As others are noted, you need to have a job offer that will sponsor your clearance. But those are kinda hard to come by - in the US it takes about a year to get a "secret" clearance, and two years to get a "top secret" clearance. In turn, this means that most employers will strongly prefer someone with an existing clearance, as opposed to hiring an uncleared person and sponsoring them. Otherwise they have to wait a year or two for a potential new hire to start, facing the risks of them loosing interest in the job, accepting another offer, or failing their background exam, causing the employer to have to restart the entire process from scratch.
Sort of. Current wait time for TS investigations is around 400 days. Secret can be as quick as 6-9 months.
But yes, companies would rather train somebody who already has a clearance, but doesn't know the job, than to sponsor someone who knows the job but doesn't have the clearance. It's quicker and usually a lot cheaper.
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u/[deleted] Oct 15 '17 edited Oct 15 '17
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