Help line and recruiter giving conflicting status updates

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

I’m hoping no one else has had to deal with this particular situation before, but maybe someone can help provide some insight for me. I was notified by my recruiter that my application was being discontinued and that I’d need to wait a year to reapply. Less than a week later my dashboard was back to saying I was in active processing. I informed my recruiter of this and she made no comment about the discrepancy and simply said to wait to receive my letter. A month later I get the denial letter which gives no specific reason for the denial and says I’m free to reapply. A new job posting is listed for the same position so I go to reapply, but once again my dashboard is still saying I already have an application in review.

This time I emailed the general help line to inform them that my application was supposed to be discontinued and ask if there is an error in the system. I received a reply saying I still had applications in review. I emailed my recruiter a second time asking her to call me since this is a confusing situation and I’d like to speak on the phone with her to clarify things. I get a response saying she will not call me because she has nothing more to say to me and that any further questions would need to be sent in a letter to the employee relations office. The job posting closes in a week so I don’t have time to wait another month for a reply as to why my dashboard is still indicating my applications are active. One party is insisting my application is active, the other is refusing to talk about it, and now I feel like I have an application in limbo with no point of contact anymore.

Does anyone know if the system the general help line uses to check application status and the system the recruiter uses aren’t the same?

2

No idea exactly what agency you are in process with, but these HR systems can take a while to update. Have you received the letter yet? The “wait a year to reapply” tends to suggest that there was a problem with security or “suitability” but the letter should offer additional info.

The recruiter almost certainly has access to more current info than the online dashboard.

3

I already got the letter a few weeks ago. It was a suitability denial, the reason why is still a mystery to me, and there was no mention of needing to wait to reapply.

The kicker with all this is that my application already was terminated the day my recruiter sent the email about it being discontinued. I checked the dashboard right after I got the email. But when I checked the dashboard again a few days later, after sending in my letter asking for the reason, everything had been restored and it’s stayed that way for nearly two months now. I assume my recruiter has access to the hiring manager and could ask if it was reactivated by mistake, but when I told her my dashboard is back to showing my application being active she kind of avoided the topic and basically keeps telling me to ask someone else.

4

If you are talking about the intelligencecareers dashboard, that is disconnected from NSA HR. The status on there is not necessarily accurate. If your recruiter said to wait a year because you received a suitability denial you will need to wait a year.

5

Oh sorry, I didn’t read your original post carefully. And the letter did not include the “wait one year before reapplying” language? Interesting… so one has to wonder when that one year clock starts ticking.