www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_3241529
Email Article Article Last Updated: 11/22/2005 03:34:09 AM FBI turns to UC Berkeley for help softening its image Haas students developing marketing, recruitment plan to rid bureau of sto dgy stereotype By Kristin Bender, STAFF WRITER BERKELEY The FBI is trying to overcome its conservative image to recrui t more diverse employees, and it is using students at one of the world's most liberal campuses to get the mission accomplished. As part of a class project, three dozen students from the UC Berkeley Haa s School of Business are hammering out a marketing and recruitment plan for the nearly 100-year-old bureau, perceived by some as an "old boys cl ub." "One of their objectives is to think outside the box, do something differ ent and get rid of their stereotypical image (of being a conservative ag ency)," said student Sabine Zimmerman, 21. The FBI looked to the University of California, Berkeley whose students are mostly female and more than 40 percent Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to diversify its pool of applicants and find a way to get to "Generation Y," the 18- to 24-year-old age group. "You see FBI agents portrayed on TV and in the movies and it definitely i s that middle-age white male (in the roles). That is definitely not what the FBI is about anymore," said Michelle Woodland, a program facilitato r with EdVenture Partners, the Internet-based consultants working with t he FBI and students on the project. Although applications to the FBI are "way up," Woodland said, the bureau is not attracting women and minorities. "They get a ton of people with law enforcement backgrounds because workin g for the FBI is really the pinnacle of being in that profession," Woodl and said. In fact, those ( people) are not being given preference." Another goal of the class project is to let UC students know that experie nce in engineering, foreign languages, computer science and even mathema tics and history are critical skills for an FBI special agent or crime s cene investigator.
in the marketing class, never thought much about a career workingwith the FBI because "it seems like one of those jobs that they have to come to you, but really you can just go online and apply," Byron said. Students from nine schools around the country, including San Jose State U niversity, are participating in the recruitment effort. With a $2,500 budget from the FBI, students will learn what it takes to r esearch, implement and evaluate a marketing plan. They learn about adver tising by creating fliers and T-shirts using the slogan "Investigate You r Potential" and about how to reach out to the media by designing news r eleases. At the end of the class, students will be evaluated on the success of the ir campaign and the affect it had on Generation Y "It's really difficult to reach that group because they are not watching TV or reading newspapers," Woodland said. "The students really want to f igure out how to reach them." This is not the first time a government agency has come to UC Berkeley lo oking for help with recruitment. The Central Intelligence Agency partici pated in a similar program on campus last fall. "There was a little hesitation on the part of the professor because of th e history of the campus," Woodland said. "They were a little worried abo ut protests on campus and thought there might be some sort of backlash h aving the CIA on campus, but their concerns were a little unfounded."
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