Cleared hot p1 - Military Transition - Military Times EDGE

Former Air Force Lt. Col. Larry Clifton knows the value of a security clearance. His own cleared status helped land him a job as a recruiter for a big government contractor. Today, he looks to former service members to fill his firm’s most sensitive jobs.

Virtually all military personnel have some level of clearance. “That is going to give you a leg up” for government and government contracting jobs, said Clifton, senior vice president of recruiting and work force planning at CACI International, which provides IT, logistics and intelligence services to the government.

“If we have someone who wants to get a clearance and someone else who already has it, the person who already has the clearance is going to have an edge,” he said. Three-quarters of CACI’s 12,800 employees have some level of security clearance.

Engineers and IT specialists are in top demand, but clearance jobs run the gamut. Any position that’s needed in a big corporation — from the board room to the mail room — may require clearance.

“People think about security clearance jobs and the first thing they think about is espionage, people doing covert work,” said Evan Lesser, director of the job-search Web site ClearanceJobs.com. But he once placed a highly cleared individual in the White House kitchen. That’s “Yankee White” status: Cleared to serve the president.

“This is someone with no engineering skills, no IT skills, no software skills,” Lesser said. “This is a cook.”

Valuable commodity

For those heading into civilian life, chasing jobs that require clearances can pay big dividends. In its latest annual survey, ClearanceJobs.com found that security-cleared professionals working in the Washington, D.C., area earn an average of $97,821 annually. Nationwide, security-cleared professionals earn an average of $92,368 a year.

More to the point: That salary often outstrips the pay received by professionals without clearance. In San Diego, for example, cleared technology workers out earned their non-cleared colleagues by 25 percent.

The financial benefits really start to kick in at the Secret level, Lesser said, and can be worth thousands at the Top Secret level. Professionals with Top Secret clearance earn about $10,000 more than those with Secret clearances, the survey found.

Almost all service members have at least basic clearance, but if you don’t, try to get it before you leave the military, Lesser advises. And don’t miss any opportunity to get a higher level of clearance.

“We tell people who don’t have a clearance but are in the military to look around to see what jobs they can move into,” Lesser said. “We tell them to let their commanding officer know that they are willing to do whatever else is necessary if there is a job available that requires clearance.”

Once you leave the military and start looking for security-cleared jobs, the clock is ticking: Your clearance will expire in two years if you don’t get a job that requires it.

A foot in the door

Want a clearance job? First, you have to get a clearance job. Sounds like typical bureaucratic silliness, but it actually makes sense; the government doesn’t want to hand out secret-level access to folks who don’t need it.

Fortunately, even the Confidential clearance carried by most service members can be enough to jump-start a civilian career, with employers such as CACI ready to help veterans bump up to Secret or Top Secret status as needed.

“Not many jobs require a Confidential-level clearance, but it is better than not having a clearance at all,” Lesser said. “In practical terms, it is a ‘foot in the door’ and a fair advantage over someone with no clearance.”

Get hired for a security-needed job and your employer will initiate the federal paperwork to get you the necessary level of clearance. The process typically takes six to eight months, and sometimes as long as a year, according to Lesser. If you already have a lower level of clearance, it may go a little faster.

During that time, you’ll usually be given work that is close to, but not exactly the same as, the work you’ve been hired to do. You may work on unclassified aspects of your project, or you may assist someone in an unclassified capacity.

“If you fit the position in terms of skills but you don’t have the clearance, sometimes an employer can put you in for an interim clearance,” Lesser said. “That will allow you to get your foot in the door and start working on parts of the project that don’t require that higher level of clearance.”

To speed the process, live a clean life.

During Clifton’s clearance process, investigators looked for all the usual hotspots: Financial distress, criminal activity, substance abuse. Then, he said, they went deeper than some might expect.

They talked to former bosses. They dug into his history. “I remember when I was going for my clearance, the investigators went to my hometown and started stopping people on the street, asking: ‘Do you know him? What’s he like?’”

Investigators want to see solid personalities. And they want integrity. Got a dark spot on your past? Clifton said the smartest thing to do is bring it out up front: “It’s better to come clean in the beginning than to let them find it.”

Nothing is set in stone, but potential deal-breakers are criminal conviction with a sentence of more than one year of jail time, controlled substance issues and serious financial problems.

“The key is the recentness of any issues,” Lesser said. “If they are recent, there will be a potentially higher chance of clearance denial.”

Finding the jobs

If you are cleared already, you may encounter another Catch-22 during your job search.

On one hand, you can’t find a job without putting your name out there. On the other, putting your name out there as a cleared individual may go against the principles of clearance.

“You don’t want to be too public,” said Robert Esti, founder and executive director of the clearance-only job site ClearedConnections.com. “Right after 9/11, the government put out warnings and concerns for candidates who have clearances to be careful where they put their information, because there may be foreign agencies out there looking to compromise individuals.”

You won’t get in trouble with the government if you advertise your cleared status on a public résumé posted on Monster or Facebook, Lesser said, but you could be setting yourself up as a target for espionage.

How do you connect with firms that hire cleared individuals, while still being discreet about your credentials?

Sites such as ClearedConnections.com and ClearanceJobs.com specialize in this sort of thing and grant access only to cleared applicants and verified contractors and government agencies approved to hire cleared personnel.

There also are job fairs, like those hosted by TechExpo and GovCentral, that are open only to job-seekers with clearance.

Another avenue is to go directly to the big-name government contractors. They’re usually looking for cleared individuals, and you can share personal information with confidence.

Ultimately, Esti said, the surest way to connect with employers seeking clearance applicants is to shake the tree. Network with other cleared individuals. Contact ex-military buddies who may be plugged into the contractor community or may be working for government agencies that deal with confidential information. This alone may be enough to get you where you want to go.

“There is more demand than supply, so having a U.S. security clearance puts you in a place where you just need to let a few people know that you that you are looking for an opportunity in that space,” Esti said.

Timing matters

If you’re interested in government or government contract work, there’s no better time to apply for jobs than right after you leave the military, so you don’t have to worry about your clearance lapsing.

“I see a lot of people who think they have a clearance but they don’t. Maybe they had a clearance once and they lost it,” Clifton said.

Other applicants may think they can easily obtain a new or upgraded clearance, only to be surprised. “With today’s economy, people can get into trouble. They may lose their house, and that is definitely something [investigators] will look at,” Clifton said.

That said, a lapsed clearance is not an automatic dead end.

If you once had clearance, “that gives the employer some indication that you could potentially obtain another one,” Lesser said. “It shows that you are clear-able, which means your chances of being cleared again, or cleared to a higher level, are probably increased.”