Australia’s spy agency ASIO will launch a major recruitment advertising campaign next year in a bid to double its numbers.
In 2004-5, 224 new staff joined ASIO—the most ever recruited in one year—taking the total to 955. ASIO will continue to grow at a sustainable rate in line with Government plans to increase its staffing to 1860 over the next five years, as part of the war on terror.
Following the watershed of the 11 September terrorist attacks, government increased funding to ASIO from $62.935m in 2000-01 to $142.852m in 2004-05 and in the last financial year, the agency spent more than $750,000 on advertising—three times that spent in the previous year.
A spokeswoman for ASIO said the group would have an even larger budget next year to run a series of off-beat campaigns to attract people who might not have considered a career as a spy. The agency will also be advertising for people with a particular focus on leadership, investigative and analytical skills, language and cross-cultural training, as well as administrative and information technology training.
“I can confirm we will be carrying out a major campaign but I can’t say which agencies we are using because it is confidential and we do not reveal that information,” she said.
Vacancies will be advertised in the major newspaper of the city they are in, including The Canberra Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age (Melbourne), the Brisbane Courier Mail, the Adelaide Advertiser, the Perth West Australian, The Mercury (Hobart), and Darwin’s Northern Territory News. ASIO will also use the Weekend Australian when advertising nationally.
The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) has also paid for a ‘sponsored link’ on search engine Google to find new generalist intelligence officers and will also talk to universities to attract young graduates.
