Spy agency GCHQ targets Shoreditch hipsters
The ads spotted in Shoreditch.Image from Stirling Ackroyd on Twitter. - Credit: Archant
UK spy agency GCHQ has taken to covering Shoreditch in graffiti in a bid to recruit hipsters.
The government’s intelligence agency has confirmed the ads, which read: “GCH-WHO? Technical opportunities”, are real.
The “clean” graffiti which should fade over time, is created using a pressure washer and a stencil, and the ads have been seen all around the Tech City area, which is home to plenty of technology start-ups.
GCHQ, which employs the bulk of the UK’s intelligence personnel, outsourced its initial recruitment efforts to corporate HR consultancy, Penna, with the initiative going viral.
More staff are to be recruited for GCHQ in Cheltenham and the other two intelligence and security agencies, MI5 (Security Service) and MI6 (Secret Intelligence Service).
The decision to recruit an extra 1,900 staff had already been announced by the Treasury days before the Paris attacks on Friday night.
The seven co-ordinated terrorist attacks are now believed to have killed 129 people, with nearly 100 more in a critical condition and hundreds more wounded.
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The three spy agencies will receive an increase in personnel to help them combat “those who would destroy us and our values”, according to PM David Cameron.
The number of spies will rise by 15 per cent in what is expected to be the biggest expansion of the security services since the 7/7 terror attacks in London in July 2005.
A GCHQ spokesman said: “GCHQ is always looking to widen our recruitment focus to reach the people we would like to recruit and therefore we use a range of innovative channels for our advertising. “We look at areas which are likely to contain a high proportion of people who we would like to recruit, in this case people with technical skills and experience.
Some of the relevant jobs we’re currently recruiting for are communications technology analysts, computer network operations specialists and software engineers.” To find out more see www.gchq-careers.co.uk.
