What Kind Of Intelligence Job Are You Looking For? (Poll)

In addition to this blog, I also manage (with significant help from one of our work-study students -- Thanks, Aleksandra!) several sites on Squidoo. If you are not familiar with Squidoo, it is an easy, web-based tool for pulling together data that resides in various places on the internet into a more or less coherent package on a specific topic.

Several years ago, I put together a "lens" on intelligence jobs, internships and job hunting tips. I did this because students were routinely asking me for advice and I was routinely giving out the same answers, so such a one-stop shop made sense to me.

One of the things I posted to the lens (almost as an afterthought) was a poll asking "What kind of intelligence job are you looking for?" I don't check the site very often but was surprised to see today that some 383 people had answered the question. You can see the results below:

A couple of thoughts jump to mind. The first is that these results track very closely to the kinds of jobs our seniors and second year grad students actually get. Virtually everyone who comes into the intelligence studies program at Mercyhurst has dreams of working for the CIA or FBI. This changes over time, however. The exposure to some of the alternatives (through coursework and internships) encourages many of the students to look beyond these two agencies and at some of the interesting alternatives offered by businesses, law enforcement organizations and other intel agencies. In the end, about 60-70% of any given class goes to work for a government intel agency (or a contractor that supports such an agency) and the rest go to work in law enforcement agencies (other than the FBI) or in business or competitive intelligence -- tracking very closely the results of the poll.

My other thought concerns the consequences that this poll might have for intel studies curriculum decisions. While I suspect that most of the respondents to this poll are related to Mercyhurst somehow, the site is available for anyone to find and I have received a number of comments about the site from non-Mercyhurst students. To the extent that this poll represents a random sample, then, there would appear to be a significant demand for business and law enforcement intelligence coursework and programs. We have always taught all three "branches" of intel here because we think there are synergies between them (e.g methods in one area that translate nicely into another area). Another reason, which this poll suggests is equally valid, is that intelligence studies programs should teach all three branches because students want education and seek jobs in all three areas.