FBI Replaces Jobs Website With One Dutch Courthouse Window

The FBI has announced a fictional emergency replacement for its online jobs portal: effective immediately, every person seeking federal employment must submit an application through Window 4 at a courthouse in Rotterdam, Netherlands, between 9:15 and 9:22 each Tuesday.

The move follows the Dutch detention of a suspected member of ShinyHunters, the cybercrime group that recently claimed to have compromised the bureau’s hiring site. Rather than repair the portal, officials said the bureau had elected to relocate the entire American federal hiring process to the one place where the internet has already been asked to remove its shoes, empty its pockets, and wait behind frosted glass.

“The courthouse window has a proven security architecture,” said a fictional FBI human-resources official, standing beside a printer labeled DO NOT CONNECT TO WI-FI. “It is operated by a person. The person is behind glass. And if the glass is compromised, there is additional glass.”

Under the new protocol, applicants will receive a laminated travel packet containing a boarding pass, a number ticket, and a six-page affidavit confirming they have not attempted to upload a résumé from a coffee shop. Candidates for analyst positions must bring their own black pen. Candidates for special-agent positions must bring two black pens and a notarized statement that neither pen has ever met Salesforce.

The plan hit an early complication after bureau recruiters learned that the court had ordered the suspect held for 90 days, turning the courthouse into the only federal hiring site with a stricter processing timeline than the federal government itself. The FBI responded by classifying all open positions as “pending glass,” a designation that allows agencies to preserve a vacancy indefinitely while repeatedly asking whether the applicant has checked spam.

To handle the expected volume, the bureau has hired a Dutch parking attendant as acting deputy director of talent acquisition. Applicants who arrive without exact change will be offered a choice: reschedule their security interview for 2029 or accept a career-track position alphabetizing subpoena attachments in a windowless office near Cleveland.

By late afternoon, officials said the system had successfully processed its first applicant: a cybersecurity specialist who was immediately asked to prove she was not a bot by finding the courthouse window in person.