Uncooperative References

SECURITY CLEARANCE Q&A
1

Hi Everyone

I am currently going through a SSBI and I met with the investigator today. Despite not having an extremely active social life, I was able to provide a few personal and employment references. However, the problem became that some references were not comfortable meeting with the investigator in person (they assumed it would be a phone interview). Has anyone ever had to deal with uncooperative references or had trouble finding enough references during an investigation? If so, did it affect adjudication?

2

A reference refusing to cooperate with your investigation will not negatively impact you. However, it will likely cause your investigation to lengthen in terms of time.

3

I would suggest talking with your references and explaining how important it is to you that they cooperate.

4

That’s coercion, you want to avoid that… Just let it ride and don’t worry about it.

5

It is not coercion, tell your friends it is okay to talk to your background investigator and to be frank in their responses.

2 Likes
6

I used to word coercion wrong - my bad. Do what @backgdinvestigator advises you to do.

7

My background investigator called and he was satisfied with the number of references that he spoke with and looks like the field portion of my BI will be wrapping up pretty quickly.

As far as the comments go, most of my references were more associates rather than friends so asking them to go outside of their comfort zone to help me get a job has fallen on deaf ears given the nature of our relationship. Sometimes people aren’t comfortable giving their personal information to some random person who calls about someone they had a class with 8 months ago. Its understandable but I would hope that it wouldn’t look bad on me.