The work leads.
No fluff behind it.

What 1811 Blueprint is

1811 Blueprint teaches people how to get hired as federal 1811 special agents. It is written by one person: me, Gary Fletcher, a serving federal criminal investigator and supervisor, 17 years in law enforcement, who completed multiple agencies' hiring processes as an applicant and has sat as a rater on hiring panels. That is the entire basis of authority here. No staff writers, no aggregated content, no guessing.

I keep a low profile by temperament, and this work is about the process, not about me. Nothing here is published on behalf of any federal agency, and nothing here is an official position of anyone but the person writing it. I'm still on the job, still sitting on panels, and that is exactly why this site can tell you how the process works today instead of how it worked a decade ago.

The short version of the story

Almost ten years as a cop, most of it desperate to get out of patrol and into federal work. Four years of applications across nearly every agency that hires the 1811 series. A written test, a physical task test, a panel, a polygraph, a background — over and over, at agency after agency.

Four offers or near-offers before the one I took. One of them came only because I cold-called a field office with no recruiter and got an agent on the phone who told me you couldn't get hired without knowing somebody — and then, twenty minutes into the conversation, nominated me himself.

I also failed a polygraph outright at one agency, and went inconclusive twice at another before passing on the third attempt. I carry a badge and supervise agents today. That is not a war story, it's the single most useful thing I can tell an applicant who is quietly convinced they've already disqualified themselves.

Why this site exists

When I was applying, the only real resource was a handful of internet forums where applicants traded intel. That community is the reason I didn't quit. There is still no good, current, honest map of this process — so I'm writing one.

The other reason is what I've seen from the rater's chair. Qualified people — good cops, good service members, people who would have been excellent agents — lose this process on preparation, not on merit. A missing parenthetical. An interview answer that stopped one sentence short. A polygraph pre-interview handled with shame instead of facts.

Those are all fixable, and none of them are secret. They're just untaught.

How these articles get written

Straight answer, since you should ask it of anything you read now: I use writing tools to help draft these articles. Every fact, every story, and every opinion in them is mine, from my own applications, my own polygraphs, and my own seat on hiring panels, and I review every word before it publishes. The tools save me time. They don't know what the inside of the room looks like.

What you won't find here

• Anything about defeating, beating or gaming any part of a federal screening process. Not the polygraph, not the background, not the test. The advice here is preparation and radical honesty, full stop.
• Protected material — actual scoring rubrics, actual test content, actual internal documents. I'll teach you the principle behind a scale. I won't hand you the scale.
• Guarantees. Nobody can sell you a federal job, and anyone claiming to is worth exactly what they charge.
• Fabricated credibility. No testimonials until real ones exist, no logos I have no right to, no invented statistics.

How to use it

Start with the free checklist — it's the map. Read the field notes for the gate you're standing in front of right now. If your resume is the thing between you and a referral, the Resume Pack is the two-page template plus worked examples, and a review gets my eyes on yours.

And keep training. The physical test is the only part of this process where they hand you the answers in advance.