No matter the track, all entry-level officers spend their first several years working in a consulate, interviewing applicants for United States visas and working with American citizens who need their help.
"We don't want to hire entry-level officers," Muller said.
While the industry is trying to prepare for these threats, John Jay's Nemeth said, it still faces a more basic problem: It is not thoroughly screening entry-level officers before hiring them.
In 2011, more than 2,100 departments chose to use volunteers, according to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and that number has likely grown in the present age of austerity, as local police departments have tanks courtesy of grants from the federal government but don't have the means or desire to pay entry-level officers.
That's the world of entry-level office work.
Mr. Cooper said that an entry-level police officer costs the city about $75,000 a year in salary and benefits, and yet repeated efforts to renegotiate contracts have failed.
At the age of 23, I took a job as an entry-level admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania.
"Those were horrifying days because there were no standards to jail conditions," Van Wickler stated of his experience as an entry-level corrections officer back in 1987.
In China, together with one entry-level Foreign Service officer and three local Chinese employees, Sundwall covered a consular district larger than Western Europe -- and, as he pointed out, "it's much harder to do business in China than in Western Europe".
From a PhD candidate in Pakistan, to a single-mom who just graduated from the NetHope Academy in Rwanda, to an entry-level IT officer in Haiti, young women with IT skills are pioneering their way into the industry in emerging markets, eagerly waiting for mentors and role models.
