Will any defense contractor get my security clearance back for me? I know I could be a valuable asset to anyone that would hire me but I feel that no corporation wants to take the time or effort to put in for a security check. Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.
Answers
Patrick,
Thank you for your service. One thought I have is for you to explore possibilities with one of DOE's National Labs. In my experience, they employ a lot of "technical" folks not just ivory-tower scientists. If geography is important to you, both Los Alamos and Sandia are geographically close to Trinidad. Six others I have experience with that I know employ folks with your kind of background are: Argonne (ANL), Lawrence Berkeley (LBL), Lawrence Livermore (LLNL), Pacific Northwest (PNNL), Idaho (INL), and Oak Ridge (ORNL). While not all folks that work at these sites necessarily have a clearance, most do, and many more get clearances when the project demands it (it's how I got mine). Also, having had a clearance renewed isn't usually a big issue, nor is it as costly as having them start from scratch. Also something else to understand, the labs are mostly contract employees, not feds. There are DOE personnel at most of them, so that is possibly a second market for you. But if you want to practice what you know, the contractors are the way to go.
If you want to have a conversation on this, I'm open to that.
Patrick,
They will if you bring a very specialized skill to them or have a certification that they require and is hard to find inside or outside the company. Most of the time though, if they include a current active security clearance in their job profile, they want someone to bring that as part of the job.
Patrick,
As a previous contractor I've seen several veterans who were hired have even though they no longer held an active clearance. The company I worked for paid to reactivate their clearances and in some cases, such as my own, the company paid for the process to raise the clearance to meet a business need. Make sure your resume and Linked In profile highlight how much of an asset you could be to the company or career field you're targeting, this way companies are willing to consider coming out of pocket for any clearance issues they may run into.
Best of luck,
Felipe
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