Hi. I posted this yesterday but now I can’t find it so I am posting it again:
Previous Friday I got a call from some supervisor at FBI that I finally got my TS clearance and I should come for processing. She said give me a few dates when you can come in and security office will set it up. You will get a call by Monday. Great. I gave a few dates and started waiting. Monday nobody called. I called that same lady Monday evening, she said the office didn’t call her yet, definitely by Tuesday. Tuesday came and went - nothing. I called back on Wednesday - she didn’t pick up the phone multiple times, I left a message. No phone calls again. I called her back on Thursday, she didn’t pick up again so I called another number (if hers ended on 5, then I dialed 4 at the end). Got somebody else at FBI and after a few tries I was given a number of someone in processing. All I wanted to know is if my supervisor is out but an email to her was sent for me to come, maybe they can tell me the date straight, so I don’t have to rely on my supervisor to show up at work and call me. Apparently you needed both the processing office and a supervisor to be present on the first day. What I did find out is that my appointment was actually set for Thursday but nobody told me about it, since my supervisor was god knows where. I thought - let me wait until Friday (that’s when I got an original call) maybe she will show up at work finally. I did call Friday morning and spoke to someone at security office who got very upset with my call, apparently I shouldn’t have had called. Then half an hour later I got a call from a supervisor who finally showed up and said that FBI will not be hiring me and will stop the processing. Also, I will not be getting my TS, because apparently to get a clearance you have to first to be processed by them.
So. I realize that I should have waited for the process to take its time and for someone to call me and not bother them. But I waited too long for this, got too excited when they called me to come in and was too impatient to wait. Can this be the reason for termination? She said I will get some kind of letter from them. This is probably a unique situation but I wonder if anyone can recommend the course of action. I definitely want to appeal but I have no idea where to start.
Sorry for the long rumbling…
Move on. Sounds like you annoyed your future supervisor and you might have given the impression of someone they don’t want to work with. Learn from it and move on. It also sounds like your investigation was potentially favorably adjudicated. You do need an agency to grant you the actual clearance, maybe you can try a contractor and see if they can pick you up instead. I am guessing here, perhaps someone else can weigh in on this. Lastly, you should never post anything about the three letter agencies in the public domain, even if you think you are being anonymous. Not wise.
I doubt that. If they refused to hire every person who became impatient during the long interminable hiring process there would be far fewer people working for the government.
Who knows. Dont give up yet.
When you say a contractor can pick my investigation up, what do you mean? Can they use whatever was completed by the previous agency and finish it? Will they have access to that information?
BTW, I’m sure I annoyed their manager, but they annoyed me too. In the corporate environment when somebody tells you that you’ll get an info by Monday and no one calls you by Wednesday you are expected to follow up and be proactive. Not so here, it seems. Anyway, even if the don’t hire me, I just need my clearance, which seemed to me I had, if only I had waited for them to call me while they were taking their sweet time after telling me they would.
No idea, pure speculation. See what the letter says when you get it and go from there.
I understand your frustration, but that’s a very entitled way of looking at your situation. Feeling like they owe you the courtesy of a prompt follow-through. This isn’t a corporation like in your example. It’s still technically a job interview and they have all the leverage.
Moving forward I’d try to keep in mind that the people making these decisions don’t owe anything to you. You’re not even on the books yet. So if a “deadline” comes and goes, give it a day to call back once and leave a message. Don’t keep hounding them. Don’t try other numbers. Don’t annoy people who are juggling multiple things. I’d then follow up (once) after a week if still no response.
I would agree with Skybox, wait for the letter, see what is in it. It wouldn’t even hurt if you get a seasoned clearance attorney, but the last thing you would want is give up.
From my experience, yes, a contractor, or another contractor can always pick up from where your investigation stooped. Here is how it works: the current sponsor releases you from their cage, then another sponsor can pick your case. Now I don’t know about particulars of such a case, but I believe there is a time limit of 90 days or 180 days for the new sponsor to pick you up. If you went through all the BI and the subject interview/s and adjudication process, don’t give up now. Of course if you want to pursue. But as I said, if you can, once you have that letter, take it to a clearance lawyer
You just started dialing random numbers at the FBI? Yikes.
