NSA turns to smart phones for recruitment

Having a smart phone may give you an advantage if you’re looking for a job with the National Security Agency. The agency on Jan. 13 announced the launch of two new smartphone applications that are part of NSA’s largest hiring effort in recent years.

The NSA Career Links Smartphone application—which is available for download through iTunes—delivers real-time NSA updates directly to the user's iPhone. This includes information about available employment opportunities, career fairs, and agency news. Users can also view videos highlighting NSA employee experiences, according to an agency announcement.

NSA is also employing smart phone tagging on many of its print-based recruitment advertisements. That will allow smart-phone users to scan tags in the print ads, which will then show them a video connected to the ad.

“This fiscal year for us is going to be a tremendous hiring year. We are looking for people in the science, technology, engineering and math skill fields,” said Kathy Hutson, NSA associate director for human resources. “Our need for these skills is enormous; therefore, we need to be using cool high tech tools.”