As the largest employer of American citizens, the federal government has become synonymous with bureaucracy. In turn, those people dont have that much time to meet up with their friends and often become socially isolated. A strange detail is that Wolf apparently put strawberry jam in his tea. Decent since you will enjoy free weekends and holidays and will not have to work many extra hours. However, if you are a rather extroverted personality with strong selling skills, chances are that you will find your dream job as an insurance agent since you can combine your passion for selling with your outgoing character and this combination will often lead to significant success in this field. These messages consisted of numbers read out monotonously according to a pre-arranged transmission schedule. Most of the time, you will just sit in front of your computer and stare at the screen or answer calls you might get. M was from a working-class background. A typical art director in advertising agency works long hours. He also has the medal he officially received from the Stasi. Listen to Eleni Braat and Ben de Jong talk about Ms life in an episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast. Disadvantages of being an Insurance Agent Stress and pressure to sell. In fact, you will have a huge advantage in the job market if you have good contacts to people who work in many different companies since they can tell you when positions are going to be vacated and you can therefore apply before other people do and will have much better chances to get the job. Whether its playing games on the Wii, drinking beer from the tap, or getting a little too creative at after work parties, creatives know how to have fun. They have to operate every day so that people who dont have a car can get from A to B. Also make sure to check out the following articles: Advantages and disadvantages of working as a politician, Advantages and disadvantages of working as an air traffic controller, Advantages and disadvantages of working as a painter, https://www.statista.com/statistics/194232/number-of-us-insurance-brokers-and-service-employees/, https://www.statista.com/statistics/422878/annual-median-salary-financial-insurance-real-estate-united-kingdom-uk/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_insurance_agent. He told us: In that world, they just fuck you. Earn Good Money. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), police officers and detectives have one of the highest rates of on-the-job injury and illness. It can be hard to receive recognition when the Account Manager, or the Executive Team, is taking credit for the sleepless nights that you sacrificed. Sure, from time to time, you will also have client meetings. M received messages from the Stasi through short-wave radio transmissions in code from a so-called numbers station in the GDR. How Much Money Does a Lieutenant Make in the Marine Corps? Working in an ad agency can be tough but also beneficial to your career. He wants to find out, in particular, why his East German handlers, whom he had managed to deceive so successfully for so many years, suddenly seemed to turn against him in the mid-1980s. 6) Decent Earning Potential. No gunshots, no bomb explosion, no Stasi dungeon. In later years, he would ask himself these questions repeatedly. Another benefit of a career as an insurance agent is that you can also avoid physical work. His former CIA handler (who M managed to get back in touch with in recent years) advised him in an email: Let it go, man, let it go. But this was clearly to no avail. While some real estate agents work independently, others work for a licensed broker. You have potential for great advancement. By 1985, M was a seasoned double agent and seemingly getting on very well with his Stasi handlers, Wolfgang and Heinz. Others are emotionally scarred by such encounters. Our professionals play critical roles in preempting threats and furthering national security objectivesfrom working against terrorism and cyber-attacks to preventing the spread of biological weapons and more. There is an increasing tendency to recruit people who are older, not just to take them fresh out of university. If one is unable to meet the sales target, his commissions will take a hit. The main benefits of using a commercial agent to sell your goods are: Some of the downsides of using commercial agents are: For more information on how we use your data, read ourprivacy policy. If you learn what drives people, you will have a much easier time, not only at work but also on various other occasions in your life. He became a double agent: by successfully pretending to be a Stasi agent, M would acquire valuable information on the personalities of his Stasi handlers for the Dutch service. The mock arrest and meeting with Wolf were unsettling for M, as he often said during our interviews. In the long run, you may become pretty bored with what you are doing and many insurance agents secretly wish to work in a different field instead. According to M, only treason within the CIA could explain it that a mole within the American intelligence service had betrayed him as a double agent to the Soviet KGB. Hopeful CIA clandestine service officers must also possess strong academic credentials and highly developed interpersonal skills. Their behaviour was rough, to say the least. Resource analyst 9. I think the HVA wanted to find out: How far will this agent go? However, if you have good people skills and your clients will trust you blindly, you will have good chances to succeed as an insurance agent and can make much more than people working in a fast food restaurant and many other people out there. You always carry that around with you. Officers may have to adjust to changes in the government policies and and funding. Every creative is familiar with the nagging worries about a potential creative block. If you like quick organizational change and seeing your ideas rapidly turn into action, you may be unhappy working for the FBI. Even though the medal from the chief of the HVA flattered my ego, it also contributed to mixed feelings. 