Security clearance application wizard12/29/2023 ![]() Despite rumors that one college party or big gambling loss will preclude workers from consideration, adjudicators use a “whole person” philosophy when deciding who is suitable for a security clearance, Lesser says: “The government is looking for a pattern of behavior,” he explains. No one mistake will prevent you from getting one.Īccording to the State Department website, the factors adjudicators consider are: allegiance to the United States foreign influence foreign preference sexual behavior personal conduct financial considerations alcohol consumption drug involvement and substance misuse psychological conditions criminal conduct handling protected information outside activities and use of information technology. There’s also the burden of asking relatives and friends to serve as character witnesses during interviews with investigators. The only cost to workers is time, energy - and the discomfort of having their lives assessed by strangers. You only have access to information at that level pertaining to your job.”Įmployers pay the costs of security clearances. “ People think if you have a clearance you have the keys to the castle, and that’s not true at all. “Former officials maintain them, but that doesn’t mean they can just pull up classified information,” Lesser says. When workers leave those jobs, their clearances are considered “current” for about two years. They’re considered “active” if they pertain to workers’ jobs. ![]() Workers don’t keep their security clearances for life. To access classified information, “the individual must have both the appropriate level of personnel security clearance and a need to know for the classified information,” according to the Department of Defense website. That’s bad news for people who want security clearances, Lesser says, because it means “most employers these days are looking to find someone who already has a clearance rather than pull someone off the street and try to get them one.”Ĭlearances don’t come with unlimited powers. The State Department says it takes an average of 120 days to process a clearance, but Lesser says there’s currently a big backlog, pushing the figure to more than 300 days for low-level clearances and more than 500 days for high-level clearances. That means security-clearance jobs are “an all-50-states kind of thing,” Lesser says. Companies and universities nationwide do work on behalf of the federal system. But the government employs people around the country: 79 percent of its employees work beyond D.C., Maryland and Virginia, according to Governing Magazine’s assessment of data from the Office of Personnel Management. The nation’s capital does have a concentration of federal workers. They’re not just for jobs in the District of Columbia. Other fields include sales and marketing, logistics, health care and, yes, gathering intelligence. “There’s a whole lot of people in the Pentagon that have high-level clearance, but they do things like sweeping the floor or are a security guard at the front gate.” Information technology positions account for a large proportion of the jobs, which include duties such as software engineering, database administration and hardware installation. The reality is most of the jobs are pretty boring, average positions,” Lesser says. “One of the misconceptions is security-clearance jobs are cloak and dagger spy stuff. The federal government is the largest employer in the U.S., which means all kinds of mundane positions require security clearances. Learn more about security clearances with information from government agencies and insight from Evan Lesser, president of, a career website. After this information is gathered, adjudicators who work for different government agencies decide whether an individual is “able and willing to safeguard classified national security information, based on his or her loyalty, character, trustworthiness, and reliability,” according to the Department of Defense website. citizens who apply for this kind of access may have to fill out forms, provide character references for investigators to interview and even submit to polygraph tests. Business & Finance Click to expand menu.Īspiring civil servants may find themselves in need of security clearances to gain government employment or move up in the ranks.
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