Candidates appeared for interviews severely under-prepared and their level of knowledge, as demonstrated in interviews, was “unacceptable for someone wishing to join the ranks of the DGSE”, said the report.

On Thursday the paper cited a DGSE report, which said that the performance of candidates during the selection process “revealed critical shortcomings”. The remaining two positions equired fluency in Arabic.īut, according to the British newspaper The Times, the French spy agency struggled to fill the positions. Of those 14 positions, 10 required advanced knowledge and understanding of foreign affairs and geopolitical developments, while two sought candidates with logistical and administrative expertise. The staunchly reclusive DGSE sent recruiters to job fairs across France -mostly at universities- and began advertising its job vacancies online, primarily on YouTube and LinkedIn.Īs a result of its efforts, the agency said that it received 400 applications for 14 positions that were advertised in January. To do so, it launched an unprecedented recruitment campaign, which French security experts described as nothing short of revolutionary. Last year, the agency announced that it planned to grow its personnel size to 8,500 by 2022. By 2019, its staff size had grown to over 7,000, including many thousands of operations officers serving secretly abroad. In 2008, it employed fewer than 4,500 people. It is tasked with procuring secret political, military and economic information from foreign targets.ĭuring the past decade, the DGSE has nearly doubled the size of its personnel. The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, known as DGSE, is France’s equivalent to the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency and the United Kingdom’s Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6.

France’s primary external intelligence agency has expressed frustration with the overall poor quality of job applicants, as it tries to expand its staff by 20 percent in the coming years.

Spy agent job