2010 The Thought & Expression Company, LLC. One of the wedding gifts the Stasi gave him was an exquisite Bohemian crystal vase. The Pay Scale of a Veterans Service Officer. Normally what happens in the services is that the risks are run by the agents the people you, as an officer, recruit. M has avidly documented everything that happened to him, including correspondence, some of it fairly recent, with the three services. Advantages of Being an Insurance Agent. People who are in it for the paycheck are better off working a career in a corporate enterprise. If you believe the pros of working for the FBI outweigh the cons and you'd like to apply for employment, know that the application process is one of the most rigorous in the nation. I had once bought a very nice book of fairy tales for myself in Denmark, and sometime later they gave me a similar book as a present. Agencies are flexible corporations that move at a very fast pace. More and more now, the secret service looks at people who have established themselves in other careers and are looking for a change. Now advances in technology mean maintaining people's covers has become a specialist area and it is a much more sophisticated operation. Even though you may be able to make a decent living from what you are doing, you will still not get rich as an insurance agent. Real estate agents decide how many clients they take on, which means they are in charge of how much they can make per year. Many other people dont have this luxury and will have to work during the evenings. A meeting was simply cancelled, and the door on his spying career slammed shut. Stars on the CIA memorial wall are unnamed, though, and the accompanying "Book of Honor" doesn't list some officers. If you are eager to learn, an advertising agency is the perfect place for you. Working in an agency requires you to work hard and overcome difficult challenges. In this article we at Filestage are going to discuss the pros and cons of working as a creative at an advertising agency. Possible income is a major consideration when choosing any career path. With all of the intelligence policy debates of the last few years, people sometimes forget the CIA has a kinetic, operational role in dangerous places throughout the world. You are given the luxury of networking with other agencies, clients, suppliers, media owners and consultants as part of your business. He was working for a Dutch multinational that we have agreed not to name. Belfast BT2 7ES In fact, there are hundreds if not thousands of insurance products you can sell in many different niches like car insurance, health insurance, life insurance and so on. Great! Copyright 2023 Leaf Group Ltd. / Leaf Group Media, All Rights Reserved. Button spy camera on display at offices of East German secret Police (STASI) Museum in Berlin, Germany. The Career Bliss website says the average salary for CIA special agents is $61,000 annually. CIA clandestine service officers are paid according to federal civil service wage scales. Ability to think yourself out of jams. Ms spying career began in the second half of the 1960s when the Dutch security service, the BVD (Binnenlandse Veiligheidsdienst) the predecessor of the present-day AIVD (Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst) recruited him. On a few occasions, his wife even played an operational role. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and Japanese from the University of Hawaii, as well as a Master of Arts in forensic psychology. So a good operational officer will have six or seven, possibly more, covers and there are specialist departments within those intelligence services whose job it is to maintain those covers. For example, if I wanted to find out about Iranian nuclear production tomorrow I couldn't wander into a facility in that country, no matter how good my cover was. In some ways, this is the most brute force act of cyberaggression out there: you're not altering. When you start off as a young recruit, you think, 'Fine, that suits me.' As an insurance agent, you will also be able to enjoy regular workweeks if you work for major insurance companies out there. M was supplied with a number of fake passports to carry out his undercover work. Most importantly, recent correspondence between M and the Dutch AIVD about access to his file shows that he had been their agent. Disadvantages of using commercial agents. The end of the friendship with his East German handlers and the insecurity and threat that it generated, in Ms words, had a considerable impact on his wellbeing. The operation, codenamed RACKETEER by the CIA, used the Personality Assessment System designed by the agencys former star psychologist John Gittinger. In early 1985, it appeared that the Stasi may have uncovered his deception and his true loyalty to the west. The trouble with any operation is that there is a great deal of preparation and research that has to go into it. As an associate, I may earn commissions from qualifying purchases from Amazon or other programs. For instance, your boss may tell you that