2nd Annual Report On Entry-level Analyst Hiring In Law Enforcement Is Out!

If our recent report on national security hiring for entry level intel analysts was bleak and the similar report for intelligence in business was positively rosy, then the annual report for law enforcement (LE) falls somewhere in the middle.


The major reason for the lack of clarity in this particular market is the lack of corroboration of our sources.  One the one hand, almost 66% of those surveyed, all of who had direct or significant indirect information of hiring intentions within their organizations and within LE more generally, indicated that they thought hiring would increase.  The same crowd, when asked about hiring within their own agencies or organizations, however, were much more conservative - only about 28% expected hiring to increase. 

We saw the same effect last year and we are still at a loss to explain it.  At first blush, it looks like a simple grass-is-greener effect:  "Everything looks great -- except for right here..."  We think it may be more complex than that for a number of reasons the first of which is that hiring, particularly in small to medium sized LE agencies, does appear to be picking up.  It is something we intend to keep an eye on for next year.

What is more clear is the functions that are in demand:  Crime analysis and cyber remain hot.  What is more interesting, however, is the amount of push-back we received with respect to compartmentalizing functions at all.  As one respondent stated, "While there may be a need for specializations in Federal Government agencies, I think most small to mid-sized agencies will continue to need analysts [with] a combination of skills..."

Written by Greg Marchwinski (the author of this year's other two reports), the entire document is well worth the read!