<p>Hello
I've just submitted a ton of paperwork for an unnamed government agency which requires high level security clearance for a highly competitive summer internship program.</p>
<p>I would greatly appreciate if you DON'T USE MY THREAD to speculate or head off topic.</p>
<p>I would like to hear from others who may have had S/D go through the process:
- How long did it take?
- Was there follow up issues to address during the process?
- How many of your friends, employers or relatives were actually contacted?
- When did you finally receive official notification that you summer position was secure (obviously I don't want to turn anything else down if this is still up in the air).</p>
<p>Thanks posters to sticking to my questions.</p>
<p>I will not be responding to this thread-- I'm just reading the thread for information.
Thank you in advance</p>
<p>You’ll probably find that the timeframe varies based on where you lived – some regions are much busier than others, so more clearances to process – and on the complexity of your personal situation and that of your family. If you happen to have always lived at the same address (except for college) and have parents who were born in the US and who do not hold dual citizenship, I’d expect that it would go faster than if you lived in a lot of different places (particularly abroad) with parents who immigrated, from another country.</p>
<p>In a nutshell…the process takes a very long time. However, many agencies will grant temporary clearance which will allow you to work while they are conducting the full clearance. You’ll have to check on that. </p>
<p>In our family member’s case, it took time just to get “in line” for the investigators to even start the clearance. I believe once the investigation started they had 30 days to finish it. Then the results went to an adjudication department that reviewed the results of the investigation and gave the final okay. </p>
<p>As far as number of people contacted…lots…friends, teachers, employers, landlords…you name it, they were contacted. The investigators will often ask during their interviews for the names of any other common friends…so then those people will get contacted. In the end, they did not contact everyone on their list. They’re really just looking for patterns in the responses they are given. Once they found out that our family member was law-abiding and fairly dull, they curtailed their calling.</p>
<p>If you look on about.com and search security clearance, you will find some of the best information about this process that I have seen. Specifically, you will be able to determine if you have known issues. This can go a long way toward evaluating the probability that it will go through. I have pointed many people to that site and it’s been very helpful to them.</p>
<p>The only thing I can tell you is that I was contacted after I had graduated from college to talk about what a friend had done during her gap year before she started college.</p>
<p>Please note that there are different levels of security clearance from minimal to top secret. The intensity and duration of the security clearance will vary according to the level of clearance required for the position.</p>
<p>My son had an internship through a research consortium that required a high level security clearance while he was in college. Due to a backlog they didn’t start the investigation until he had been working about 6 months. When they did the investigation we were astounded how thorough they were. The investigator talked to one of our neighbors for about 2 hours and then contacted on old neighbor (an attorney) that knew our son from the time he was about 5 years old. She was amazed how long the interview lasted and the extent of the questions she was asked. From what we heard most all the friends he listed were contacted. When the investigator interviewed my son initially he had all our family records from the military members in our family. </p>
<p>We have heard these security clearances cost about $25K per applicant. Not sure if that’s true but they certainly were thorough. My son worked for a good salary in the internship for 2 years and then the company hired him full-time when he graduated. Good luck!</p>
<p>Mine was so long ago (college co-op job) that everything is probably irrelevant, but the answers above were similar to my experience. Yes, they were very thorough, talking to everybody - former bosses, neighbors, etc. I got the lower clearance for about 6 months until they finally passed me for a higher one.</p>
<p>But a funny story: Just before I got the higher clearance, I was called into to office of the security director in the defense plant where I was working. I was ushered into his office by a man that looked straight out of Men In Black, and who stood behind me as I sat before the desk of the director. No one said a word at first. The director opened a very think dossier - mine - and leafed through the papers. He leaned over, looking extremely serious and said in a very low tone, “Explain to me why you were President of something called the Russian Club.” I felt like I was about to go to prison right then and there. </p>
<p>When I explained that it was the high school Russian LANGUAGE Club, and I took Russian in the first place because that club had the best parties in the school, he relaxed and actually laughed… “The Russian… LANGUAGE… Club…?”</p>
<p>It takes months. If they contacted anyone listed on my forms, no one ever told me. I suggest you save copies of the paperwork you submitted so it is easier to fill out the next time.</p>
<p>In my experience a full field investigation was done due to high level clearance. All people on forms were contacted and then they go about 2-3 deep per contact beyond those. Process included a personal interview with an agent. Depending on where you live and how prevalent these things are, might determine how many more are ahead of you in the cue. It is an important process and it’s vital that to be thorough. Good luck.</p>
<p>My son-in-law went through a very long and involved security process when he applied for a job with the DIA. He knows they contacted some people listed on the forms, even people in the Soviet Union–he was born in St. Petersburg and came here with his parents when he was 6 years old. Son-in-law also had 4 or 5 interviews for this position–including one where he took a lie detector test. It was a very long time before he heard anything from the agency. During that time, he applied to graduate school and was accepted and got money and decided on that route. Good luck.</p>
<p>It depends a lot on what is on the form. If you have a lot of foreign contacts or close foreign family members, if you have a lot of debt, if you’ve spent a lot of time abroad (particularly in any global hotspots), all of this can lengthen the process. It takes exactly as long as it takes, so you have to be patient. They may contact everyone on your list, or they may contact no one. They may only contact people who knew you when you were living abroad. They will call you to make an appointment to be interviewed by an officer, which will consist of them going over the answers you gave and them asking follow up questions if neccessary. </p>
<p>The best advice you can possibly get in this process is to BE HONEST. If you’ve done something “wrong” (smoked pot, been arrested, whatever) be up front about it. Mistakes will not usually cost a person their clearance, but lying will cause you to be denied every single time. They have security clearances because they need to be able to trust people, they need to trust that their is nothing you have done that someone might be able to use to coerce you while you’re working for the government. They need to know that you’re not related to anyone who might try to use your relationship to coerce you to do something wrong. They don’t take people with a lot of debt because they need to know you won’t be tempted by an offer of a large sum of money in exchange for secrets you are charged with keeping. They need to know you’re not harboring so much political anger against the government that you might be tempted to say, download hundreds of secret cables and give them to WikiLeaks…</p>
<p>They know people aren’t angels, but they would rather have a college student who smoked some pot experimentally as an intern and doesn’t care who knows it, than a student who is terrified that their parents or their employer might find out what they’ve done. So be honest, it will pay off for you every time.</p>
<p>And I agree with others, if you’re not going to respond (even to say thank you) then you should just research this on your own. There’s plenty of info out there and no need to issue posters a bunch of dictates. We are not your own personal google.</p>