Security Clearance Protocol

Some of the most sought-after jobs on the market are those that require a security clearance, be it a confidential, secret or top secret designation.

But there is a common misconception about securing one of the very valuable clearances, as evidenced by this job seeker's question:

Is there a way to obtain a security clearance on my own? I need it to apply.

Unfortunately for job applicants, the simple answer is no, you can't do it by yourself.

Evan Lesser, director of clearancejobs.com, which lists 5,000 jobs needing a security clearance, says, "People obtain them on a need-to-know basis. You have to be sponsored by the government or by an authorized federal contractor."

Typically, Lesser says, contractors hired by the government's Office of Personnel Management can do preliminary background checks for new workers within two weeks to two months so they can be granted interim clearances. These initial checks would typically include electronic criminal and credit reviews.

However, he says, more formal background checks, which might include interviews with an applicant's neighbors, friends, relatives and co-workers, can take about a year to complete. He says those granted an interim clearance have a "fairly good chance" of being handed a full clearance.

Obviously, he says, the fewer dings you have in your life history -- such as poor credit or perhaps a drug conviction or multiple traffic violations -- the better off you are when the investigators start poring over your background. But he says such indiscretions are not necessarily a block to winning a clearance.

If perhaps, he says, "you do have financial issues, then fixing financial difficulties is definitely helpful. The time frame of [problems in one's background] is pretty important. Investigators will mostly look in the past seven or eight years for a pattern of behavior. They look pretty heavily at whether you have stopped doing whatever you were doing."

Confidential clearances are good for 15 years, secret designations for 10 and top secret for five, at which point the clearances are subject to review. If you leave one job that requires a clearance and want to keep the clearance, you have two years to find another job mandating a clearance, Lesser says. Beyond that, he says you would have to start over on the clearance process.

At the moment, he says there are about 200,000 vacant jobs worldwide connected in some way to the federal government that require a security clearance and about 40,000 to 50,000 of those are in the Washington area.

He says the Washington area has "the highest concentration of security jobs on the planet."

Kenneth Bredemeier has six years of experience writing about the workplace. On the Job, a column addressing real worker questions about office relationships, corporate policies and workplace law, is written exclusively for washingtonpost.com.

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