1.2: Recruitment, Hiring, Staffing, and Retention

Adopt innovative recruitment, hiring, staffing, and retention strategies to build expertise.

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Building an analytic work force for the 21st century requires adopting a new business paradigm or model for recruitment, hiring, and staffing. This not only includes establishing market-driven pay categories for hard-to-fill occupations, but also adopting more flexible personnel management policies and regulations. Currently, most Intelligence analysts are recruited and hired at entry level. However, some issue areas can only be addressed by analysts with specialized skills and expertise. When home-grown expertise is insufficient, the IC must be prepared to pay market rates to hire outside analysts at what are normally regarded as senior positions. Although there would not be many such hires and they would not necessarily remain to complete a career in intelligence, they might be the only way to acquire the in-depth knowledge and high degree of expertise that is required to tackle some of the more difficult problems. Ideally, such high entry-level positions would be time-limited appointments, to be extended and renewed as required. Implementing Actions: • Establish market-driven pay categories to recruit/compensate analysts in highly competitive skill areas. • Increase senior- and executive-level hiring. • Expand use of time-limited appointments. • Expand tiered work force: a mix of longterm careerists, short-term employees (two to five years), and annuitants/contractors/ consultants. Rotational assignments, if designed and tailored to allow analysts to continue working in a useful knowledge area, can be one of the most important and rewarding components of career development. To build and sustain expertise, rotational assignments must meet the criterion of either enhancing an analyst’s knowledge of a core specialty or providing broadening insights into a complementary discipline. Expansion of the Community’s rotational partnerships with the private sectors, academia and other government agencies is especially important for the S&T analytic work force. Implementing Action: • Establish expertise-building or -broadening rotational assignments (overseas programs, partnerships with academia/private sector). Career progression as an analyst in the Intelligence Community must include the ability to reach senior ranks without having to transition to management, if a strong cadre of analysts with sustained expertise is to be developed. Over the next decade, NIPB organizations should increase the number of senior positions open to analysts. Implementing Action: • Conduct annual reviews of all senior/executive positions to develop appropriate balance. Career patterns of many types of employees entering the US work force over the next decade will be characterized by greater mobility than those of their predecessors, and this trend is likely to affect the Intelligence Community as well. We must be prepared for, and, in many cases, embrace a segment of the work force that will transition back and forth between the private sector and government. These employees will take responsibility for their own job satisfaction and may be attracted to the IC by the opportunity to obtain skills and knowledge that they may not be able to acquire if their career spanned only government, industry, or academia. Implementing Action: • Develop flexible personnel security policies to accomplish missions and protect secrets amidst less fixed work force patterns.

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