# How did the US Government hire people pre-internet? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 28, 2011, 8:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054 "2011-10-28T08:13:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2011, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/21 "2011-10-29T20:32:18Z")
Going back to the OP, Amasia writes: \> . . . I realize the federal government has gotten much larger in recent years . . . No, it hasn’t: [http://wiredworkplace.nextgov.com/2010/09/too\_many\_federal\_workers.php](http://wiredworkplace.nextgov.com/2010/09/too_many_federal_workers.php) As you can see, the number of Federal employees rose quickly from 1940 (the earliest date given in this article) to 1970. The number of Federal employees stayed relatively high in the 1970’s and 1980’s. It decreased in the 1990’s. It went back up in the 2000’s. So there are less Federal employees now than there were in 1970. Most of the growth in the 2000’s were related to Homeland Security and Defense. Furthermore, these are increases in the raw numbers. As a proportion of the population, the number of Federal employees is much less than in 1970. ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/22 "2011-10-30T18:03:25Z")
Here, at any rate, intelligence agencies didn’t advertise, ‘connected’ academics talent-spotted people at university and suggested that an approach be made to them. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/23 "2011-10-30T18:10:59Z")
That may have been true at one point in the U.K., but it’s not true anymore. Here, for instance, is the job application website for GCHQ: [http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/](http://www.gchq-careers.co.uk/) Similarly, there may have been a few years after the founding of the CIA in the U.S. when a lot of the hiring was done by professors at elite universities recommending particular students to the agency, but that was long ago and no longer the case. ---
**Author:** ![appleciders](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85f322/32.png) [@appleciders](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/appleciders)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/24 "2011-10-30T18:12:16Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I was amused by the ads from the intelligence agencies that pretty explicitly said that they wanted to hire people to work as spies. > [@Mk\_VII](#): > > Here, at any rate, intelligence agencies didn’t advertise, ‘connected’ academics talent-spotted people at university and suggested that an approach be made to them. Hmmm. My father, a college professor, delights in sending his foreign exchange students to any Federal table at job fairs to request work as spies. Maybe he’s doing more than joking… ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/25 "2011-10-30T22:23:12Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Similarly, there may have been a few years after the founding of the CIA in the U.S. when a lot of the hiring was done by professors at elite universities recommending particular students to the agency, but that was long ago and no longer the case. Within the past year, I’ve seen several TV ads from the CIA, looking for people interested in careers there. Interestingly, these ads were often placed on _Mythbusters_…I suspect they decided that it was the right audience for the message. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/26 "2011-10-30T22:36:11Z")
FYI, [here](https://www.cia.gov/careers/games-information/view-our-advertising.html) is a link to a page on the CIA website that offers samples of their advertising. And [here](https://www.cia.gov/careers/opportunities/clandestine/core-collector.html) is the webpage offering information on spy jobs (double-ought spies, as Jethro Clampett used to say). The jobs are as “core collectors” in the clandestine service. As I said, they used run ads for these positions quite openly in the newspapers. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/27 "2011-10-30T22:43:32Z")
As a point of comparison, [here](https://www.mi5.gov.uk/careers/showjob.aspx?id=80) is the page describing intelligence officer positions with MI5. Neither the CIA nor MI5 seem to pay all that much. ---
**Author:** ![Hermitian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hermitian/32/470_2.png) [@Hermitian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hermitian)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/28 "2011-10-30T23:46:35Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Hermitian, yes, of course all the intelligence agencies both now and as long ago as I know about have always accepted applications from people who sent them in without any previous contact with the agency. What did you think happened, that the agency would go around the country kidnapping people that they considered qualified and bringing them to an undisclosed location, where they told these people that they could undergo the secret test to become an employee of the agency or else the agency would wipe their memory and return them to their homes? There is no mystery whatsoever about how intelligence agencies hire people. They get resumes or applications from people, either by mail, the Internet, or at a job fair. They then hire the applicants according to all the usual reasons that any private company uses - the content of their resumes, what they wrote on their applications, their performance in interviews, their degrees, their grades, their recommendations, etc., plus the results of the investigation for a clearance. > > For your other question, if there doesn’t happen to be a regional federal job fair or a university-based job federal job fair close to you, you just send your resume to the agency that you want to apply to. That was true before and is true now. In any case, basically federal job hiring is very much like hiring for any big company (although it tends to be slower). Yes, I realize that everywhere in the federal government allows people to submit their resume online, that was not what seemed strange to me. The part that seemed strange to me is the idea that you could send a physical resume to the front desk of an agency or a large corporation, and it would actually end up in the right place and be considered for anything. I could be completely out of touch, but I would think that piece of paper would be so far out of the normal hiring “process” of online and/or career fairs, that it would be essentially worthless. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/29 "2011-10-31T00:18:47Z")
I was talking about the time before submitting applications online was standard. Before then, the mail was how an applicant communicated with an employer. In any case, these days applying to an agency starts with either talking to an interviewer at a job fair (or an interviewer in a college placement office), sending a resume to the agency, or E-mailing a resume (or an online application) to the agency. The resume does not go to any individual office in the agency though. The personnel office in the office will look at it and, assuming that an appropriate position in open somewhere in the agency, send the applicant the standard application, either by mail or by explaining to him how to submit an online application. No, they don’t consider an application or a resume sent by mail to be so strange that they would just reject it out of hand. How did you think that things worked before online submission of applications or resumes was possible? ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/30 "2011-10-31T15:23:31Z")
