Good morning. I am hoping someone can help me with this. I interviewed for a position as a Supervisory Medical Support Assistant in June. Received a letter that I was tentatively chosen. Returned for my physical and fingerprinting. Passed fingerprinting. Just received my congratulations letter that I was chosen. On the New Employee Orientation form it states that all new employees must complete e-QIP. I’m a little confused because from what I’ve read, E-QIP is another background check. I don’t forsee me failing it but you never know. Is it possible to be hired and fired if you fail the E-QIP? Thank you.
e-QIP is the program used by NBIB to gather the information required to complete your background investigation (SF86 or SF85).
Your actual background investigation, using the e-QIP program, will be a Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3, Tier 4, or Tier 5. The Tier level determines the investigation depth. Fingerprinting is one part (of many) for all of the Tier levels.
“Failing” the e-QIP might lead to termination if passing the federal background investigation was an employment requirement.
This is my first government job so please forgive me if I’m asking the wrong questions. In my job description it mentions security clearance. Is that the same as e-QIP? My congratulatory letter lists my grade/series as a GS-679-8 step 1.
The e-qip is used to fill out the SF85 or SF86 (depending on your clearance type) used to conduct your background investigation for your clearance. Be prepared to spend a few hours on it. It can be daunting.
The eQIP is the background packet that they base the investigation off of to determine if you should be granted a security clearance.
Your security clearance would be something like Confidential, Secret, Top Secret or Top Secrey/SCI
It does seem unusual though that you would be hired without the SF86 and clearance if the job required one. Were you given a final job offer or a conditional job offer?
I was offered a final job offer. My orientation is August 19th
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The only way to “fail” an e-QIP is to input incorrect information. This is hard to do as you cannot advance a page forward until all information in current page is filled out. It is always good practice to have a Microsoft Word (or other word document) file with all of the information you will need going back 5, 7, and ten years. If you prepare well, then there will be no problems. e-QIP issues are often the result of bad work on the applicant’s part.