@Redonions Thank you. Are I correct in understanding that a third party contractor can pick up an investigation and not necessarily their customer or do they need to have a customer interested in me before they would pick up my BI?
@Waffles Hi. I did not feel entitled, I was just under impression that it was a done deal (which it virtually was). As it turns out it works differently in the corporate world, if I had known about it - I would have definitely waited for them to take their time, but my “corporate culture instinct” kicked in. Learned it the hard way… Hopefully it won’t be the end of my dream, who knows at this point.
I’m not trying to sound contentious, but the actions you described and your thought process would be described as entitled. You thought it was a done deal and felt like they weren’t responding to you adequately.
I’m chiming in as someone who works in the career management industry and deals with recruiters often. Your actions (incessant hounding) was not “corporate culture instinct”. It was excessively aggressive and stalkerish.
I’ve spent years in the corporate environment and if a new hire did to me what you did to your FBI contact (especially calling random numbers to get through to me) I’d also cut ties and move on to someone who seemed less desperate and needy.
I’m not sharing my advice to be rude or put your actions down. Just trying to be helpful and give you something to think about moving forward.
@Waffles I would respectfully disagree regarding a corporate culture. I worked with the biggest clients in the financial world (Goldman, Morgan Stanley, BOA, JPM). You try to give them an excuse that you were waiting for an answer for a week or longer and see how long it’s going to take them to fire you. Again, my mistake was being too eager to get the answer, something that would have been encouraged in the world where I work and not knowing that it works differently here (again, corporate world is all I know). I thank you for your advice though, maybe someone else will learn from my mistakes.
My Agency doesn’t go with three letters. I gave up my privacy and little liberty for a job with clearance. I felt so panic and suffering while waiting. 
The process likes a black box. You might be still have a chance to get a notice later as long as you don’t give up /withdraw voluntarily. Just let it be and move on.
In my case, months ago, Agency replied by email “It was the last stop. Just waiting on adjudication. We should hear very soon.”. Month later, I saw Agency is hiring at this same position. I had followed up and got respond “We honored your request from 8/30/2019. You are no longer being considered for the position.” This month, numerous of investigation calls received to I and to my references. It is outrange. It’s my first time. I have no idea .
Good luck.
They probably could pick up on this and decided to pass. More than likely because you processed with FBI you will not be able to just pick up where you left off, its going to be a do-over.
Have you ever tried to transfer a clearance from FBI?
The organization that you kept calling. Dialing random numbers at your future employer just to get somebody on the line is odd behavior. It is suspicious when somebody is overly eager to gain access to classified material and you probably exceeded the threshold, it is one of the indicators of an insider threat.
That’s just laughable. If I was “overly eager to gain access to classified information “ I, probably, would have been instructed by my “handlers” precisely not to do it. I was however, too overly excited to wait for them to call me back.
Anyway, this is not fixable, as I see it. It’s just seems very strange to me that an agency that spent 30k (or whatever it cost them to do the BI), went through my history, financial records, poly and everything in between (not even talking about the skill set I was getting hired for) and then stop the process because I was trying to find out what is going on with the onboarding day the week after it was going to happen according to them. I read on these boards about the whole person concept. Are you telling me that me trying to call them out weight everything else?! Did I kill someone since my BI started? Incurred debts? Some kind of lies were uncovered? Smoked crack, got fired, stole something from the store? None of that. A phone call - was all it took. Wow.
Actually no, not with FBI, and that could be different. What I was referring to was not with 3-letter agencies.
I am not trying to tell you anything, I am on your side. Lesson learned.
The FBI seems to have their own internal process that is not easily shared externally. We had a guy on contract while waiting for his clearance to transfer FROM FBI 12+ months. We eventually had to let him go because there was no progress.