Abstract
Private sector intelligence uses a vast array of terminology that obscures the boundaries, clear definition and demarcation of the field. This paper presents original empirical research to analyze job responsibilities and terminology. It first examines 2245 job postings in the UK through an ‘intelligence analyst’ query, then engages qualitatively and quantitatively with 425 global postings. The results reveal that private sector intelligence positions appear under a myriad of titles and descriptions that lack standardization, reflecting a wide array of roles and responsibilities which contribute to a murky recruitment environment. This variability contributes to a ‘grey zone’ of intelligence roles and reflects the need for greater understanding of private sector intelligence functions, to delineate what truly constitutes intelligence in the private sector.
Introduction
As the private sector intelligence field continues to evolve and professionalize, it is critical to understand the job landscape. While the nascent scholarship on private sector intelligence has examined the field’s evolution and professionalization (Sage-Passant 2023; Robson Morrow 2022; Dahl 2018) and, separately, analytical skills (Duvenage 2021; Lewis 2018; Campbell Prestwood 2018), none has yet holistically examined how hiring practices shape the field. Driven by the need for intelligence job seekers to better understand intelligence opportunities, and for private sector intelligence roles and responsibilities to be better captured within intelligence studies and intelligence programs, this research presents and examines two original datasets collected under separate research questions with a common mission: to capture the characteristics of the private sector intelligence job market.
This paper argues that intelligence positions in the private sector appear under a myriad of titles and descriptions that are non-standardized and reflect a diverse array of roles and responsibilities. This has contributed to the conflation of ‘intelligence analyst’ roles with other ‘analyst’ roles such as business intelligence, cyber, or data analyst roles, which could hamper the growth and professionalization of intelligence in the private sector. These hypotheses reflect both practical and doctrinal concerns, which also mirror Wilhelm Agrell’s (2002) assertion that ‘when everything is intelligence - nothing is intelligence’. Two decades after Agrell made this argument, concerns over the meaning and boundaries of intelligence as a profession continue to prevail both in practical and academic terms, amid transformational forces in the field, such as the proliferation of open-source intelligence and artificial intelligence tools in the workplace.
This study treats intelligence as a product, practice, and function, where information is processed to provide actionable insights to decisionmakers based on specific requirements. Emphasis is placed on the ‘intelligence analyst,’ who helps convert that information into actionable intelligence in the public or private sector. We distinguish between risk intelligence and other types of intelligence, such as market, competitive and business intelligence, which are considered outside the scope and boundaries of the security and geopolitical risk-focused intelligence job function.
Contemporary intelligence encompasses a broad array of risk-focused and security-focused functions in corporations and other organizations outside of government, which are the subject of a nascent and growing literature (Dahl 2018). The challenge in this environment is that many jobs termed ‘intelligence’ turn out to be outside the scope of risk intelligence, while others represent classic intelligence analysis or collection roles without ever using the term ‘intelligence.’ These positions appear on job platforms such as LinkedIn and Indeed under a variety of job titles and descriptions that often obscure their true meaning and can confound aspirants to such roles. These platforms employ algorithms that often seem to incorrectly bucket intelligence roles with other unrelated positions—for example, combining ‘intelligence analyst’ roles with ‘analyst’ roles from domains such as consumer pricing. Meanwhile, many true risk intelligence roles appear under a myriad of titles that do not use the term. Understanding the state of the private sector intelligence job market is important for practitioners and scholars alike; practitioners need to understand the places where the jobs market may be operating sub-optimally, and academics seeking to understand private sector professionalization need to understand the job market.
This obfuscation is explored by developing two separate datasets which were analyzed independently and the findings were combined to draw this paper’s overall conclusions. For the first, job postings were manually collected on a large N scale stemming from the search query ‘intelligence analyst’ in the UK between December 2023 to February 2024 on LinkedIn and Indeed. 2245 job postings were collected and then qualitatively coded into themes relating to different areas of work, such as intelligence analysis or data analysis, based solely on their job titles. This phase of the project asked: when the term ‘intelligence analyst’ is queried in jobs databases, what types of jobs are returned and to what extent do the jobs actually map onto intelligence as recognized from the literature?
In parallel, 425 job postings from around the world were manually collected for the second phase. The underlying research question was: what terminology is used in private sector intelligence job postings and what qualifications are being sought? These job postings constituted risk intelligence roles even if the title did not have the word ‘intelligence’ included in the title or job description. Here, intelligence jobs are defined as those jobs that apply intelligence techniques to external operating environments to facilitate strategic decision-making and mitigate geopolitical and security risks (see Robson Morrow 2022). These postings came from intelligence job boards, website postings, and email distribution lists. The dataset was coded for traits and characteristics requested in the job postings, educational requirements, work experience requirements, and job titles to provide insight on the requirements and qualifications within intelligence job postings, and to explore the potential mismatch in intelligence job titles and job descriptions.
This paper first briefly contextualizes this job market confusion by engaging with literature on online job seeking and recruitment, and how the online job market influences the private sector intelligence field. Subsequently, the paper delves into the current state of intelligence as more than a government function, the problems arising with the expansion of intelligence capabilities in the labor market, and thus the professionalization of intelligence – engaging in important definitional, ontological, and professional concerns related to intelligence and the role of the intelligence analyst. Then, the authors set out the methodological parameters of each phase for collecting and analyzing online job postings, clarifying the steps undertaken for each separate phase of research. Next, the authors discuss the broader implications of the results for the intelligence market, identifying a distortion of the online intelligence job market due to ads outside the scope of intelligence analysis, and diverse intelligence terminology and job characteristics that obfuscate the boundaries and requirements of private sector intelligence. This research concludes that there is a ‘grey zone’ of intelligence roles: a job falls in the grey zone if it encompasses responsibilities related to intelligence but also additional requirements that fall outside of the traditional scope of intelligence, which will be explored in detail in this research. The paper wraps up with recommendations for further empirical and theoretical research.
