Our job is not to bring justice to the most wanted.
Our job is to bring the most wanted to justice.
The new CBS drama "FBI: Most Wanted"
tells the stories of FBI agents in action.
It's one of the most coveted jobs in law enforcement,
but how do you become an FBI agent?
According to one former FBI agent
who now teaches at the college level.
The first thing I say, in all seriousness,
is to stay outta trouble, number one.
Because there are automatic disqualifiers.
Certain drug use, certain kind of crime,
non-payment of taxes, those are the basic disqualifiers
and they're automatic.
Assuming you've kinda stayed outta trouble,
you can go into the Bureau in a variety of ways.
The quickest way to become an FBI agent
is to have a specialty, an expertise,
a skill that they need posthaste.
Like a language that they need right away,
whether it's Sicilian, Farsi, Arabic.
That's the kind of skill that can get you into the Bureau
faster, perhaps, than any other skill,
but it is by no means an exclusive route
to become an FBI agent.
Shapiro says you shouldn't rush
into a career at the Bureau.
The best strategy is to sort of develop your own life,
your own brand, your own experience, your own niche
and then apply after that.
Like, if you wanna be a special agent,
well, go out after college and work a couple years
doing whatever you want, whether as a public accountant,
as a lawyer, as a journalist,
and then apply if you're still interested.
The FBI prefers to have people,
sort of the special agent role, in their second career,
because they're most mature,
they're gonna stay there for the 20 years.
And that's important, to develop that expertise,
to develop the relationships among other agents.
Why is all that prior experience important?
Former FBI agent Tim Clemente has a story.
I had a guy that was on my squad that grew up in Israel,
his first language was Hebrew,
who lived in Argentina, spoke Portuguese, Spanish,
also studied Greek, Ancient Greek
and Ancient Latin languages because he was an archeologist.
He was fluent in nine languages,
but he could decipher any language on the planet
based on that experience.
Now what does that do for the FBI?
Well, when he came to the FBI,
he became an incredible expert.
You could look at a picture of something
that a terrorist took anywhere in the world
and he could identify what period architecture
was in the background, the type of sand and dirt,
where it might be.
He was incredible on crime scenes,
not to mention a language skill that was vast.
That means one thing
a perspective agent must do is hit the books.
If you study something well and study it deeply,
you also learn other skills,
research, writing, communication,
and those skills are important as an FBI agent.
Study hard, learn some things, but also be sociable.
Sociability counts.
The FBI agent's best friend is a tipster.
The FBI agent's best asset
is being able to get people to talk to him or her.
So don't ignore the social aspect of living,
it's very important.
The FBI tests its applicants
in a variety of ways.
There are written tests, physical tests for fitness,
there are basic weapons tests for firearms,
and there is the background test,
and also there are interviews, right?
Where a group of FBI agents will sit down and talk with you
and say, "Well, tell me about yourself.
"Why do you wanna become an FBI agent?"
Of course, you don't have to be an agent
to work for the FBI.
But there're also many,
most other positions in the Bureau
are not special agent positions, like intelligence analysts,
forensic accountants, computer scientists, language experts.
So there's a whole lot of other ways to work in the Bureau.
The FBI recruits from so many different backgrounds,
at so many different ages and so forth,
from photography and journalism to special agents,
lab technicians.
you know, honestly, just about anybody can find a role
for him or herself in the FBI.
(dramatic instrumental music)
We find out what's behind her,
we find out his next move.
This is InsideEdition.com.