Friday, March 9, 2012

How Many Entry-level Intelligence Analysts Do The Business And Law Enforcement Communities Need This Year? (Survey)

Good questions, right?
 
If you have direct knowledge of information that might help answer the question in the title for business or for LE or you have indirect knowledge that is relevant to the answer to the question in the title, please take 2 minutes to complete
 

What do I mean by direct and indirect knowledge?
Direct knowledge means that you know personally or have good information concerning the hiring plans of your agency or organization (or at least your section or division).  You might work in HR or be a manager with hiring responsibilities.

Indirect knowledge is information that is relevant to the question that is not due to your direct responsibilities.  You might have spoken with an HR manager or have been involved in meetings where this issue was discussed.

We are NOT looking for opinion based on purely circumstantial information.  If you are not involved in the hiring process either directly or indirectly, please DO NOT take this survey.  
If, however, you know someone who does fit the descriptions above, please forward this post or the survey links to them.

Why are we interested?
 
Every year, other disciplines announce hiring projections for the year:  "This year's hot jobs are for engineers and chimney sweeps."  That sort of thing.  Entry level intelligence analysts who are searching for a job, on the other hand, receive no such guidance. 
 
We hope to change that.  Working with one of our hot-shot grad students, Whitney Bergendahl, and my colleague and marketing expert, Shelly Freyn, we put together these surveys to get a better feel for the the job market for entry level analysts for the year ahead. 
One of the questions you might have regards our definition of "intelligence analyst".  This means something that is more or less clear in the national security community but, in both the business and law enforcement communities, it is a bit more muddied.  In fact, very few jobs in either community are actually labelled "intelligence analyst".  I leave it up to you to decide if the jobs you are likely to have fit a broad definition of "intelligence analyst".  What I would ask is, if you think you might be employing intelligence analysts (no matter what the job position is actually called), please, at least take a look at the survey -- and then fill it out if it seems appropriate.
Once we get enough survey data, Whitney will compile it and combine it with the macro-level, mostly qualitative data that we already have and put together a "jobs report" for the year ahead for both communities.  I will publish them here once we are done.
 
Regular readers of this blog know that we have already published our report on job prospects for the US national security intelligence community.  These two new surveys will allow us to cover all three of the major "intelligence communities".
 
Thanks for your participation!