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Subject:Re: Question about security clearance From:Ned Bedinger <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 19 Dec 2008 09:13:35 -0800
Lippincott, Richard wrote:ended to hire
> John Posada asked:
>
>> Hi, guys...when a job requirement calls for Minimum Security Clearance
>
>> Requirement: Sensitive Compartmentalized Information (TS/SCI), is this
>
>> something you already have and bring with you to a position or is it
>
>> something you must get once you have the position?
>
> Everyone who has ever held or now holds a security clearance got it in
> the same manner: we got hired for jobs where the clearance was needed,
> and our employers put in the application.
Richard,
You're talking about private sector employers, I gather, ands possibly
about permanant positions? I think the policies might vary depending on
where your target job opportunities lie in the spectrum that runs from
pure public to pure private employers, and of course the time frame for
which they're hiring.
At any rate, my experience applying for contract tech writing positions
in government labs is different from yours.
According to the gatekeepers who screened candidates for the last
government lab TW positions I applied for, the employers with the jobs I
wanted, which were not sensitive except that they were at gov't
laboratories where sensitive work was done, never took candidates with
no clearance history. They tended to hire ex-miltary candidates who had
had some level of clearance while in the service.
At the time when I was getting this bad news about my lack of clearance
history to date, I probed the screeners carefully for any possibility
that my good qualifications and appropriate experience could get me to
the next step of the application process. The bottom line, as I was told
it, is that it is just so much simpler for them to hire someone with
clearance. The reading I got was not about my qualifications at all, it
was simply that it was not thinkable to hire someone not having a
minimum of some clearance history. Considering that the groundwork for
clearance includes sending gov't people out to do research like knocking
doors in your old neighborhoods and talking to neighbors who might
remember you, it does seem pretty clear to me now why they don't want to
start from nothing to clear a temporary contractor, if not a staff
empoloyee..
My $.02,
Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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