One of the most frustrating things about being an IT professional in the Baltimore/DC metro area is that there is an abundance of contracting jobs available if you have a security clearance.  Having a security clearance gives you the ability to work for many of the federal agencies in the area.  You can be a God amongst IT professionals in your area of discipline but unable to find work because you don’t have a security clearance.

If you do a quick search on a job board like Careerbuilder.com, you find many job listings requiring some type of security clearance.  You may say to yourself, if I am qualified to do the job, a contracting company will have no issues with helping me get a security clearance. Unfortunately, many contracting companies are reluctant to arbitrarily sponsor a perspective employee for a security clearance.  Sponsoring an individual for a security clearance is a long and expensive process. For those few companies that do sponsor individuals for security clearances, the individual usually ends up having to sign an indentured servant document stating if you decide to leave for another contractor, your current company can take legal action against you.

There are three general levels of security clearances: Confidential, Secret and Top Secret.

Confidential refers to material which, if improperly disclosed, could be reasonably expected to cause some measurable damage to the national security. The vast majority of military personnel are given this very basic level of clearance. This level needs to be re-investigated every fifteen years.

Secret pertains to the unauthorized disclosure of secret information could be expected to cause serious damage to the national security. This level is reinvestigated every ten years.

Top Secret pertains to individuals with this clearance who have access to information or material that could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security if it was released without authorization. This level needs to be reinvestigated every five years.

If you are an IT professional who has one of these clearances, especially Secret and Top Secret, you are sitting in a pretty sweet spot.  I remember a few years back, I worked at a federal agency with this recently retired Army Ranger who happened to have a Top Secret Poly clearance. He liked working at this federal agency because the job was low maintenance. During one of our breaks he mentioned that this recruiter had been bugging him to interview at another federal agency because they needed a system administrator with his clearance.  The former Army Ranger wasn’t interested in being a system administrator because of the demands of the job and knew he wasn’t qualified.  He told us that he would go to the interview just to get the recruiter to leave him alone, and to make sure he didn’t get the job he would show up to the interview wearing shorts.  You can imagine our surprise when the former Army Ranger told us that they made him a six figure job offer on the spot, and offered to send him to MCSE training at no cost.  He had a change of heart and decided to take the job because the salary was too good to pass up.

If you are one of those individuals like myself without any security clearances, you are pretty much screwed as a contractor for many government agencies.  You will have to really dig deep to find the government agencies that only require a Confidential “Public Trust” clearance to work as a contractor.  The Food and Drug Administration and Department of Treasury have a few departments in which one could find an IT job as a federal contractor.  As for myself, I decided to stop trying to look for IT  jobs as an federal contractor.  I made a lot of good friends and had a lot of fun during my time as a federal contractor.  As with most things, they must come to an end at some point.  I figure this would be a good time to switch gears and pursue other interests.