How To Write An Awesome Resume, How to Organize Your Internship Search, How To Make Money While You Are Waiting And Other Advice For The Job Hunter (Link List)

It has been some time since I talked about the unspeakable horrors of the entry level intelligence analyst job search and it will probably be some time before I re-visit that particular issue.  Here are some useful sites to tide you over while you wait:

Top 10 Ways To Rock Your Resume.   Lifehacker has put together a good list of their advice to resume writers.  It is an excellent place to start.

Create A Master Resume For Easy, Targeted Applications.  If you are a college student you should be reading Hack College.  If you know one, forward them this link.  It is one of the best blogs for useful advice about how to get the most out of the college experience and this post is a good example.

MeganMcCollum.com.  Resumes, they are a changin'!  Meg McCollum, one of our recent grads, is on the job market again and took a very different approach this time to the traditional resume for analysts.  It is worth a look if only for some ideas (of course, if you are looking to hire an extraordinary young analyst, you should take a look in order to offer Meg a job...).

RezScore.  This site allows you to upload your resume and get feedback on how good or bad it is.  It actually gives your resume a letter grade!   Even if you are hesitant to upload your resume to the site, you still want to take a look at the "A", "B" and "C" resumes available on RezScore's home page.

The Idealist Guide To Non-Profit Careers For First Time Job Seekers.  While not written with intelligence analysts in mind, this online guide provides a wealth of useful guidance for all entry-level job seekers.  In addition, I find that many people who are interested in intelligence jobs are also interested in serving their country or their communities in other ways.  This guide is even more useful for those students.

Organize Your Internship Applications With A Spreadsheet.  Internships not only help secure a job, they are also one of the best ways to help you figure out if intelligence analysis is right for you.  These internships are typically pretty difficult to find and to get, so multiple applications are a necessity.  This useful tip from Hack College (again) is worth exploring if you find yourself submitting multiple internship applications.

8 Websites To Get Tips On Job Interview Questions And Answers.  After the applications and the resume comes the interview.  These sites offer some helpful tips for managing that part of the job hiring ordeal with equanimity.

5 Salary Comparison Tools For Your Next Job Search.  Another handy list from MakeUseOf.com

A Mind Map Of 100+ Tips For Using LinkedIn More Effectively.  Most students are familiar (too familiar?) with Facebook.  In my experience, though, the social networking site that might actually help you get a job is LinkedIn.  Becoming actively involved in LinkedIn's various groups and taking advantage of its tools for building a professional network are things most students simply do not know how to do.  The mind map, available for download from this site, does a good job of organizing and outlining many of the tasks you can accomplish with LinkedIn.

The Monster List Of Freelance Job Sites.  One of the big problems with a career as an intelligence analyst is waiting for the clearance process to be completed.  While the wait time for this has gone down over the last several years, it is still an unfortunate fact of life.  Rather than working at Wendy's, recent grads often have skills they can use in the freelance world.  This list of sites is essential for these kinds of short term job searches.

Make Money In Your Spare Time Doing Simple Online Tasks.  Another way to help fill some empty months with a little bit of cash flow.

Any other sites I have missed?  Leave them in the comments!

Make Better Presentations, Use Language More Effectively, Pronounce Foreign Words Perfectly And Generally Become A Better Analyst (Link List)

I am determined to play catch up for months of ignoring some really good websites and some really useful tools that have come across my desk:

50 Tips For Better Presentations.  I have always liked Clive On Learning and this list of 50 tips is a pretty good example why.  Some are a little obvious ("Keep off the booze") and some I disagree with ("Spare the thanks"  -- though I do agree that a lengthy introductory "thank you" is unnecessary) and some are clearly from hard-earned experience ("Use humor with caution").  Whatever your level of experience, however, you will find something of use or, at least, interest here.

50 Rhetorical Devices For Rational Writing.  After years in the business of both intelligence and teaching intelligence analysis to students, I have come to think that the art of rhetoric needs more emphasis.  Understanding these tools can really improve your own writing but can also let you better understand the tricks that others are pulling on you.  My favorite?  Litotes.

8 Online Pronunciation Guides That Help You Speak Words Correctly.  Nothing destroys your reputation as an analyst faster than mispronouncing foreign words.  It sends an immediate signal that you are not an expert in the area you are discussing.  While some of these sites are designed to help you pronounce English words better, several of them also offer good foreign language pronunciation guides.

Copy, Paste, Map -- IssueMap.org.  This new tool from, of all places, the Federal Communications Commission and FortiusOne, allows users to relatively painlessly move data from a spreadsheet to a map.  It looks both pretty cool and pretty easy to work with.

The 6 Best Free Online Meeting Tools To Collaborate With Your Team.  While probably not very useful for analysts trapped inside various "bubbles" around the world, these tools might be very helpful for business professionals (particularly entrepreneurs) or student teams working on various projects.

A final tip of the hat to MakeUseOf.com which provided two of today's links -- it is a site worth subscribing to!

Passport Ownership Cures Diabetes (Analytic Traps)

(A big tip of the hat to Allen Thomson for this one!  Besides having an obviously  keen eye for learning opportunities, Allen is known for his exhaustive source documents typically hosted on the Federation Of American Scientists website.  You can see some of his work on the Israeli Strike on Syria, the allegations of cooperation between Burma (Myanmar) and North Korea or even his source report on the Russian Okno and Krona space surveillance systems by clicking on the links.  Note:  These are sizable reports and may take some time to download but are definitely worth it.)


Check out the two maps on the right.

