I will be conducting an interview with my father who is currently an employee for the FBI. The
main goal of the interview is to try to get an understanding about his life as an FBI employee
and if he would recommend it to a college student desiring to work for the agency.
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What is your current job title for the FBI? Management and Program Analyst
How long have you been working for the FBI? 32 years and retiring at the end of this
year
What degree did you get to work for the FBI? I have an undergraduate degree in
Business Management. I originally didn’t want to work for the FBI but his school
held a job fair and he just had a good conversation with the recruiter and the rest
is history. He also stated that a lot of people assume you need some kind of
degree in criminal justice but that isn’t the case. “You can have an art degree and
have just as good of a chance at getting the job” he said.
What made you want to work for the FBI? His father was in the navy and it really
showed him how meaningful and honest it was to serve the country everyday for
work.
Would you ever have to work longer hours than you expected and if so when? For a
time he worked in the white house to do background checks for people on the
team of newly elected political candidates. So around the time of elections he
would always have to work overtime and occasionally on weekends but that was
when he was lower in the rankings.
Do you find yourself having enough time outside of work to participate in your hobbies
and spend time with the people you love? Enough time, obviously there is never
enough time in a day for someone to be satisfied with the amount of time they
spend doing their favorite hobbies like for me is golf.
Do you enjoy your job? He wouldn’t say he enjoys his job but when you have a
family and people to take care of in his own words he said “It’s not a bad gig by
any means”
How is the work day outside of the actual work? Way better than you would think,
maybe I got lucky but there isn’t a single coworker or boss that I can genuinely
say I don’t like and in most cases the bosses are way more understanding than I
assumed they would be. I even eat lunch with my bosses a couple times a week, I
feel like I have real friends at work.
Is the job anything like how it is portrayed in the movies? Maybe about 5% of the
things seen in movies are accurate to real life. Whenever he is asked this question
he always answers with the same thing, “ FBI agents aren’t as pretty as the actors
and cases aren’t solved in a day”
Would you recommend this job to a college student considering this career path? I don’t
want anyone that will read what I say to change their mind based on what I say but
I will say that joining the FBI was the best decision I ever made.
Even though I was interviewing my father, so almost every conversation we have tends to flow
well and feel natural, I tried to leave that bias at the door and interviewed him like I had no idea
who he was and how he acted. For example I knew what degree he has and that he doesn’t
think the movies portray the FBI well at all but I had to ask those questions like I don’t know who
he is like everyone else who would read the answers to my questions. I tend to use a lot of
probes in my everyday conversations so that was very easy for me to do in the interview.
Nodding and things of the sort is almost a habit for me so I caught myself doing that a lot while
he would answer the questions. There wasn’t much interpretation needed for his answers to the
questions I asked but I did really need to leave the bias at the door for at least the questions I
asked so that was the best way I could use self-reflexivity. Once again I tried to establish rapport
in ways that would seem odd talking to your father but normal when interviewing someone you
didn’t know, for example I shook his hand and said my name is Joey and I will be interviewed
you today about your profession and if whether or not you would recommend it to a student like
me. My findings were a qualitative interpretation. I didn’t take many field notes because I did
record the interview so I just went back and wrote a simplified version of his answers. There
weren't many patterns I could notice but if you could watch the video of the interview you would
be able to see that he was smiling a lot. Bias aside from knowing how he acts after work he
seemed to genuinely care about his job and doesn’t mind waking up at 5am everyday for it. I let
the interviewee do most of the talking and he didn’t officially answer yes or no to the question of
would he recommend his profession to a student but he said it was the ebay decision he ever
made so it was a very simple interpretation that he would recommend it to everyone.