What are your chances?

There are only about 14,000 FBI Agents worldwide. Special Agents are required to retire after twenty years of service. That means the FBI hires approximately 700 Special Agents per year. That's not a lot. Respectively, that's only about 12 - 14 agents per state, per year. The major hurdle for most applicants is to receive an invite to the Phase I test. If you do take the Phase I test and pass it, there are no guarantees that you will be intived to Phase II. They make it known that only the most competitive applicants will be invited to Phase II. Knowing this, it's a bit sobering when you attend the orientation and meet the other applicants awaiting Phase II. There are a lot of accomplished, successful applicants out there. As I recall, in my group, there was one Naval Academy Graduate, several applicants that had law enforcement backgrounds, military backgrounds, fluency in second and third languages, advanced IT skills, Master's Degrees from highly acclaimed colleges and by the way, I am sure they were all much younger than me. I really thought I was wasting my time at that point and I had a very stong urge to just walk out of that orientation and get back to work. I would have done just that, but one thing stopped me- In order to walk out, I needed an escort to take me from the conference room, through the FBI building, and out to the lobby. I recall thinking to myself that I would probably be the first applicant ever to stand up and say- "Excuse me, but this old lady needs to be escorted out of here." Well, I did not do or say that and I hope you will not either because this old lady did go to Phase II and passed it. So, the bad news is this - The FBI receives 70,000 applications for the Special Agent job each year. As, I said, there are approximately 700 vacancies occuring each year. That means only 1% of applicants are actually hired. But, don't dismay. If you are reading this, you've probably already passed Phase I and in that case, things are actually looking pretty good. Half of the applicants that pass Phase I will be invited to Phase II and of those applicants that attend Phase II, 70% will pass. So, if you have passed Phase I, there is a 35% chance that you will take and pass Phase II.