The Secret Service is looking to hire 4,000 new employees by 2028, a year that will include the presidential election and the Olympics.

The added agents would increase the size of the agency by 20%, bringing its numbers to more than 10,000 for the first time, The Washington Post reported.

According to a plan led by agency Deputy Director Matthew Quinn, the hiring initiative aims to expand its special agent ranks from about 3,500 to about 5,000. Secret Service officials also want to add hundreds of officers to the Uniformed Division, for a total of about 2,000, and hire additional support staff.

An attempt to reach 10,000 employees over a roughly 10-year period ending in 2025 failed amid agency leadership turnover, disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic, and hiring restrictions during the Obama administration. Despite offering some of the biggest financial incentives of any federal law enforcement agency, the Secret Service fell far short of recruitment and retention goals.

“Our mindset is, we aren’t going to pay our way out of this,” said Quinn, a longtime Secret Service official who returned to the agency in May after working in the private sector for several years. “We can’t create enough incentives to negate the fact that we’re working our people very, very hard.”

Quinn said he and Secret Service Director Sean Curran are making hiring a top priority, second only to protection, and that senior administration officials have backed them.

“The protective mission has expanded,” Quinn said. “Our numbers are low to meet those needs. We have to achieve what we said we were going to do 10 years ago. We’ve got to achieve it now.”

The Secret Service in November held its first accelerated hiring event in which candidates complete assessments over several days, including a physical fitness test, a security interview, and a full polygraph.

The Secret Service’s chief human capital officer, Delisa Hall, said that historically, those assessments have taken months. She added that about 350 candidates out of nearly 800 who attended the first event advanced to the next phase.

“It’s becoming evident that this may be our new normal to push applicants through,” Hall said.

Secret Service officials said they have compressed the timeline for a job offer down to less than a year from the previous 18 months or more, and hope to cut the timeline by about another four months. Previously, because of the long wait, some candidates have withdrawn from the hiring process or taken positions with other agencies that moved more quickly.

Hall said the agency is recruiting from the military, law enforcement, and college athletes and that it’s staying more engaged with applicants to keep from losing people along the way.