Geeks wanted for FBI jobs

[Jessica 0]

TECHIES IN DEMAND FOR FBI JOBS
Eds: Also moving financial queue

By Jennifer Beauprez
The Denver Post

DENVER — Wanted: super-smart techies interested in a good salary, early retirement and great job security.

Sound unusual in this economy? Here's the kicker: Must be willing to chase down terrorists and respond to bank robberies if necessary.

Uncle Sam hopes metro Denver will be a prime recruiting ground for its fast-growing FBI computer crimes division. The agency has congressional funding to add 960 people nationwide next year, including 192 computer crime agents.

“That's a lot of people to bring in,” said Jim Berry, FBI agent in charge of Denver recruitment.

He said he sees gold in the area's skilled, but unemployed, tech workforce and plans to scout out a number of upcoming career fairs for new recruits. As much as two-thirds of the layoffs in Colorado over the past few years came from telecommunications and technology businesses.

Yet landing a job at the FBI isn't easy, even for the Albert Einsteins of code writing.

Flabby computer geeks who can't run a mile won't make the cut; neither will anti-social programmers who'd rather look at a computer screen than at people, nor those who've smoked pot more than 15 times.

In fact, just 1.5 percent of all applicants typically survive the rigorous FBI interview process that sometimes can last a year, Berry said. People with more professional work experience tend to do better.

“It's competitive,” Berry said. “It's not impossible, but it's competitive.”

The select few who do get hired will make sacrifices. The most painful: They can't stay in metro Denver.

The FBI's rule forbids new agents to stay in the city in which they were hired to eliminate any conflicts of interest.

Plus, agents will be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week and must relocate on demand to any number of cities across the globe.

For those who win an agent's badge, the rush of wielding a gun, busting down doors or sleuthing out hackers makes for a dream job.

“It's like you get to be a kid for the rest of your life,” said FBI special agent Christopher Buechner, one of 11 in the Denver computer crimes division.

Buechner sports a gun on the FBI's SWAT team, but most often sifts through computer hard drives seized by agents to root out evidence of child pornography, terrorist plots and corporate espionage. He's been relocated twice and sent on a mission to Pakistan most recently.

“It's a great job,” Buechner said. “It's something I've always wanted to do. I'm honored to be an agent.”

The agency's hiring practices have changed dramatically since Buechner joined the FBI in 1996, due primarily to homeland security concerns.

The FBI in the past primarily has hired accountants, lawyers and language specialists. But for the past 18 months, the agency only has been permitted to hire people in a few key areas: computer science, engineering, accounting, biology or chemistry, military intelligence and foreign languages, particularly Arabic and Farsi.

Computer investigators are critical because most terrorist activities and violent crimes have a computer nexus, whether they are conversations in e-mails or Internet activity, said Dave Mahon, the Denver-based special agent in charge of computer crimes.

Mahon said the agency created the computer crimes division last year and is expanding it quickly, recently adding international agents in Scotland, Pakistan, Australia, Japan and India.

Computer sleuths, Mahon said, are critical to protecting nation's critical infrastructure from terrorist attacks. Computers control all water, banking and power systems. The recent East Coast blackout underscored the chaos caused when cities lose electricity.

“The next war is a technological war,” Mahon said.

Yet joining the FBI's team to fight that war is like no other job interview. Candidates face a daunting gauntlet of tests.

Everything is up for grabs: their credit history, ability to do push-ups and what their next-door neighbor or old boss has to say about them.

Job candidates can't be older than 37 and must pass several rounds of hurdles, including a four-hour written exam, an hourlong interview, a polygraph lie detector test — when they're asked about drug use, among other things — and a 1.5-mile timed run.

Survivors go into a 17-week training course at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Va., where they take yet more physical and written exams, undergo firearms training and learn physical defense techniques.

The squeaky-clean, smart and physically fit recruits hired can make as much as $85,000 a year. They also find job security, something not easily found in today's economy.

“Unless you really screw up bad, you're never getting fired,” Buechner said.

Agents are required to retire by age 57and then receive “competitive” retirement packages, Berry said.

But the job isn't for people who won't work weekends and odd hours or aren't committed to the FBI, Berry said.

“People have to have the desire and passion to do this kind of work,” Berry said. “This isn't for somebody who just wants a change.”

More people who have that passion emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, he said.

“It's based on patriotism,” he said. “They want to come in and fight the fight. Fight the terrorism fight or the cybercrime fight.”

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[freeflir29 0]

Yep...FBI...Geeks......birds of a feather.