National Security and Federal Hiring Predictions for 2024

We are heading towards the end of the year in the start of a new year and what does that mean for the security clearance community? To help answer that question, I’m joined by Evan Lesser, the founder and president of ClearanceJobs.com. Nobody knows the cleared community and the cleared marketplace better, so it’s a real delight to have him on the show anytime we have him. His insights are always super relevant to our community and these episodes are super interesting, even for me, somebody who works for clearance jobs. So I appreciate your taking the time to chat with me, Evan,

Always, Lindy, happy to be here.

I want to talk about market predictions. You’re always really good at doing this. I think it’s something that a real value of ClearanceJobs is it’s not just a career site and a community for folks in the national security space, but you are providing a ton of insights to our customers and our audience regularly about the national hiring landscape actually looks like, I feel like we’re on year infinity of it being a really challenging hiring market, but I did want to start with what we can expect for 2024. I feel like we’re constantly saying it’s going to get worse. Is that kind of what you’re seeing as a market reality as we head into 2024?

Yeah, employers with security cleared workers, they are going to find the new year as challenging for recruitment and retention as ever. Quite simply put, there is a supply and demand imbalance and it just seems to be getting worse and worse over time. Based on recent surveys on ClearanceJobs, 92% of cleared professionals say that they’re already employed. They already have jobs 92%, so that means that only 8% consider themselves to be unemployed and actively job seeking each day though the government awards new contracts to vendors that require workers with clearance and in many cases those workers either don’t exist or they exist in such small numbers. It makes recruiting difficult at best. At the same time, employers really need to be worried that their own cleared employees will stay in place. Poaching is rampant these days and a little more than half of clear workers we’ve surveyed say they were likely to very likely to leave their jobs in the next year for greener pastures.

Yeah, I think that’s huge. We’ve been talking about the retention piece of it for a long time. If you hire a cleared worker, can you keep them? And we’re seeing kind of that revolving door cleared employment and talent and it’s really important if you find somebody that you’re able to just onboard them and also try to keep them and it’s super competitive out there. The reason for that is in part because it is still somewhat time intensive to onboard new talent that does not already have a security clearance. We do see security clearance processing times going up. Again, it’s been a good news story over the past couple of years that the government has brought those timelines down, but I know the last quarterly update had 170 days for a top secret security clearance, a hundred days for a secret clearance, a lot higher than we tend to prefer. I get a lot of pushback and folks say, well, a lot of those folks can get an interim clearance, but if you’re in the contracting space, there’s certainly sometimes requirements about who can work under an interim and who can’t. And again, I’m tracking it and following it. Curious to hear your thoughts. If we continue to see the clearance processing times go up, what does that mean for this employment landscape? What does it mean for employers in the space?

Like the tides or the stock market, security clearance processing times ebb and flow over the years. There’ll be a few years where processing times are shorter, relatively speaking, and then they grow again, and while employers may not like the current 170 days end-to-end processing for a top secret clearance not too long ago in the middle of 2020, it was 221 days. So it’s all relative, but what I can say is that what goes up must come down, but we should expect 2024 to not be the year where employers put candidates up for a new top secret clearance without a whole lot of waiting. I’m afraid too that the typical cycle we see is that when clearance processing times go up, it tends to come almost exactly at the same time as some security breach. And it’s interesting about the Jack to share case that happened earlier this year and clearance processing going up.

(04:49)
Lawmakers start to say, too many people are getting clearances or the clearance process is too easy or the clearance process isn’t working because look at this person who breached trust processing times go up and then the lawmakers come back and say, oh, clearance processing times are way too long. It’s a big security concern to have this many people waiting for clearance and then they come down again. So this happens. We’ve seen it. ClearanceJobs has been around for 21 years and over that time period we’ve seen clearance processing times rise and fall. We just happen to right now be at another high point.

Yeah, and you tied in well to my next question, which is about Jack Teixeira. So when we talk about top security clearance stories of 2023, that’s definitely one that comes up high on the list. You kind of mentioned that earlier. That certainly created some backlash where we had senators member of Congress saying, Hey, we’re giving out security clearances like candy. It’s way too easy to get a security clearance.’ I’m not sure that we’ve seen the end of that narrative, but how does it actually fit with the reality that you see? Is it unquote easy to obtain a security clearance?

