They primarily do. Someone else on the thread says they do some industry hires, but everyone I know who worked there was recruited from engineering school.
I know a few people who went in as experienced hires, but the NSA in particular is happy to do high-paid contracts if you have the appropriate skills, so most of their actual employees seem to be straight out of school.
They primarily do. Someone else on the thread says they do some industry hires, but everyone I know who worked there was recruited from engineering school.
I remember a bunch of TLAs approached most of my friends in college, but never took an interest in me.
At the time I thought, "That's stupid. I'm the best phreaker in this NPA!" Later I realized this might be a liability, not an asset.
There are many pathways and schools internally for the different directorates.
Most programs are partnered with outside schools, with some giving you course credits for internal classified work and only requiring a few outside unclassified courses to fulfill needs. Many of these are MS degrees. I got one through one of these programs. Which come in handy with restrictions on promotions / positions based on ed reqs.
but they generally are not the type to be filtered by an email domain requirement.
They are exactly the type to filter by something as "trivial" - 99% of their target audience is Math nerds with .edu emails.
The other 1% will go the other 99% of the way to acquire the needed materials to satisfy the target condition. Which in this case, is a room-temperature check compared to the challenges.