popularity of the life of the secret agent, with James Bond, Mission Impossible, Charlie’s Angels and even Austin Powers. In recent months, the CIA’s Director of Operations has been training 10 times the number of intelligence officers that were being trained five years ago. Due to an expected wave of retirement in the homeland security agency, the CIA, along with other federal agencies, has stepped up their recruitment efforts on college campuses.

The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization devoted to promoting civil service careers, estimates that over 50 percent of employees in the homeland security agency will be eligible for retirement by 2007. “The government is facing a major work force crisis over the next five years,” said Bethany Young Hardy, Press Secretary for the Partnership for Public Service.

Because of the time required for training and on-the-job experience, the government needs to start filling the estimated 250,000 job openings in the next year.

“We felt that the federal government was missing from campus recruitment,” Hardy said. “We provide a good bridge between the federal government and the campuses.”

In the past, government agencies looked down on recruiting college graduates. “In the 70’s, it was very controversial to recruit on campus for government positions,” said Scott Quackenbush, professor and department chair for the biological sciences department.

Now agency officials feel different towards students. They believe college students have a greater knowledge about current affairs happening in the world around them. Today’s college students have traveled more and seen more foreign lands and cultures than college students of the past. Agency officials are also drawn to the fact that college students can understand and speak more foreign languages.

Quackenbush remembers being recruited during college to be a secret agent because of his foreign language skills. “They were looking for people who had a lot of foreign language and I had taken a lot of classes, so my name popped up,” Quackenbush said.

Interest in government jobs has also increased over the past couple of years, especially after the terrorist attacks in 2001. “9/11/2001 happened, and in the aftermath of that we’ve had a lot of people come to the agency to fight terrorism,” said Paul Nowack, CIA Spokesman. The terrorist attacks accounted for the interest, so the CIA began trying to meet the demand by getting representatives onto college campuses.

The government is getting help with the recruiting effort from the “Call to Serve” campaign, sponsored by the United States Office of Personnel Management, which serves as the Human Resources Department for the government, and the Partnership for Public Service. The Partnership for Public Service was created when Sam Heyman, a retired lawyer for the justice department, gave $25 million to start the organization one year ago to promote government jobs.

Over the course of the year, the Partnership for Public Service has brought 60 agencies together with 388 colleges and universities, including UNCW. “This organization did studies and polls, and found that young people are not as interested in government jobs,” Hardy said. “The number one reason was lack of knowledge about government jobs.”

The largest misconception about government jobs is that the work is all in Washington D.C., when in fact 85 percent of the jobs are elsewhere.

A CIA secret agent should expect a drastic change in lifestyle and realize that it will be dangerous. CIA headquarters, located in Langley, Virginia, has a wall with 79 stars in remembrance of officers who lost their lives while on the job.

About 80 percent of a CIA career will be spent overseas, whether as a “Diplomatic Cover” posing as a U.S. embassy official, or a secret agent living a secret life trying to infiltrate a foreign country. This is after successfully completing a 6-month interviewing process, extensive background and psychological checks, and two years of training both in the classroom and in the field. “The quality of recruits that we get is very high, with a spirit to help protect the country,” Nowack said. “They are a patriotic cross-section of America.”

Regardless of the type of government job chosen, Hardy believes that the choice to work for your country proves to be extremely fulfilling, “It’s a really flexible and meaningful way to make a difference for your country.”