Linguists: meet the team - Rob

"I had never heard of GCHQ before I went to a careers fair, more in hope than expectation of finding something less frustrating than the job I was doing for a freight company.

I had been using the Russian I learned at university only very occasionally, and I didn't really feel stretched. A casual enquiry at the GCHQ stand elicited a wealth of information about how I could do work of critical national importance, using my language daily, working sensible hours and getting paid better than I was. It sounded too good to be true!

My job involves receiving large amounts of foreign language material, much of it colloquial and broken up, and analysing the content to determine whether it is reportable as intelligence. Once I have extracted the nuggets I translate them and prepare a report, drawing on collateral information and additional expertise from the Intelligence Analysts in the team.

Writing the report is often a joint effort, although we all have our own specialisms and I have direct contact with my customers in Whitehall. That's the beauty of this job - you get more responsibility as your experience and knowledge increase, and now I am fully involved in the whole process of obtaining intelligence requirements from customers, through the analysis of material, to issuing the end report. It's especially satisfying when you get positive feedback from a customer that your report influenced British government policy!

The people I'm working with are great, too, and have been very supportive in helping me to settle in. Everything is team-based and inclusive, and everyone is highly motivated, feeling valued at their contribution to national security. Much of my initial training has been on the job, but I have also been on a couple of courses to hone my analytical and reporting skills. I have developed plenty of outside interests and contacts, so it's a good job I can work flexi-time, to allow me to pursue them all!

It's only a couple of years since I was paper-shuffling lorries around Europe, but that all seems so long ago now. It's a cliché, I know, but I really look forward to coming into work every day, not knowing for sure what new challenge you will face. As to the future? Well, I could retrain in another language, or in time I could expand my horizons by applying for one of a number of posts advertised in our internal bulletin. For now, though, I've got some projects on the go that are too interesting to hand over!"

Top of page