There will likely be several hundred applicants for any given job opening, so this is especially critical if you want to succeed. If you have any felony arrests, or even misdemeanors, your application will likely be flagged and discarded before you even have an opportunity to prove yourself as a reliable agent. To work as a secret agency, you need to have an exceedingly clean record. If you hope to embed as an undercover agent in the future, this can be an excellent stepping stone. Competitive intern programs are available for students studying foreign policy or law enforcement, and the agency tends to hire from this pool of applicants in the long run.

In the US, you might try to get an internship with the CIA as a student.

You need to study something that will have you involved with global politics.

Field agents have degrees in all sorts of fields, but language skills, international and policy law, and business administration are all sought-out in particular.

For most government agencies that employ field agents, at least a bachelor's degree is required and an advanced degree preferred. Secret agents don't just sign up straight out of high school, or get plucked from obscurity for their surveillance skills. There's no such thing as an uneducated secret agent.

Get an advanced degree in business, foreign languages, or law enforcement. If you're relaxed, your lie will seem more like truth. Most lie detection occurs because someone gets agitated and anxious.

If you know you're going to have to tell a fib, calm down. To avoid the need for this, practice your excuse and your lie ahead of time so you won't have to stall and give yourself away.

Liars will avoid contractions, re-start sentences, and often repeat the question verbatim as a way of stalling and coming up with a suitable answer.

People telling the truth will 'spread out' more. Liars tend to fold up, keeping their limbs in and their body away from others, symbolizing discomfort. Learning to detect lies can help make you a better liar as well. Likewise, if you're the one finding the suspicious behavior, you've got to be able to find the lie quickly and efficiently.

If a secret agent gets caught by security guards at midnight hiding in the records room with a flashlight, he must come up with an excuse or an escape in the blink of an eye and make that lie believable. Learn to detect lies and learn to tell lies.

Secret spy agent pictures