London: UK's security services will revert to traditional style of recruiting new spies by tapping them on the shoulder to attract the "best" talent, the new spy chief said on Friday, dispelling the notion that the agency is the preserve of posh Oxford and Cambridge graduates.
MI6, known officially as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), feels the traditional method would be more effective in broadening its ethnic minority recruitments.
Alex Younger, the new MI6 chief, told the 'Guardian' in his first newspaper interview on Friday that he himself was recruited that way and believes it is the most effective way of getting the right candidates rather than those who fancy themselves as trigger-happy James Bond, the fictional MI6 agent made famous in Ian Fleming's books and by Hollywood on the big screen.
"They may well be able to use a revolver. But that is not really what we are looking for. We don't want to be the SAS [Special Air Services]. The brand [James Bond] has attracted a lot of good people. But it has also put off equally fantastic people," Younger said.
"There is a perception out there that we want Daniel Craig [Bond actor], or Daniel Craig on steroids. He would not get into MI6. We need to get that message across because it is so embedded, and we have to get around that. We are between a rock and a hard place between trying to be innovative, while protecting the secret stuff that keeps this country safe.
"We get thousands of people applying. But we need people from a wider range of backgrounds in order to be able to select the best talent this country has to offer," he said.
MI6 will begin a campaign as part of an expansion through which it will grow by up to a third. It aims to recruit hundreds of more agents, bringing its overall staff to about 3,500. Another 900 recruits will go to linked security services MI5 and GCHQ.
Younger's remarks came following the general perception that the agency had become the preserve of posh Oxford and Cambridge graduate spies.
"I'm quite passionate about this. We have to go out and ask these people to join us. Before we were avowed as a service, that was the only way of recruiting people, a tap on the shoulder. That was the way I was recruited. We have to go to people that would not have thought of being recruited to MI6. We have to make a conscious effort. We need to reflect the society we live in," Younger said.
"Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain. Every community from every part of Britain should feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status. We have to stop people selecting themselves out. "We have suffered from group think in the past. We have to get the maximum [number of] differentiated points of view in the room and for people to have the confidence to say what they think. Even if it's not the popular thing to say, even with people like me," he said.
