I want to work with the FBI as either an Experimental Forensic Psychologist, Forensic Psychopsychologist, or (most likely) a Criminal Profiler. I’m thinking of majoring in Psychology and minoring in Neuroscience and then, for my graduate, Psychology and, eventually, for my doctorate, Clinical Psychology with a postdoctorate in Forensic Psychology unless Forensic Psychology is offered. Is this a smart plan?
Believe it or not, we get this question on this board so often that I’ve actually bookmarked the FBI’s page on this.
Based on the FBI’s current career paths on their web page, they don’t hire clinical psychologists to be criminal profilers - or even have a specific job as a “criminal profiler” or “forensic psychologist”. Instead, it seems that the path is that you have to become an FBI Special Agent first, then eventually make the transfer to the Behavioral Analysis Unit, the FBI unit that does FBI criminal profiling and analysis. It appears that the average BAU agent was a special agent for 7-15 years before making the jump. So this isn’t something that you can just get your PhD in and then go straight into the FBI.
Check out the eligibility tab [url=<a href=“https://www.fbijobs.gov/career-paths/special-agents%5Dhere%5B/url”>https://www.fbijobs.gov/career-paths/special-agents]here[/url] for more information about becoming an FBI special agent. The most important thing to remember here is that although special agents come from all kinds of backgrounds, there are some backgrounds that are more in-demand by the FBI than others. You can imagine that they are inundated by applications from people with political science, criminal justice, and psychology degrees; they used to have a part up that said specifically that people with those degrees were only competitive if they had graduate education AND some work experience in law enforcement.
Really, your chances of becoming a special agent are actually better if you’ve studied a STEM major or a critical foreign language (think Russian or Arabic, not Spanish or French). That’s not to say that you can’t become a special agent with a social sciences or humanities degree. You just have to be a really competitive candidate with some compelling reason for them to want to hire you.
Also, keep in mind that most people do not go straight into the FBI - most FBI special agents have experience in law enforcement or in the military first, or - in the cases of engineers, scientists, accountants, attorneys and doctors - in their field of practice. So honestly, your best bet for getting into the FBI is serving as a military officer or a detective in law enforcement first.
I friend of mine was a part-time instructor at Quantico. He said that most of the people in his classes were accountants, and having a CPA is listed on the FBI’s website as one of the few backgrounds that allowed someone to apply without prior experience.