Defense Intelligence Agency: Position-Related Assessment Factors - Assignment Example

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Position-Related Assessment Factors Introduction: This paper is a personal position ment in response to the 'Defense Intelligence Agency' (DIA), the USA, mandatory requisition for job applicants to 'Agency's Entry Level Program'. The particular requisition demands that applicants describe their experience and/or academic background pinpointing highlights in their careers that can make them desirable to the Agency as entrants. This particular assessment factor also requires candidates to explain how the highlights of their existing can assist them in future to be of effective usage to the Agency. The second factor the paper posits for the benefit of those in the Agency who would take note of it in lieu of assessing the candidate's supremacy as a potential entrant to its entry level program is requires the candidate to state why she is interested in making her future career at the Agency. The paper now goes forthright to posit the two assessment factors. Experience and Academic Background: Academic Background Background: 1. Bachelor of Arts in Geography, International Studies Concentration (2003) Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; 3.96 GPA; Graduated with Highest Honors; Minor in Russian and East European Studies 2. Primary Leadership Development Course U.S. Army 3. Linguist Training (Russian) Defense Language Institute, Monterey, California 4. Current French Coursework Alliance Franaise, Chicago, Illinois Experience Highlights: Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana Staff Assistant, Office of Multicultural Affairs, 2004-Present Skillfully support administrative staff in coordinating and executing all activities of Multicultural Affairs Office. Educate students, parents, faculty, and staff regarding available programs and services. Work with internal and external vendors to schedule, coordinate, and execute departmental meetings, conferences, catering requests, and guest speaker arrangements; secure travel arrangements and itineraries. Administer departmental budget reports, organize files, distribute mail, and handle phone inquiries. Supervise, train, and motivate 4 student workers. Structured extensive database of multicultural resource materials as well as database of scholarship, internship, and grant opportunities. Planned successful multicultural orientation for first-year students. Updated and maintained departmental Web site and e-newsletter to improve student and faculty access to information and services. Worked closely with vendors to create eye-catching promotional materials for programs and conferences. Implemented online registration option to streamline registration process for student-led conference. Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana Student, Geography / International Studies, 2001-2003 Successfully pursued comprehensive course of study as Honors student in Geography and International Studies minoring in Russian and East European Studies. Completed coursework and gained expertise in specialized areas to include Geography of Europe, Geography of Russia and Newly Independent States, Geography of the Caribbean, Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East, Travelers and Explorers of Central Asia, World Regional Geography, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Gained substantial knowledge of geopolitical characteristics and socioeconomic issues of Russia, Eastern and Western Europe, Central Asia, and the Caribbean. Researched, authored, and presented well-received projects utilizing GIS site analysis tools and technologies. Honed solid working aptitude for GIS, cartography, and spatial analysis technologies, strategies, and techniques. Created effective and informative PowerPoint presentations outlining regional and cultural geography of Russia and Turkey. Bayer Corporation, Mishawaka, Indiana Promotions Representative Specialist, 1998-2003 Facilitated marketing initiatives by delivering topflight customer service to clients. Provided informed responses to queries regarding promotions, troubleshooting potential issues and verifying order information. Precisely processed customer and retail rebate submissions and reimbursements, tracked and reported fraudulent rebate activity, and maintained comprehensive customer records and files. Collaborated with supervisor to write, edit, and launch ISO 9000 procedures. Awarded company recognition for processing $1M+ in customer and retail rebate submissions per year. Authored and distributed rebate identification manual for outside vendors. Significantly reduced fraudulent activities by developing and implementing system upgrades to optimize integrity of database files. Substantially improved customer response time by introducing effective new "find it fast" file system. Enhanced promotional check system, improving timeliness of check payment process. Tasked with training new hires in winning customer service and marketing strategies. Selected to serve as second in charge of department during supervisor's absence. Additional Experiences: U.S. Army, Wiesbaden, Germany Russian Voice Intercept Operator (8-year honorable tenure of service) Traveled internationally to locations including Germany and Saudi Arabia in support of military intelligence gathering operations. Trained, supervised, mentored, and evaluated team of 11 Russian voice operators working within $243M facility, ensuring swift mastery and application of classified intelligence-gathering systems and security protocols. Collected, translated, summarized, and reported voice intelligence data to senior decision makers and NSA; handled all storage and disposition of classified materials with consummate accuracy, timeliness, and integrity. Partnered with intelligence analysts, intercept operators, and other members of intelligence community to facilitate optimal completion of all assigned tasks. Trained and directed key intelligence support activities of 18 Kuwaiti civilian nationals during deployment in Saudi Arabia in support of Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Maintained Top Secret Security Clearance (TS/SCI). Earned numerous awards and accommodations for consistent performance excellence. Skills Representation: Now that the candidate has put down her experience and academic background highlighting her achievements she is ready to illustrate qualitatively how her present skills can be of full assistance to the Agency's present operations and its future objectives and aims. It is notable firstly that the threat environment to the United States of America, and to the global community in a larger sense, has escalated from a relatively fixed and familiar one in the Cold War era to one that is presently treacherously shifting and immensely unfamiliar. The DIA terms this as 'Irregular Warfare' (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 7). To combat this increasingly erratic pattern of threats the Department of Defense (DoD), the United States of America, intends to develop a 'Defense Intelligence Enterprise' that is comprised collectively of all the defense intelligence communities within the DoD and their stakeholders. The DIA has been allotted the responsibility of spearheading this enterprise and thus requires capabilities that relates across a wide range of