ES Lifestyle newsletter The latest lifestyle, fashion and travel trends Enter your email address Continue Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in Register with your social account or click here to log in I would like to receive trends and interviews from fashion, lifestyle to travel every week, by email Update newsletter preferences

A drizzly afternoon on Shoreditch High Street and on the rain-spattered pavement, among the discarded cigarette butts and tattered XOYO flyers, a hidden message from MI5’s sister service GCHQ (the Government Communications Headquarters) emerges like invisible ink at your feet: ‘GCH-WHO?’ it reads in stencilled lettering. The rain has washed away the pavement’s grime to reveal the ‘reverse’ graffiti, a marketing masterstroke dreamt up by the agency’s recruitment team to entice Silicon Roundabout’s tech-savvy twenty-somethings.

Gone are the days when a tap on the shoulder from an Oxbridge don was the only way into British intelligence services. Now you’re more likely to be recruited when playing video games (this is no exaggeration: GCHQ adverts have been found on Xbox Live online game networks, where pixelated posters for ‘gchq-careers.co.uk’ are pasted on the simulated street corners of titles such as racing game Need for Speed: Carbon). In October, Mumsnet users noticed banner ads for MI6 intelligence officer roles popping up as they browsed Dorset holiday destinations, while East London’s GCHQ graffiti campaign recently took social media by storm.

The approach may sound bizarre, but it seems to be working. John was browsing discussion forums when he stumbled upon canyoucrackit.co.uk, a website set up by GCHQ to recruit code breakers. ‘I spent a bit of time just staring at the webpage and had a flash of understanding when I saw a pattern I recognised,’ says John, 24. ‘From that point I was hooked.’ Online forums lit up with would-be spooks swapping ideas on how to break through. ‘The air of mystery was what most got to me,’ he admits. ‘What kind of challenges would an organisation like GCHQ be designing for people to attempt to break? Was it possible for mere mortals to do so?’ The recruitment tactic worked; he is now a cyber researcher for GCHQ.

The dawn of the internet age and the rise of ISIS have meant the agency has had to reinvent itself, so the need for a new type of tech-savvy recruit to all three of the UK’s spy agencies — MI5 and MI6, responsible for domestic and international intelligence respectively, and GCHQ, which provides frontline defence against cyber criminals and terrorist hacks — has never been greater. Combined, they’re engaged in a public drive to attract 1,900 new intelligence and security staff to help counter the threat of attacks on British soil, bringing the total to 14,600 by May 2020. Although websites encourage applicants with a range of skills, from language to explosives experts, technical skills are a commodity across all three services.

‘In the past, at MI5 and MI6, it was all about people skills — an officer talking someone into being an agent,’ says Gordon Corera, the BBC’s security correspondent and the author of MI6: Life and Death in the British Secret Service. ‘Now they also need staff to be experts in all things online, from analysing data sets to carrying out surveillance by following someone’s digital trail.’

A source at MI5 agrees: ‘These roles are not corporate jobs — they are supporting frontline MI5 investigations into terrorism, espionage and cyber.’ After the Paris attacks, George Osborne announced plans to invest nearly £2 billion to create the country’s first ‘cyber force’ to combat online threats from states and terror groups. ‘GCHQ in particular has a tough challenge,’ says Corera. ‘They need to recruit people with tech skills, who command good salaries in the private sector from firms like Facebook and Google.’

It’s here that the video game ads come in handy, drawing in a younger, more tech-minded demographic. The adverts and videos posted across Xbox Live’s network secured a remarkable 500 per cent spike in activity on the GCHQ careers website. ‘We stayed away from the more hardcore video games, the likes of World of Warcraft,’ says Chris, 47, a member of GCHQ’s recruitment team. ‘The last thing we want to say is: “Well done, you’ve just killed a whole load of people, come and join us.” ’ Last November, spy games went up a level, with 42 prospective cyber security experts competing in a simulated bio-

chemical attack on the Royal Family in Church House, opposite Westminster Abbey, as part of the Cyber Security Challenge UK, a competition designed to bring young and diverse talent into the securities industry. Flashing lights, actors in biohazard suits and trays of energy drinks upped the ante as the code crackers worked to foil the terrorists. GCHQ talent-spotters mingled with recruiters from QinetiQ, BT and the Bank of England, all of whom sponsor the event. Stephanie Daman, CEO of the Cyber Security Challenge, says their aim is to work with the intelligence agencies to narrow the gap between the number of people in cyber security we have and the number we need. Competition winners are often head-hunted by GCHQ. ‘GCHQ helps us with some of the challenges. They will see people they’re interested in. Then conversations go on that we aren’t party to and invitations to interview are given.’

But according to Chris, it’s not just ‘geeks hunched over keyboards’ who are on security service radars — as their targeting of Mumsnetters shows. ‘It’s essentially about the ability to make decisions, possibly when you haven’t got all the information you’d like and you can’t afford to sit around waiting,’ Chris explains. Mothers, he believes, are particularly well suited: ‘Imagine you’re at home, you’ve got a baby, and suddenly it makes a funny noise, coughing, or going a bit red in the face,’ he says. ‘Is it just a bit of reflux, or something more serious? Do I ring the doctor, ring the hospital, or do I just give them a cuddle and sort it out? It’s those sort of decisions that are pretty high impact.’ Mumsnet said it had received more applications than for any other job advertised in the site’s 16-year history.GCHQ also employs more than 300 staff with dyspraxia, dyslexia, autism and other profiles of difference and are actively recruiting more. ‘What we find is that people who have Asperger’s, for example, have a different way of approaching problems,’ says Chris. ‘They have a much more analytical, investigatory mindset. They’re much more keen on seeking out the answers to a particular problem and solving it.’ Dyslexic people often have the ability to see codes with patterns, repetitions and omissions. ‘People who have had to adapt to study often have greater powers of concentration.’

So what can those who respond to these initial advances expect? George, 23, an Oxford graduate, was encouraged to apply as an intelligence analyst after attending a GCHQ careers event. Instead of being given a standard psychometric test, he was invited to an assessment centre in Farringdon. ‘They make it abundantly clear not to talk to anyone about it,’ he says. ‘There were obviously lots of people from the same university. You try to pretend you didn’t see each other.’

He didn’t get any further. Those who do can expect a gruelling testing process. Annie Machon, an ex-MI5 intelligence officer who left the agency with her former partner David Shayler when he turned whistleblower in the 1990s, says the first stage involved a three-hour interview with an intelligence officer on everything from ‘your politics’ to ‘your sexuality’. Two intensive days of written, IQ and verbal reasoning tests followed, along with work on a fake operation and rigorous follow-up interviews with an intelligence officer, a psychiatrist and a senior civil servant. Months of vetting see MI5 contact referees from school, university and work. ‘In the end, you’ll be absolutely wrung out,’ says Machon. ‘But that’s what it’s designed for.’

The drive to diversify continues. GCHQ’s Cyber Summer Schools target today’s spy kids, teaching students about GCHQ’s role in defending the UK against cyber threats while paying them £250 a week (Cyber Exposure, which has a site in South West London, is open from 11 July to 19 August this year to students with five GCSEs, including Maths and English). Last month, they held their first Women in Cyber lecture at Birmingham University in an effort to appeal to more female science students, who, Chris says, ‘are more likely to sit back and look at the wider picture’ than men.

Last month MI5 was named Stonewall’s Employer of the Year, while MI6 was ranked 36. You don’t have to be James Bond to work for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Maybe you prefer a beanie hat to a fedora, maybe it’s your baby’s formula that’s shaken, not stirred. Either way, your country needs you, and it’s not shy about asking.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter: @EsMagOfficial