Anyone in the San Antonio Area looking for a job?

Hello,

I'm a long time lurker here and finally decided to jump in. My company has at least 20 more people to hire for a government contract in San Antonio. The positions are mostly IT Analysts (no experience really needed) To be considered you really just need to have at least an Active Secret Clearance and Sec + certification. I am not a recruiter for this company, just trying to help someone in their job hunt. If anyone is interested you can let me know and I can give you more info. Thanks

PS: I took my SSCP today in Austin and hopefully I passed

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forkvoid

grettlerj wrote: »

Hello,

I'm a long time lurker here and finally decided to jump in. My company has at least 20 more people to hire for a government contract in San Antonio. The positions are mostly IT Analysts (no experience really needed) To be considered you really just need to have at least an Active Secret Clearance and Sec + certification. I am not a recruiter for this company, just trying to help someone in their job hunt. If anyone is interested you can email me at johngrettler@fastmail.fm and I can give you more info. Thanks

PS: I took my SSCP today in Austin and hopefully I passed

Sec+ = easy

Secret clearance = not so easy. You have to have a sponsor(government contractor or government itself), which means any one who would really be jumping at this would have to already worked for or still working for the government. Most contractors pay for the clearance for their employees, because you can't get clearance on your own without a sponsor.

It's a shame, really... thats ~20 new IT guys finally getting their break.

grettlerj

forkvoid wrote: »

Sec+ = easy

Secret clearance = not so easy. You have to have a sponsor(government contractor or government itself), which means any one who would really be jumping at this would have to already worked for or still working for the government. Most contractors pay for the clearance for their employees, because you can't get clearance on your own without a sponsor.

It's a shame, really... thats ~20 new IT guys finally getting their break.

It's true you need a company to sponser you to get a clearance but someone might have just got out of the military and have a clearance, or just moved to the area, might be looking to switch jobs. Someone could have a clearance but left that type of work and want to come back to keep their clearance active. (less than 2 years) If you have just a secret clearance this job will give you a Top Secret Clearance with SCI access. In my opinion it is worth it just to get the TS SCI clearance.

ULWiz

I was just in San Antonio last month. I must say beautiful area by the Riverwalk and the Alamo for anyone that knows the area.

Nice helping out your fellow IT guys.

forkvoid

grettlerj wrote: »

It's true you need a company to sponser you to get a clearance but someone might have just got out of the military and have a clearance, or just moved to the area, might be looking to switch jobs. Someone could have a clearance but left that type of work and want to come back to keep their clearance active. (less than 2 years) If you have just a secret clearance this job will give you a Top Secret Clearance with SCI access. In my opinion it is worth it just to get the TS SCI clearance.

I'm just pointing out that the pool of people you're able to draw from is quite limited. Retired military, people making career changes and low-level lateral moves.

Without sponsoring for the clearance, you're able to assist a very small portion of the IT community. Sponsor for the clearance and you're able to help pretty much everyone.

Of course, that clearance costs the company money and time, so I understand why they're not.

grettlerj

forkvoid wrote: »

I'm just pointing out that the pool of people you're able to draw from is quite limited. Retired military, people making career changes and low-level lateral moves.

Without sponsoring for the clearance, you're able to assist a very small portion of the IT community. Sponsor for the clearance and you're able to help pretty much everyone.

Of course, that clearance costs the company money and time, so I understand why they're not.

I know that needing to have a clearance will eliminate many possible candidates but I am sure there are people with a clearance who are looking because I was one of them also. Most of the people working here are not retired military. I wouldn’t call these positions low-level positions. It may not be someone’s dream job but if hired they will give you a TS SCI clearance and pay for you to get your GCIA while you make 40-75k to start, depending on your experience.

Sanis4life

forkvoid wrote: »

I'm just pointing out that the pool of people you're able to draw from is quite limited. Retired military, people making career changes and low-level lateral moves.

Without sponsoring for the clearance, you're able to assist a very small portion of the IT community. Sponsor for the clearance and you're able to help pretty much everyone.

Of course, that clearance costs the company money and time, so I understand why they're not.

The OP is posting job opportunities for a gov contact, which is a great thing, and here you are preaching about sponsorship issues?? Do you always look at the cup as half empty?

forkvoid

Sanis4life wrote: »

The OP is posting job opportunities for a gov contact, which is a great thing, and here you are preaching about sponsorship issues?? Do you always look at the cup as half empty?

My posts were a mixture of hoping his company would change their mind on sponsorship and informing anyone looking at the opportunity who is unfamiliar with government work about their inability to get clearance on their own. I see my post as helpful.

But to answer your question directly: generally, yes. It helps me to stay objective.

If the OP thinks I've dumped on the thread, my apologies; it was certainly not my intention.

grettlerj

forkvoid wrote: »

My posts were a mixture of hoping his company would change their mind on sponsorship and informing anyone looking at the opportunity who is unfamiliar with government work about their inability to get clearance on their own. I see my post as helpful.

But to answer your question directly: generally, yes. It helps me to stay objective.

If the OP thinks I've dumped on the thread, my apologies; it was certainly not my intention.

