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Spies can’t work from home — and that’s hurting recruitment in Germany

  By [20]Victoria Bisset
  May 23, 2023 at 9:31 a.m. EDT
  Bruno Kahl, president of the Federal Intelligence Service in Berlin,
  says that recruiting is a “major challenge” for the agency. (Sean
  Gallup/Getty Images)
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  Would-be spies face many challenges — from mastering the difficult
  technical or linguistic skills that intelligence agencies seek, to the
  new life of secrecy that awaits them if they are accepted. But,
  according to the head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service, its
  potential recruits have more mundane concerns: the lack of remote
  working and not being able to take their personal cellphone to work.
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  updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine.

  “We cannot offer certain things that are taken for granted today,”
  Bruno Kahl, president of the Federal Intelligence Service, or BND, said
  [22]in a live-streamed discussion Monday. He called recruitment a
  “major challenge” for the agency.

  Remote working is “barely possible” for the agency’s workers for
  security reasons, he continued, and the idea of not being able to take
  cellphones to work “is asking a lot from young jobseekers today.”
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  He noted a lack of recruits for certain roles in science and
  technology, cyber experts and Arabic speakers, and said the BND is
  using “new methods” to recruit within specific target groups. He also
  cited a competition for skilled workers from other, better-paying
  employers.

  “Just three years ago, before [the coronavirus], I could always say
  that we have 10,000 applications every year and can choose the best of
  them — which also wasn’t enough; even then there were deficits,” he
  said.

  The BND did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request
  for comment Tuesday.

  Kahl’s remarks appear to reflect a wider [23]demand for flexibility
  among younger workers since the pandemic, as other intelligence
  agencies across the world adapt to new demands of the modern workforce
  and ramp up their recruitment tactics.

  [24]Gen Z workers demand flexibility, don’t want to be stuffed in a
  cubicle

  Last year, Britain’s three main intelligence agencies — MI5, MI6 and
  GCHQ — [25]announced an end to the requirement for applicants to have
  at least one British parent. Now they must only hold British
  citizenship, and MI6 [26]says on its recruitment website that its
  “flexible working policy means you can work around personal
  commitments.”
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  Earlier this year, the CIA [27]said that security issues leave “few
  chances to work from home or any other unsecured location.” But the
  agency added that it aims to improve flexibility in other ways.

  The CIA has also tried novel approaches at home and abroad, from
  publishing recruitment videos on [28]YouTube to launching a social
  media campaign in Russian [29]to recruit new spies. GCHQ (which stands
  for Government Communications Headquarters) [30]regularly releases
  puzzles for members of the public who want a sense of the challenges
  involved in its work.

  The U.S. federal government has also [31]been seeking new ways to
  attract talent, including job fairs and more internships, as its
  workforce ages.

  A [32]YouGov poll carried out from August to September 2021 in 14
  countries found that 49 percent of workers in Germany would like to
  work from home at least some of the time in the future. In the United
  States, the figure was 66 percent.

  Working from home also comes with certain protections in Germany: In
  late 2021, a federal court[33] ruled that the route from an employee’s
  bed to their desk while working at home is considered a commute.

  [34]Injury on way from bed to home computer is a workplace accident,
  German court rules
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