Government contractors, agencies and recruiters are largely not changing their hiring practices even though waiting times for clearances are decreasing, a ClearanceJobs.com survey indicates.Of the 472 hiring managers and recruiters surveyed in late July, 63 percent said their recruiting practices have not changed while 19 percent said improved processing times helped lead to changes in recruiting practices.
Those changes also included hiring non-cleared candidates when their firms can afford to wait, the survey said.
“Top secret clearances are still taking two to three times as long as secret clearances for end-to-end processing,” Evan Lesser, founder and managing director of the website,” said in a release accompanying the survey.
“Even within clearance levels, hiring managers tell us wait times are haphazard and without rhyme or reason,” he added.
Of those who reported no change in recruiting practices, 46 percent said they would change if the waiting time for clearances was one month or less.
Forty-eight percent claimed qualified candidates dropped out of consideration due to the waiting times, the survey said.
In another survey released in May, the website found the federal government had cut waiting times for most clearance applicants by 30 days on average.
However, around half of applicants from contractors and agencies waited up to four months for a clearance.