It proves conclusively that passport ownership is a cheap and easy cure for diabetes, right?  I mean, look at the maps!  There is almost a perfect correlation between the so-called "diabetes belt" in the south and the lack of ownership of passports in the same region.  Increase the number of passport holders and the diabetes epidemic is over! 

If you have ever heard the classic scientific warning that "correlation does not imply causation" and did not understand what that saying meant, this is a perfect example.  Just because two things are happening at the same time does not necessarily mean that one caused the other.

Analysts typically spring this trap when the connection is not as obviously flawed as it is in this case.  The human mind is extremely good at seeing patterns -- even when they are not there.

Does correlation never indicate causation?  No, that is clearly false as well.   In fact, correlation is a necessary condition for causation -- necessary but not sufficient. 

The best way to expose this trap appears to be to imagine the counterfactual.  In the case above, imagine what it would be like if all those southerners actually had passports.  Would that, in turn, reduce any of the known risk factors for diabetes?  Unlikely.  It would appear to be merely a coincidence.

Should the analyst just discard the evidence at this point?  The answer is "No" once again.  Kicking back and pondering why this apparent coincidence exists might well yield new insights into diabetes or passport ownership or both.  Even if such thinking might not seem too valuable now, who knows what the future will bring? 

In case you need another example, consider the third chart which shows the rise in global average temperature over time as a function of the number of pirates.  Clearly, global warming is caused by the decrease in the number of pirates. 

For those of you who find this argument particularly compelling despite what I have written, I would remind you that "Talk Like A Pirate Day" is September 19th of each year where you, too, can do your part for the environment...

New Thinking On How AFRICOM Can Help Increase Stability (Strategic Studies Institute)

The Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute has just published what I think is an extremely interesting and insightful monograph about the kinds of engagement activities AFRICOM needs to consider in order to help increase stability in sub-Saharan Africa.

Titled, "Civilian Skills for African Military Officers to Resolve the Infrastructure, Economic Development, and Stability Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa," and authored by Diane Chido, this 56 page monograph contains "a good bit of good thinking" and should be required reading for anyone in the defense cooperation, defense partnership or security assistance communities that support African missions.  

Intelligence professionals should find this volume interesting as well for its exploration, in case-study format, of previous stability efforts in Africa.  The author highlights a number of indicators that probably aren't normally considered but seem to be highly relevant to any peacekeeping and stability operations in which the US might participate in Africa.

It is free to download here.  Worth checking out. 

(Full disclosure:  Diane is a friend and frequent co-author of mine.  I had nothing to do with this monograph, however (she wouldn't even let me see a draft...).  I first took a look at it today and was, as I usually am, impressed with her grasp of the issue and the quality of her recommendations.  As someone who spent several years working defense cooperation issues, I think she has hit the nail on the head.  While I may be biased, I still think that, if you work African issues at all, you owe it to yourself to read this book.)

"Gamification" And What It Means For Intelligence (NewScientist.com)

"Gamification" is a neologism that highlights the increasing tendency to add game-like qualities to serious or mundane tasks in order increase participation or, in the context of education, learning. 

A recent issue of The New Scientist, one of my favorite science magazines, contained a feature article on the trend and produced the nifty video below to explain the phenomena:




I accept the premise that gamification is a hot trend everywhere but recent reporting and my own research suggest that game-based learning has an important role in educating the next generation of intelligence professionals.

In the first place -- if we are honest with ourselves -- gamification of serious or mundane tasks has been around for quite some time now. I have been able to reliably trace the general trend back to at least 1964 (see the first ten seconds of this video) and it probably goes back much further.

This is true in intelligence as well.  Some of the classic cliches of intelligence, such as "connect the dots" and "put the pieces of the puzzle together" are game references.  Furthermore, to the extent that Kriegspiel has an intel component to it, you can push the date back to at least 1812.

Second, and despite the recent press coverage, I don't want to sound all pollyanna-ish about game-based learning. If there is one thing I have learned, it is that this pedagogical approach has its own challenges.

Many educators think like I thought at this time last year:  Games = attention and attention = learning. While capturing the attention of students remains one of the most important yet increasingly difficult elements of teaching, the idea that games = attention deserves some "tweaking".

To begin with, a game is not really a game unless the players enter into it voluntarily. Jane McGonigal in her new book, Reality Is Broken, talks about games as "voluntary attempts to overcome unnecessary obstacles."

In my mind, "voluntary" is the operative word here and voluntarism comes in degrees.  At one end of the spectrum, you have the passionate volunteer.  For this person, playing a game as a way of learning is a real pleasure.   In fact, if this passionate volunteer has played the game many times, they may have already sucked all of the learning out of it but not be aware of that fact because most of the lessons have been taught implicitly.

At the other end of the spectrum lies the person who hates a particular game or type of game.  Getting these aggressively indifferent players ("apathetes"?) to volunteer to play a game, no matter how tangible the benefits, is going to be difficult.  I often use the example of trying to get a 6th grade boy to play a Barbie-themed math game.  It might work, but I wouldn't count on it...

As a professor, I can adjust the level of voluntarism to some degree ("Would you rather hear me lecture or play a game?") but unless I am linking this new sense of voluntarism to an intrinsic motivation on the part of the student, I don't think I am necessarily increasing the learning. 

The focus, then, for game based learning initiatives (both inside and outside the intel community) needs to be as much on the motivations for playing a game as it is on the game itself.  As IARPA kicks off its SIRIUS program next week (with the goal of creating "Serious Games to train participants and measure their proficiency in recognizing and mitigating the cognitive biases that commonly affect all types of intelligence analysis") this is going to be at the top of my mind.

Previous Posts on this Topic:  Teaching Strategic Intelligence Through Games