you have to sell a number x of insurance products. For instance, a construction worker has to lift heavy stuff all day long and this can be quite exhausting. Sure, not all insurance products make sense and whether one kind of insurance is suitable for you also depends on your individual circumstances. As a young man during the Nazi period, Wolf had lived in exile in Russia, where this is a common habit. Creative agencies are a part of a bigger community of advertising and communication professionals. The Federal Bureau of Investigation had about 35,000 employees in 2017. We shook hands, M told us. FBI investigators will interview your friends, co-workers and family to determine whether you would be a good fit for the organization, and you'll need to take a polygraph and drug test. Might get to have a cool job like doctor/astronaut/CIA agent. How China combined authoritarianism with capitalism to create a new communism, What my 20 years in Afghanistan taught me about the Taliban and how the west consistently underestimates them, Embracing uncertainty: what Kenyan herders can teach us about living in a volatile world. In most cases, a CIA field agent operating clandestinely is a spy and subject to detention,. The number of operations officers, or covert spies, within the CIA is largely classified. In 2016, Ms emotional problems became acute, and he spent a night in an hospital emergency ward. HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:29 Surprising Facts About The Agency Business and Best 19 Agency Software Solutions to Manage Your Agency. How honest is he? Also, I would have put myself in a vulnerable position with the East Germans by saying yes. In other words, M always had to be on guard in his dealings with the Stasi, even with his friends Wolfgang and Heinz. While some insurance companies dont require a college degree, others want you to have at least a bachelors degree. Either way, the interrogation ended suddenly and bizarrely. Creative Agencies balance a plethora of projects simultaneously. Roles that require regular training can negatively affect your family life, particularly if you're gone for long periods of time or have to leave on short notice. You can work indoors. More difficult to make friends [via decreased ability to suffer fools, via not being a fool]. For decades in fact, CIA field agents have operated unseen and unknown in parts of the world antagonistic to the U.S. Vital to U.S. security interests, field work carried out by CIA field agents can also be dangerous. Do All Jobs With the CIA Need to Be Kept Secret? But it is emotionally crushing for officers in the secret services and you can never really share that guilt with anybody. But I can recruit a scientist who is already there. My name is Andreas and my mission is to educate people about the different career paths that are possible in our current state of the world. You do not have any colleagues in espionage, he said. Median annual earnings for real estate agents were 26 percent more than the median wage for all workers, according to 2018 figures from the BLS. nibusinessinfo.co.uk You think about becoming an insurance agent but are not sure whether this profession is the right way to go for you? They look for independent, self-driven people, who do not fit into a particular pigeonhole. Decreased blog hits because no one knows what youre talking about. Indeed, she told us she could see for herself how M was always completely exhausted when he came back home from these meetings, having spent several days in the company of Wolfgang and Heinz. And, depending on your position, it can even put your life in danger. Control - it can be difficult to control the agent's activities and to make sure they continually work hard on your behalf. Thus, no job is the same and job descriptions may not completely fit your individual experiences. Changes in the needs of the government can result in agents being transferred, and not always to a desirable location. Another disadvantage of becoming an insurance agent is that you will also have to deal with many difficult people. No customer will be like the other and youre learning each and every day. As a creative in an advertising agency, you are expected to come up with great ideas on a regular base. 1. The job can strain your family life and psyche. Everything you need to create your best work, delivered from our brains to yours every other Wednesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation: New Agent Training. Increased ability to get high and fuck around through all . Kiplinger: Should You Work for Uncle Sam? He would go on to believe that he had been betrayed. Some agencies are known to have more of a conservative hardworking ideology. While some insurance companies require a college degree, others only require a high school diploma. I thought even if I move on from this, it's got to be a once in a lifetime opportunity and it will be interesting to find out what the job is really about. New special agents must also undergo a 20-week training course at the FBI academy. I was a double agent after all, I was also a traitor. CIA operations officers must also be able to obtain security clearances. The trouble is that even though the rules have been slightly relaxed now certain members of your family are allowed to know you can never discuss details of operations or what's happening with particular agents. Passionate about communications and client relations. Insurance companies may also set pretty ambitious goals for you which you have to meet. 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