Bear in mind that the government is, effectively, a business - it provides critical services that requires resource allocation (staff, funding, physical assets, and intellectual properties). With very few exceptions, Federal workers are employed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM - the folks who run the USAJobs website). With the dawn of the Intertoobz, the various agencies largely realized that they could more efficiently perform recruitment by “warehousing” their collective hiring efforts under OPM. So, OPM developed this as a service, for which the agencies pay a fee. In many cases, it works like this - Johnny and Janet want to be FBI agents. Johnny uses the USAJobs website to fill out an application, upload a resume, etc. Janet gets the phone number for her local recruiter, who asks her to complete and application, send in a resume, etc. Johnny gets a call from the local recruiter after OPM and FBI determine he meets minimum requirements… Janet gets a call from the local recruiter after her paperwork is found to meet minimum requirements. And then interviews, background investigations, and all of the other fun stuff happens. Same result, with the main difference being that Johnny used slightly less of the FBI’s time by making his submissions electronically (no wasted recruiter time on the phone, no physical paperwork, and some of the document review being performed electronically). Janet just cost the FBI a little bit of money to process her application, but they had to pay a fee to have Johnny’s paperwork processed by OPM. ---
**Author:** ![Keeve](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f07891/32.png) [@Keeve](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Keeve)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2011, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/31 "2011-10-31T15:44:35Z")
> [@Mr.Excellent](#): > > You laugh - but I’m very, very glad that I only entered the full-time job market after Internet access and email became ubiquitous. As difficult as the job search is now, I can’t imagine what it would be like without easy access to nearly-comprehensive jobs databases for my field, or the ability to email resumes and cover letters without having to actually print them each and every time. This is a great example of the “double-edged sword”. Those databases give you a lot more jobs to apply to, which seems great. But that very advantage is precisely offset by the greater competition for those very jobs. In simpler English: When our main source of jobs was the want ads in the local newspaper, we applied to a much smaller number of prospective employers. But our odds of landing a job at one of them was much higher. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/32 "2011-11-01T02:25:10Z")
GiantRat writes: \> . . . With very few exceptions, Federal workers are employed by the Office of \> Personnel Management . . . I assume that by this you mean that Federal workers usually make their first enquiry for employment at the OPM. They don’t of course in any sense work for the OPM (unless their job is actually at the OPM). All the decisions about who gets hired is done at the particular agency where they will work. The OPM merely acts as a funnel for applicants. ---
**Author:** ![GiantRat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@GiantRat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GiantRat)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2011, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/33 "2011-11-01T14:57:50Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > GiantRat writes: > > I assume that by this you mean that Federal workers usually make their first enquiry for employment at the OPM. They don’t of course in any sense work for the OPM (unless their job is actually at the OPM). All the decisions about who gets hired is done at the particular agency where they will work. The OPM merely acts as a funnel for applicants. And administers their pay and benefits. This is why it’s so easy to move from one agency to another - you’re not changing employment status, don’t have to take a reduction in grade, and aren’t considered a “new employee.” “Office of Personnel Management” is not a coincidental name for the agency - when you apply for work you are potential “personnel”; when you work for the G, you ARE “personnel.” OPM is there to find potential personnel, arrange for them to become personnel, and then manage them when they are personnel. It’s not just a [monster.com](http://monster.com) organization. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [November 2, 2011, 2:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054/34 "2011-11-02T02:52:58Z")
Well, sort of. The OPM administers the standard pay grade schedule for the entire U.S. government. They administer the standard health and retirement benefits system for the entire U.S. government. They do not do any hiring or promotion though, but when you are hired by an agency, you know that your pay, promotion, health benefits, and retirement will be handled in a standard way. If you move from one agency to another, your eligibility for retirement and the amount of money you will get during your retirement will be calculated according to the total number of years you spent as a Federal worker. If your agency is downsized and you lose your job, it’s made easier for you to apply for a job at another agency. However, there is no requirement for another agency to hire you if there is an opening. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-did-the-us-government-hire-people-pre-internet/601054.md?page=1)