Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden, author of "Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror," explains what the Central Intelligence Agency looks for in a candidate. Following is a transcript of the video.
Why should we pay more attention to you then to the other 159,999 things I got stacked over here? And so what’s the hook? Second language, life experience, success in whatever it is you’re doing. Foreign travel, living in a foreign country, mastering a foreign language, showing a comfort level, living in a foreign culture. All those kinds of things kinda make you percolate to the top. We got to college fairs. We go to Arab American week up in Dearborn, Michigan. Have a big tent up there where we talk to Americans of Arab descent. We recruit just like any other enterprise. In addition, we’ve got a lot of people who self-identify. Who say that they want to be part of the Central Intelligence Agency. My last full year as director, which would have been 2008, we had 160,000 Americans make genuine applications to CIA. And I’m not talking about clicking on the website. I mean going through all that very intrusive paperwork to make themselves eligible for employment with us.