No, it’s not easy to obtain a security clearance. The reality is that there are 5 million people with DOD clearance and when you get 5 million people together in any shape or form, there’s going to be bad apples in the group. No doubt. The problem is that technology makes it really easy to steal classified information and the clearance system is all about trust. It’s not hard for a bad actor to breach that trust. Most of the time it all works out just fine, but make no mistake, there are other Jack Teixeiras out there. He wasn’t the first and he surely won’t be the last, but is it difficult to get a clearance? Most of the people that go through the process do obtain a clearance, but that’s because one, the process is strict, but it’s also because someone who puts themselves through the clearance process tends to know whether or not they’re going to be able to get it ahead of time. So no, I would not say they’re being handed out like candy and considering the dramatic imbalance between the number of open jobs and the number of people with clearance, I would say that it’s still fairly off kilter and no, it’s not easy to get a clearance. They’re definitely not handing them out like candy.

Yeah. Next Halloween, I’m going to start handing out 136 page SF-86s. If you want to forget tricks or treats. I would like you to fill out this 136 pages of personal information. You mentioned that well, as there is a bit of whenever we talk about the numbers and we’ll be posting the denials and revocations and some of those stats over at ClearanceJobs shortly, but there is a bit of a disconnect, right? You have a very, very proportionally small number of people are actually denied a security clearance. There’s a lot of people who just personally opt out, right? We’ve had this conversation over clearance jobs. I don’t want to stop using drugs, so I’m not even going to bother applying. It’s not a matter of could I or could I not? It’s I’m not choosing to go through this process. So do you think there’s an issue there with, I know that’s something that you’ve talked about when it comes to attracting people into this, are we doing enough to sell people on the mission of national security to make them go through what can seem like an intrusive process to obtain a security clearance?

No. No. The government definitely has not done a for all of the good things that government does. One thing they have not done a great job of is selling civil service in homeland security defense and intelligence as being a viable worthwhile career for people. I think one of the things to keep in mind, sorry to backtrack just a little bit, is that when Jack Desha got his clearance, his background was okay. The issue was not him necessarily getting the clearance, the issue was him maintaining it. The biggest issue with Jack de share is the fact that he was doing bad things behind the scenes where the clearance process doesn’t touch. He was actually found to be accessing information that he should not have been, and his superiors at the Massachusetts Air National Guard said, ‘don’t do this,’ and he did it anyway, so he should have been pulled out.

(08:43)
But I think people tend to focus on how did someone get a clearance in the first place when they do bad and not so much on how did they maintain it, and I think that periodic investigations having been phased out in lieu of more automation may not yet be all end all solution to this question. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but continuous vetting is still a fairly new thing in terms of time and I think the verdict is still out as to whether it is going to do a superior job at catching people midstream to make sure that they’re still suitable to maintain a clearance.

You’re speaking a topic near and dear to my heart. Evan, you’re saying that technology cannot solve every problem, maybe perhaps. I mean, I think that’s some of it here because like you said, there were actual more along the lines of employment related or access control issues, chain of command issues for him since he was a service member. We certainly see this a lot of the things that we want technology to solve all these problems, but one of the things that unfortunately government doesn’t always do well is creating kind of the consequences for negative behavior and denying access based on that. Yeah, like you said, I think it’s easy to blame the security clearance process because people just know the term or at least know it, but it’s a lot harder to kind of look at the minutiae of employment law and what somebody was doing or maybe what repercussions were possible within his chain of command for why he had access to things he didn’t have access to.

Exactly. Yeah, and it only takes one case, one bad apple that goes very public for the whole system to be put into question. But again, for the majority of people it works and it works well, but unfortunately it only takes one person for everyone to call the whole system into question.

Yeah, I mean I think that’s why across the security profession, they do say it’s risk mitigation. It’s not insider threat training programs, which have been a relatively new phenomenon of the past 10 years, post Aaron Alexis, those are all designed to mitigate risks, but we’re never able to completely eliminate it. So we’re going to have this question every few years probably come up where there is some issue and then we kind of have that pendulum shifts back and forth between, ‘Hey, we need security clearances to be processed faster, we need to move more people through the system,’ versus, ‘oh no, we’re going to go the other direction. We want this to take more time. We need to do more vetting. We need to layer more on top of it.’ Now we have all these continuous vetting solutions that people are definitely emphasizing in a good way. It is catching more things sooner, but it’s certainly not the only thing. We still need some actual gum shoe, human-centric security investigations because we don’t have technology catching every single thing.

The real issue was chain of command and process and making sure people are called out when they do something wrong that could be seen as making them less suitable to hold a clearance. That’s really where the main failure is, and technology is not going to be able to solve that problem.