activities that are increasingly been drawn to the operational centers from the previously-existing centralized defense intelligence structures (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 7). Operators within the Agency, which is construed in future as a nodal one within the defense community, will thus have to acquire and sustain as wide a range of capabilities as the Agency may require. In the DIA's present focus on the global war on terrorism (GWOT) and its aim to eliminate threats from production, deployment and implementation of weapons of mass destruction the Agency requires operators enabled efficiently to collect, analyze and produce 'actionable' intelligence that can, in turn, assist in efficient decision-making to combat threats that may arise anywhere at any time. The candidate notes, in her context, that threats emanating from irregular warfare elements and others are presently perceivable not only on U.S. home territories but also abroad. The candidate notes here that her long experience at multicultural skills such as proficiencies in the Russian and French languages combined with her geographical skills, especially her IT (information technology) ones, enables her to combine both strategic foreign geographic features with cultural ones. She notes that her abilities to work on a diverse range of current software that enables gathering, analysis and deployment of geographical spatial and cultural data combined with her cultural abilities, her foreign language capabilities especially, makes her an ideal candidate for operating for the Agency in a desired foreign locale. She also notes that her aim and objective in learning the multicultural skills was forthcoming from a desire to know such alien cultures with empathy and that later interactions with foreign nationals on foreign soil, especially in the Netherlands, Germany and Saudi Arabia, have been effective and amiable. Here again the candidate notes that Agency operations in foreign lands (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 19). may not only interface with hostile elements but also friendly ones from whom assistance may be derived for achieving prevailing Agency objectives. It is notable that threats may become perceivable both at the assimilation stage as well as at the analysis stage when an operator derives intelligence data from what may seemingly be interpreted as a normal environment. The candidate notes that her experience with the US intelligence services in the past has made her familiar with the structured environment these agencies work in and has enabled her to understand how to allow discipline to assist her in efficiently dispensing with her responsibilities. She also notes that she maintained throughout her 8 year tenure with these agencies 'Top Secret Special Compartmented Information Clearance', which demonstrates her abilities to sustain complete integrity at all times. She also served both actively and in reserve status and has abilities to supervise and train others within the required disciplined ambience. Furthermore, her work experience with both army and private agencies prove her prolonged sustenance at management and organizational skills. The candidate furthermore puts out that she is skilled at enhancing performance from existing operational levels, as she did at Bayer, and that she serves well at public relations with good skills at building rapport and communicating clearly and effectively. She notes that this last, combined with her multicultural and language skills can enable her, as in the past, to deal effectively with foreign nationals when working abroad for the Agency. The candidate notes that the Agency is presently engaged in implementing a fully integrated Defense Intelligence Enterprise that is networked and enabled by a Information Technology architecture (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 11). In this context it is notable that innumerable innovative strategies are likely to be devised and put into action and the candidate's penchant at innovation combined with her other capabilities is likely to be of great assistance if she is signified for a post either abroad in a foreign locale or at home where she can specifically use her multiple skills to train operatives, both US nationals and foreign ones, and later on, after successful completion of their training, supervise their operations. She especially believes that she can assist immensely by thriving in an environment of change by bringing in and settling down new practices that are likely to be put into place (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 18). soon throughout parts of the Agency. The candidate also believes that, provided her multicultural skills are being utilized in an appropriate part of the Agency, she can also assist in customer relationships (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 17). in which she does have ample experience. This is in context to intelligence customers who may be both US and other nationals. Above all the candidate emphasizes that her specific skills at multicultural capabilities combined with her capabilities at collecting and analyzing data, especially the geographically implicit type, can enable her immensely in assisting the Agency to develop, implement and operate strategies that can, in turn, discover, share, apply and build upon a knowledge base that is a force multiplier (Strategic Plan, 2007, p. 21). in the sense that it keeps progressively snowballing into effective combat against the Agency's GWOT. Candidate Mission Statement: The candidate will now explain why she would like to join the Agency and assist the United States of America fight adversaries against her and the democratic ideals she represents in the world. The candidate notes that American freedom is well-derived and that it upholds democracy with its effective application both on American soil and abroad. Thus, the candidate would like to assist her homeland in preserving these democratic ideals that the land's forefathers and her present leaders have so carefully put into place and persevered at upholding and representing. She believes that her current skills set makes her an ideal individual at doing this by joining the Agency that can prove to be a very appropriate one to deploy her said skills. Her skills, combined with her love of defense work, especially the intelligence kind, thus make her an ideal candidate. She furthermore believes that not only will the Agency benefit from her work with it but she also will be able to achieve her ideals that, in turn, strive at defending American democracy that is so cherished at home and abroad. The candidate furthermore believes that her views on diversity in culture are benign ones. She strongly advocates diversity as a cherished quality that must be nurtured and afforded growth. In this context she believes that her defense of American ideals cannot be at odds with multicultural elements both within the homeland and abroad as the same American ideals have been institutionalized with an immense built-in tolerance for other's legitimate points of view. The candidate does believe her affinity for diversity can be of great assistance to an agency that strives to develop internationally. Reference: Strategic Plan, 2007-2012, Leading the Defense Intelligence Enterprise, Defense Intelligence Agency, United States of America. Read More