my first "real" job was managing the public computer lab at college, and doing misc IT type tasks. Also part of my job was managing the workstudies that attend

my first "real" job was managing the public computer lab at college, and doing misc IT type tasks. Also part of my job was managing the workstudies that attended the lab and helped students. It was a pretty lightweight job and the workstudy positions had a fair amount of turn over as students moved on. One day I got a call that one of my workstudies had applied for an internship with the NSA and put me down as a reference. They wanted to schedule a meeting with me to talk about the applicant. Up to that point I had received a few reference check calls from companies that were hiring former workstudies, and they never lasted more than 5 minutes, and they never wanted in-person meetings. The meeting ended up lasting over an hour, and not once did they ask me about technical capabilities or job duties. All the questions were about his social connections, personality, narcissism. I realized that this wasn't a reference call but a security clearance screening. A lot of times they asked the same question in multiple ways, trying to trip me up or see if I had inconsistant answers. They also asked questions about me, presumably to determine if I was a trustworthy source. A few years later I applied for security clearance since I had moved jobs to the US Navy, and I had to maintain PC with classified data on them. My clearance level was probably the lowest level because their interview of me was not as probing as what I went through for the workstudy that applied to the NSA (I never heard whether he got the internship.)