So let’s talk a little about trends for 2024 and what we can expect on ClearanceJobs. You kind of mentioned this earlier, kind of talking about how we attract more people into this profession. I think that’s one of the things where both government and government contractors, when I worked for the federal government, I always assumed once I landed into government contracting, I would see how everybody was doing things way cooler and better than they were in the government. And you realize sometimes government contracting can echo the marketplace that they see within the government as well, and we’re not always innovating the way that we should when it comes to how we hire and retain folks, but that’s why I love working for clearance jobs is I really see you’re committed to innovating when it comes to how we hire people, I don’t think anybody is doing more innovative things than are happening within ClearanceJobs. You always are creating more ways for employers and candidates to engage and connect, so we know we have this supply talent issue, we need more talent into this marketplace. What are some of the things that you think employers need to be doing in 2024 to help get that next generation interested in national security careers and actually applying and pursuing those jobs?

At ClearanceJobs, we can’t necessarily create new cleared people, but what we can do is bring them to the service. We can introduce them to employers that are hiring and let the employers talk about why that person may want to leave their current position and come over to their job. The reality is that 92% of people with security clearance are already employed. It’s going to take an employer quite a lot of work to convince someone who’s already fairly happily employed to leave their current employer to come over to their job. A recent employer slash recruiter survey that we did showed that 51% of recruiters said that their top pain point in recruiting is simply getting candidates to engage. When an employer comes to clearance jobs, they may post jobs, they may search through our database, but if the candidates don’t engage, then they’re not going to get too far.

(13:25)
So in terms of technology, one of the things that we’ve done really over the last year is that we’ve shifted ClearanceJobs from being a marketplace where employers and candidates can exchange opportunities to being more of a community, and the community aspect is really just so people can get to know each other, and so those opportunities can present themselves in a more soft and organic manner. If most people have jobs they don’t want job postings shoved down their throat 24/7. So the way that we’ve kind of fashioned the ClearanceJobs service now is not only marketplace but community aspects on top of it, giving employers and candidates the ability to talk, to share information, to share content, whatever type of things that they are reading and digesting, we’ve now given both employers and candidates the ability to share that information just so they can talk about it, and it doesn’t all have to be job, job, job, job, job. We’ve got employers talking about articles they’ve read and movies they’ve watched and books they’re reading and candidates talking about where they’ve been traveling to and what they’re looking forward to in the new year and what kind of training and certifications they’re getting. That stuff opens the door for opportunity.

Yeah, no, I love that and I always love that you kind of create this safe community for the cleared community where they can have those kind of connections. They can have robust career connections, network with folks who are in this space, the transparency, even a job listing where you can connect with the employer and learn more about that company. I just feel like for candidates today, they really want that kind of information, and so employers need to be providing it.

I would also say as far as employers and recruiters go, especially in this market where it’s going to be so difficult to recruit and very few candidates are actively job seeking, engaging talent is critical. There is value in interacting with candidates even without a hire relationship. Building with talent in the clear world pays off in dividends and just creating goodwill and trust is beneficial to employers. I know every employer and every recruiting team always looks at the bottom line, which is how many hires could we make? There is so much value and interacting with candidates in a positive way even without a hire.

Yeah, no, I think that’s a key point in talking about how changing some of those recruiting KPIs because I do think sometimes it is all about a hire, but in this market, I think just getting a candidate to see your message or to engage with content, we have an Expressed Interest feature on ClearanceJobs, so just liking a piece of content actually is pretty valuable in this market just to get engagement versus it’s going to take a lot of those marketing touchpoint to make a hire. So kind of helping folks to see that holistic picture of it’s super important.

Yeah, at the end of the day, recruiters are salespeople. The candidates with clearance are the consumers and a salesperson is trying to sell something to someone else, and recruiter is simply trying to sell the open position and the employer to the candidate.

No, I love that, and I think we’ve seen that with what candidates say at ClearanceJobs is just logging in and being active on their profile kind of creates some of that engagement and interest on the employer side and creating more opportunities where folks are able to connect and engage and share information. I think we’ve talked for years about the hidden job market is definitely where a lot of opportunities are exchanged, and so certainly when you have that community feel for how folks are able to connect and provide information, that goes a long way. And we always say building out your career network is always wise, even if you’re not looking for an opportunity. Just knowing what’s out there and being informed about the process and being informed about both what it takes to obtain a security clearance and what it’s like to work in national security and those community features really help to foster that and kind of create those even internal referral networks within our community and network where folks are watching out for each other, watching out for opportunities, connecting with interesting employers.

(17:07)
I love to see all of that community building take place. Well, thank you so much, Evan for being on the show, and thank you for your time. I’m really excited for what the next year has in store. I know it’s not getting any easier, but it is encouraging always as I see our community grow, I think that’s kind of how you persevere through a really tough national security hiring market. We continue to try to do our part to attract more people into this space and to care about this community and to bring together all of those stakeholders. And so that’s really important and it’s really important the way you’re engaging in this conversation and you’re taking the time, so I appreciate it.

Always a pleasure. Thanks so much, Lindy.