A Guide to Navigating Security Clearances in Hiring

Whether you’re an employer filling a sensitive role or a candidate seeking this type of position, the security clearance process can seem daunting. Here’s how to navigate it with confidence.

A security clearance is an official determination by the government that an individual is eligible to access classified information. For employers in defense, intelligence, federal contracting, and adjacent industries clearances aren’t simply a checkbox. Rather, they’re often perhaps the single most important hiring qualification.

There are three primary clearance levels:
Confidential – Access to information that could cause damage to national security if disclosed. Reinvestigated every 15 years.
Secret – Access to information that could cause serious damage. Reinvestigated every 10 years.
Top Secret (TS) – Access to information that could cause exceptionally dire damage. Reinvestigated every 5 years. Often comes with a Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) designation resulting in a TS/SCI credential.

For hiring managers, knowing which level a role requires (and understanding the implications of each) is the foundation of an effective clearance related recruiting strategy.

The Clearance Process: A Timeline Employers Must Plan Around
One of the most common mistakes employers make is underestimating how long the process takes. The investigation varies widely depending on the level requested, the applicant’s background complexity, and current government processing backlogs. Here’s a general framework to follow:

• Confidential: 1 – 3 months
• Secret: 2 – 6 months
• Top Secret / SCI: 6 – 18+ months

These timelines are averages more than guarantees. A candidate with foreign contacts, extended time abroad, or financial issues in their history may take longer to process regardless of their professional qualifications thus it’s essential to build clearance timelines into your workforce planning. If you need a cleared employee in seat in 90 days, hiring someone who needs to initiate a TS clearance from scratch is almost certainly not the right path.

Hiring Cleared v. Clearance Eligible Candidates
Employers face a fundamental strategic choice at the outset of every cleared hire. Do you require an active clearance, or will you sponsor a candidate who is clearance eligible?

Hiring for an Active Clearance
Candidates with active clearances are a finite and very competitive resource. They tend to command premium salaries and have multiple options in front of them at any given time. The advantage here is speed as an active clearance holder can often be onboarded and productive much faster, especially if the clearance is in proper scope and requires only a brief reinvestigation.

Sponsoring a Clearance Eligible Candidate
If you’re willing to sponsor, your talent pool expands dramatically. A clearance eligible candidate is typically a U.S. citizen who hasn’t held a clearance before who has a clean background that encompasses criminal history, financial issues, foreign influences, and substance abuse patterns. Sponsoring comes with certain costs (time, government fees, and the risk of denial), but it’s often the right call for difficult to fill technical roles where cleared candidates are scarce.

Understanding Adjudicative Guidelines: What Actually Disqualifies Someone?
The government uses 13 adjudicative standards to evaluate clearance eligibility. Employers and candidates alike benefit from understanding them, because many assume that any blemish is a potential dealbreaker when, in reality, context and mitigation matter a great deal.

The 13 guidelines cover:
• Allegiance to the United States
• Foreign influence
• Foreign preference
• Sexual behavior
• Personal conduct
• Financial considerations
• Alcohol consumption
• Drug involvement
• Psychological conditions
• Criminal conduct
• Handling protected information
• Outside activities
• Use of information technology systems

The most common disqualifying factors in practice are financial issues including significant debt, bankruptcy, or unexplained wealth. Drug use (particularly recent marijuana use, despite state-level legalization) and undisclosed foreign contacts or dual citizenship also are primary reasons for dismissal of consideration. Adjudicators are trained to look at the person as a whole when considering these possible red flags. A candidate who disclosed a past drug issue, sought treatment, and has been clean for years may be cleared while and individual who hid the same issue and was later discovered may not be.