Does your dream job involve flying drones? Infiltrating barricaded facilities? Targeting suspects recognized via security cameras? Telling all your friends you work in marketing?
Then maybe the Mossad is for you. Israel’s top-secret overseas intelligence agency just put out a flashy recruitment video that looks like it was taken from a “Mission: Impossible” video game. The bizarre clip goes from an image of a satellite over Earth to a woman helping her son fly a remote-controlled airplane and then to a man drinking coffee.
From there, we see more images of drones, people checking their smartphones, breaking into server rooms and office buildings, walking across roofs, looking at infrared images, wearing suits. You get the idea.
Throughout, a woman and a man say things like “My job isn’t exactly nine-to-five,” “Life is what you make of it” and “All my friends think I’m in marketing.” Sometimes, the two supposed agents speak in unison and sound like a robot.
The video leads a website launched to recruit Israel’s best and brightest to the Mossad. The site is also available in English, French, Russian, Arabic and (of course) Farsi.
A form that seems oddly like a BuzzFeed quiz asks which qualities best describe you (sociable? highly self-confident? fond of routine?), how you prefer to spend leisure time and the like. It puts the image of a fingerprint on the answers you choose. Answer some questions about work, education and travel records, fill out some security questionnaires and a medical history, and — Mazel tov! You’ve applied to be a Mossad agent.
The sleek site and special effects-laden video are part of a change the Mossad has gone through since its early days, when its director was identified by only an initial and the agency clandestinely sought out specific recruits.
The first open recruiting campaigns began more than a decade ago, and now the Mossad is upping its game — perhaps to compete with the start-up ecosystem that’s poaching Israel’s prize minds. In that vein, the video may be aiming to show that a life of secret missions is more enticing than days spent in front of a laptop at a Tel Aviv cafe. Though either way, it seems, you’ll get to drink coffee.
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