Hot Federal Jobs in 2006 First on her list: Openings for criminal investigators and special agents at the FBI, National Security Agency (NSA), Border Patrol and US Marshals Service. http://www.military.com/Careers/Content1?file=careersArticlesFederalJobs2006.htm&area=Reference&ESRC=fasttrack.nl
Hot != easy to get. I have a friend who recently got in the door at NSA. Here are his qualifications: He is a retired Army intelligence warrant officer, with degree, and knows many people in the agency from his long work in the field. Despite these advantages, it took a year. He informs me that NSA gets an average of 7000 applications for every opening. Accordingly, they can be as picky as they want. Applicants need to be prepared for a rigorous, stressful, and lengthy application, interview, and qualification process.
NSA = Washington D.C. as does the FBI. Washington D.C. is not exactly my cup of tea, but if you're willing to drop everything and move, more power to ya. BTW....the Border Patrol is always hiring, however I had a friend take over a year to get an academy assignment (get hired) despite their constant need for applicants. Again, be prepared to move, but I like the weather in Laredo better than the weather in D.C.
I did some consulting work a couple years back with Customs (which evolved into CBP) including a few Border Patrol trainees at the academy. All of these positions took months, usually around a year, from the start of the process to the beginning of training. And a lot of these folks still did not take the time to get into decent physical condition before training started. Some thought they wouldn't be hired, others just didn't think it was important until then they got injured from being too out of shape to handle the physical training.
