Essay Example on FBI Struggles to Hire Agents Despite Recruitment Enhancements

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is a government agency that is tasked with improving national security. The FBI performs different functions aimed at providing intelligence that can help law enforcement authorities to prevent crimes and apprehend criminals (Kessler, 2016). In the recent past, the FBI has been faced with the challenge of recruiting new agents into the force. The problem continues to escalate each year with the agency failing to hit recruitment targets despite enhancing efforts to recruit more agents. The FBI's failed recruitment numbers is a challenge that must be addressed to prevent cases in the future when the force has agents. The problem of law numbers is something that needs to be investigated to come up with solutions that can help increase the number of successful agents in the future. The FBI's failed recruitment numbers can be attributed to an improved economy which has made FBI jobs unattractive.

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The FBI jobs are no longer unattractive to the youth because of economic issues. Previously, the FBI was one of the lucrative organizations to work for which saw many applications seeking to work for the agency. According to the Wall Street Journal, the number of applicants seeking to be FBI agents has dropped from 68,500 to 11,500 since 2009 and 2018, respectively (O'Neil, 2019). The drop in the number of applications is alarming since the agency is finding it hard to fill up annual positions that are required to offer services effectively. Experts have blamed the drastic decline in the number to the growth of the economy, which has increased job opportunities to the youth (Rohrlich, 2019). Several jobs are coming up that offer competitive pay compared to the FBI. It is for this reason that the majority of the youth prefer to work in other sectors compared to the FBI. The problem has seen the agency increasing the allocation for advertising to be able to reach out to more potential applicants. As long as the economy is growing, it will be difficult for the agency to find enough recruits who can fill up various positions.

The strategic planning of the FBI to address the issue will involve a data analysis to understand the issue better. The dominant data analysis methods that are used in strategic planning are descriptive and inferential analysis. The two methods allow an analyst to compare different sets of data to identify the mean, median, frequency and mode (Ott & Longnecker, 2015). The descriptive analysis provides a comparative analysis that ensures the problem can be examined to find lasting solutions. The inferential analysis focuses on correlation, regression and variance. The analysis is crucial in establishing the relationship between data sets and how it affects the variable in question (Ott & Longnecker, 2015). The inferential analysis makes it easier to eliminate factors that do not relate to the problem variable. It is easier to establish the causes of the problem and how it affects the issues at hand.

The specific strategic planning data-analysis methods that will be employed in this case are descriptive statistics and content analysis. Descriptive statistics are used for quantitative data, which provides a comparison between one industry and the other (Meeker & Escobar, 2014). In this research, the data that will be used for the analysis will represent other institutions that are finding it easier to recruit. The analysis based on the median, frequency and the percentages will allow the analyst to compare and offer suggestions to the reasons why there exists some variance. Qualitative data can better be analyzed using content analysis method. Content analysis allows the researcher to look into the finer details of documented information, making it easier to draw parallels on the issue in question (Meeker & Escobar, 2014). The two methods are crucial in strategic planning as it allows the researcher to analyze the problem from a multivariate perspective to develop recommendations that can address the issue.

The recommendations derived in the strategic plan, such as increased allocation of resources to the department and massive advertising campaigns can be implemented to address the problem. The implementation by increasing budgetary allocation to the agency will ensure that the salary and other rewards to agents are improved, making it competitive in the market (Woog, 2014). Enhancing advertising to attract more recruits can help in increasing the number of applicants. The recommendations should be evaluated after implementation to assess their viability in solving the problem. The evaluation will identify areas of improvement to better increase the number of FBI recruits (Woog, 2014). The ethical issues that are likely to arise in this case are using pay increase as an incentive to attract recruits to the agency. The nature of FBI jobs should not be induced but rather left for the recruits to decide.

The strategic plan should be concerned with ways that can be used to improve the number of recruits at the FBI. The research questions that can be used in this case are: does improved pay attract more recruits to the agency? Does advertising influence the recruit's decision to join the agency? The analysis of the data collected can also be done using descriptive, inferential and content analysis methods.

References

Kessler, R. (2016). The Bureau: the secret history of the FBI. St. Martin's Paperbacks.

Meeker, W. Q., & Escobar, L. A. (2014). Statistical methods for reliability data. John Wiley & Sons.

O'Neil, L. (2019, Feb 27). Not so special agent: FBI struggles to attract recruits. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/feb/27/fbi-struggles-to-attract-new-recruits

Ott, R. L., & Longnecker, M. T. (2015). An introduction to statistical methods and data analysis. Nelson Education.

Rohrlich, J. (2019, March 5). The FBI is doubling its ad budget because it can't attract enough new agents. Quartz. Retrieved from https://qz.com/1564750/how-the-fbi-hopes-to-finally-fill-its-many-open-positions/

Woog, A. (2014). Careers in the FBI. Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC.