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James Bond stand aside; French spy service seeks computer geeks, linguists
 [Reuters] France's foreign intelligence service is bolstering recruitment to counter Islamist militants and cyber criminals, but it is looking for computer wizards and linguists not would-be James Bonds.Top of the vacancy list at France's DGSE, the equivalent of America's CIA or Britain's MI6, are posts for young information technology gurus and linguists who master the finer points of Russian, Chinese or Farsi, widely used in Iran and Afghanistan. While publicity is not usually a priority of the foreign spy service (the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, or DGSE), its head of administration said recruitment pressures are changing things. "All kinds of telecoms and IT profiles interest us, from crypto-mathematicians to super geeks," Charles Moreau, head of DGSE administration, told Reuters during an interview at the agency's northeastern Paris headquarters - nicknamed "La Piscine" (The Pool). The DGSE hiring target is 500-600 recruits a year to bring its numbers up to 7,100 by 2019, but the skills required are not those of amphibious frogmen or secret agents of the kind incarnated by the fictional British character James Bond. Today the foreign spy service is recruiting in an increasingly open and competitive marketplace where it has to vie with big industrial groups, start-ups and other top-end recruiters to attract high-fliers, says Moreau, whose remit covers oversight of hiring. Posted by: Besoeker 2017-07-07 |
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