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June 2009

Security Cleared Staff: Can You Afford To Take A Chance?

“The demand for high quality, professional technical staff is indisputably down on last year, but as a client looking for security cleared resource, can you afford to be complacent that there are plenty of candidates to choose from?”

We’ve all seen wide-scale reports of job reductions, and know that there are more people on the market than we’ve seen in a long time.  Indeed, Modis commented on this vast pool of often very talented workers in its last edition of the “Leading Edge”, under the article “Needle in a Haystack”.

As a user of contract labour or a permanent employer of security cleared resource, don’t be fooled into thinking this ever-growing pool of people is overly rich in the one thing that is a mandatory requirement on any of your requirements – a security clearance.

Workers holding a UK government SC clearance have always carried both a pay premium and a level of scarcity, which has really only been surpassed by those holding the highly prized Developed Vetting (DV) status.  The demand for this resource is still high.  Large-scale, long term projects such as DII (Defence Information Infrastructure) have assured that there is continued pressure on both the cost of this scarce resource, and the demand shows no sign of slowing.

There are many agencies on the market today that will claim to have access to this resource, which they may well have, but without HMG approval, these organisations have no way of validating the currency of the clearance that a worker holds, much less managing the transfer and maintenance of the clearance.

If your business is in any way connected to the defence or security sector, and you have any need to hire or use this type of resource and have a supplier that claims to have access to a large volume of security cleared labour at short notice, whilst not having an HMG approved status, the advice is “caveat emptor”, or “buyer beware”.

Two alarms should start going off:

1. There are not huge numbers of people on the market with government clearance – demand is still robust

And

1. If your supplier isn’t an HMG approved consultancy, you’ve no way of knowing if the people you’re being presented with actually hold the clearance that they are professing to have.

In a marketplace like the defence and security sector, which is heavily based on trust, can you afford to take the chance ?