MI6 comes in out of the cold with adverts for modern James Bond`s

It's not the way they recruited James Bond, but times have changed in the world of espionage. For the first time since its creation nearly 100 years ago, the Secret Intelligence Service is openly advertising for staff in the British press today - reports The Guardian.

Dubbing MI6, as the agency is more commonly known, as "The World's Intelligence", it says it is seeking administrators, officers, analysts, linguists, and those with experience of information technology. Under photographs of people in the shadows with an aircraft and palm trees providing a hint of the exotic, the ad says the service operates "around the world to make this country safer and more prosperous".

In contrast to the days when it relied on being what one of its former chiefs called a "softshoe service", MI6 is now rather less coy. "Whether we need a thoroughly efficient administrator or an overseas operator in the field," says one ad, "we hire people we can depend on because everyone in the UK depends on them".
Though MI6 launched a website last year, supplying a PO box number where people could apply for jobs, today's move has been described as a big step by intelligence sources. Never before has MI6 advertised in newspapers in its own name.

The agency would not say how many recruits it needed, but it is likely to be scores rather than hundreds. It has a total staff of some 2,000 - the figure is an official secret - and while its budget has been increased, it is smaller than that of the fast-expanding domestic security service, MI5.

After the battering to its image and morale caused by the controversy over the Iraqi weapons dossier, MI6, like the CIA in the US, succumbed to the bidding of its political masters. A postmortem led to a shakeup in its procedures. More recently it was embarrassed by a Russian exposure of a fake rock said to have been used as a covert transmitter by MI6 officers.

The decision last year to launch an MI6 website was partly an attempt to attract recruits from a wider variety of backgrounds, including ethnic minorities, and with different skills. Last night a ticker was running on the website, reading: "SIS has an immediate need for software developers." From today potential secret agents can apply for a job online.

In a carefully worded passage the site explains that "James Bond, as Ian Fleming originally conceived him, was based on reality". It adds: "Staff who join SIS can look forward to a career that will have moments when the gap narrows just a little and the certainty of a stimulating and rewarding career which, like Bond's, will be in the service of their country."

Today's job descriptions were more mundane. Advertising for administrators, it says: "We rely on each one to be accurate and efficient, whether they're maintaining databases or handling filing ... You'll understand that there's little more we can tell you at this stage."

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