Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Is there a benefit to having secret or top secret clearance? If so, what is it?
Sure - you have the ability to apply for jobs that many don't due to meeting a static requirement.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kinkytoes
OK thanks for all of the responses but I'm still confused. Is it worth it to take a job that has a long commute in order to get a clearance? Does it help in terms of future job security?
I'm not sure there's a specific answer to that. That would depend on various other factors. What's considered a long commute? What's my career goal (is it to stay in a cleared field?)? Pay, conditions, type of contract....etc. In the end, it becomes a personal question.
You certainly can be more "valuable" to some contractors as they can then bid you on upcoming tasks that will require cleared folks. But that also depends on your skills/experience. In the end, it is a plus within certain industries (e.g. defense contracting, Federal consulting, etc.), but there are inherently some minuses with those organizations as well. For example - some live and die on contracts. So that in itself can make it a less secure space to work in.
I don't know that a clearance will provide you any more job security than any other job, but what it does do is open a different set of job options up to you. You can apply for positions that many others cannot. With that being said, if it's a government contractor you will always be a little nervous when it comes time for the contract to expire.
Whether or not someone who is currently not a clearance holder should apply to a job that requires a clearance needs to be carefully considered.
The reality is that many jobs are completely overclassified, meaning that there really isn't any rational basis for the clearance levels required except that those who created the positions decided to err on the side of overclassifying rather than underclassifying.
The uninitiated should be aware that Top Secret, Secret Compartmental Information, and Special Access Program clearances also hold significant disadvantages for the employee. Clearance holders, especially beyond Top Secret, are often very limited in their ability to travel abroad. Any contact a clearance holder makes with foreign nationals, even just causal contact (i.e. there's a new kid in the same class as the clearance holder's child, and a parent of the new kid is a foreign national), has to be reported. SCI/SAP clearance holders have virtually no privacy in their lives (though you could argue that's true for all of us anyway). Your finances, phone calls, emails, physical mail, your vehicle, your briefcase, everything is fair game to be monitored, watched, read, inspected.
TS/SCI/SAP clearance holders can essentially not make any friends outside of work. They need to be suspicious of every new person in their lives, of ever stranger that says anything to them. TS/SCI/SAP clearance holders cannot talk to their spouse, kids, parents about the work which can create significant strain in a relationship. Even if both partners are clearance holders they can likely still not talk to each other about work.
Restrictions that come with TS/SCI/SAP clearances often remain in place for years after you leave a clearance job, or your clearance expires. If you ever held a really high clearance level, and you still work in the same field but lost your clearance, then it may significantly affect your chances of getting another job in that field because people will question what you did to have had your clearance level restricted, or letting it lapse.
Bottom line; you better be absolutely sure that this is the life you want before you apply for a clearance job.
This is good to know. I was offered a job once from Booz Allen Hamilton that required that level of clearance. Since I didn't take the offer, I still have no idea what they were working on.
at my last company, we signed a big project with the US government. it required security clearance so we were actively trying to hire anyone that already had clearance.
for those in the company who were willing to work on that project, we gave a one time bonus. this was because nobody wanted to go through the hassle to get and maintain clearance. i am not sure if it is true but the folks in the company saw this as a career limiting move to get clearance as they felt that they would be prohibited from working at certain companies in the future due to the work that they did here under clearance (e.g. there might be certain multi-national conglomerates that the US government prohibits).
The lack of sufficient reciprocity policies between agencies for clearances and cleared individuals are stupid and thereby limits the benefits.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
