What is going on at the State Department?

I have been waiting for about year and a half on my sercurity clearance. I call the customer service line at least once a week, but now every time I call, it is always busy. I have been hearing rumors that they are not hiring anyone this year or even clearing anyone this year. Are any of these rumors true?

As you are probably aware, there was a hiring freeze in place at State long after most other agencies started hiring again. Supposedly the new Secretary has ordered that the freeze be lifted.

Hopefully you are in the “no news is good news” category since they have not contacted you to let you know your offer was rescinded or they stopped processing your clearance.

No idea when they will actually start bringing people on board yet.

Just curious, do you think the hiring freeze applies to contractors or DS direct hires?

-Swanbe01 - Are you a DS Direct hire or hired through a company that has a contract under the Department of State?

I am a direct hire. I am a Consular Fellows, wish is a Limited Appointment Hire. The contract is for a maxium of 5 years.

Anyone heard any new information from DOS?

They recently implemented the new 5 year reinvestigation requirement even for secret. So any currently secret-cleared employees with a clearance before before ~2013 are now suddenly overdue for a PRI. I really don’t see why they couldn’t just grandfather those people in. Given the astronomical amount of investigation backlog, this would seem the logical move.

With the hiring freeze being lifted, you have people that were in the pipeline before now needing investigations. Then with all the people now overdue, it’s adding up big.