No worries. I lived in Virginia for almost 20 years and know what it’s like to not have a clearance but see that most of the jobs I wanted required you to have one. VA/DC has the most government jobs in the country. Texas is # 3. I was lucky enough to get sponsored by a company and it does stink that it’s only way you can get it. Most companies prefer to hire someone with the clearance than to sponsor it themselves. It’s a money and time issue. Sometimes it can take up to 2 years to get it and that can cost the company a lot of money.

forkvoid

grettlerj wrote: »

No worries. I lived in Virginia for almost 20 years and know what it’s like to not have a clearance but see that most of the jobs I wanted required you to have one. VA/DC has the most government jobs in the country. Texas is # 3. I was lucky enough to get sponsored by a company and it does stink that it’s only way you can get it. Most companies prefer to hire someone with the clearance than to sponsor it themselves. It’s a money and time issue. Sometimes it can take up to 2 years to get it and that can cost the company a lot of money.

Oh yeah. I live down the street from Oak Ridge National Lab, which is one of the largest employers in the area. Of course, you need clearance to work there, and not having clearance already puts you at a disadvantage next to everyone else who already has it.

Hyper-Me

forkvoid wrote: »

Oh yeah. I live down the street from Oak Ridge National Lab, which is one of the largest employers in the area. Of course, you need clearance to work there, and not having clearance already puts you at a disadvantage next to everyone else who already has it.

Not only that, but almost all of the jobs out there have rules in place where they go through temp agencies/IT recruiters first, so you get paid @ 50% for the first 6 months or so while they decide if they want to keep you and pay for your clearance.

Pay after that is pretty generous, but it would be a strenuous 6 months.

cgrimaldo

Is this for the Fort Sam Help Desk? You can pm if you like. I'm in the S.A. area as well..

RouteThisWay

eh, decided to edit my post here. Been said many times.

grettlerj

I worked for SAIC in McLean VA for over 10 years. Sometimes I think about moving back to VA (really miss having a basement) but it is more expensive to live there and my kids really like it here.

Hyper-Me

You can't have a basement in Texas?

grettlerj

I'm sure somebody might but they don't even give you the option here. I've heard some people say because the ground it too hard but in VA they used dynamite to open the ground for my house. I think it is probably more of a drainage issue.

networker050184

Hyper-Me wrote: »

You can't have a basement in Texas?

Too many drug tunnels under there already.

forkvoid

Hyper-Me wrote: »

You can't have a basement in Texas?

Most of the southwest can't support a basement due to too much sand and too little drainage. I lived in Phoenix for seven years.

JDMurray

The downturn in the economy has caused a lot of aerospace and defense contractors to shed (among others) IT people. There are lots of IT people on the West coast who are looking for an opportunity for moving to a much more inexpensive place to live, like Houston, Austin, or San Antonio. And because of all the DoD activity, there are lots of jobs for "hackers" in the San Antonio area too, but you must have a clean background to be able to obtain a DoD security clearance.

networker050184 wrote: »

Too many drug tunnels under there already.

And ants. Lots of ants in Texas.

grettlerj

It's true, if you have a clearance there seems to be plenty of opportunity for employment in Texas. It's also true about those fire ants. I guess the one good thing about those fire ants is if you have them you generally won't see any snakes.

forkvoid

JDMurray wrote: »

And ants. Lots of ants in Texas.

And not just any ants, but freaking fire ants.

And chiggers.

I hate chiggers.

CrapMasterZero

Sorry to say, but I don't get the "If you have just a secret clearance this job will give you a Top Secret Clearance with SCI access" part.

TS/SCI is the mother of all security clearances (at least of the ones we know of) and getting a Secret clearance is nothing like getting a TS/SCI. (Actually there's a difference between TS and TS/SCI, SCI is part of a special access program...anyway)

Secret clearance is more or less a glorified credit/background check and all you have to do to get it is be a citizen and not be in any major trouble (drugs, debts etc.) And the time line is fairly short as well (2-3 months). TS/SCI on the other hand is a different ballgame. It's a long process (months if not years) and involves detailed interviews with you, coworkers, friends, family etc. and might involve a polygraph as well. Not to mention TS/SCI costs a shitload more than a regular Secret.

And please don't hesitate to apply for Secret if you do have some "kinks" in your background. They look for mitigation factors, so if you did pot once 5 years ago and have shown that you kicked the habit or had debt which you made efforts to pay back that's probably not a problem, however, if you continuously displayed bad behavior then you might have some trouble.

grettlerj

Basically there are 2 requirements to get hired for this position:
1. Have an Active Secret Clearance.
2. Sec+ certification

Once hired, the company will submit your paperwork to get you your TS/SCI. You can work with the secret but you will need to be escorted to and from the floor each day until you get your TS/SCI.

grettlerj

I just found out that the company changed the requirements for the positions. They want you to already have an active TS/SCI to apply for these positions. I know this greatly narrows the pool of potential candidates who are qualified for this position. If anyone is interested and has a Secret clearance along with some IT experience I would still apply. I am pretty sure they would make an exception for the right candidates. This wasn’t my decision, I am just reporting what was told to me. Thanks

7lowe

forkvoid wrote: »

Oh yeah. I live down the street from Oak Ridge National Lab, which is one of the largest employers in the area. Of course, you need clearance to work there, and not having clearance already puts you at a disadvantage next to everyone else who already has it.

Hey, I work right down the street from there @ SAIC. I've been working temp to hire on a help desk trying to get on full time hoping to get a job with a clearance because the most of the jobs I really want require a clearance. They are doing the background check now to bring me on full time to another help desk which is for the DHS so I'll have to get some clearance though it's not much.

7

forkvoid

7lowe wrote: »

Hey, I work right down the street from there @ SAIC. I've been working temp to hire on a help desk trying to get on full time hoping to get a job with a clearance because the most of the jobs I really want require a clearance. They are doing the background check now to bring me on full time to another help desk which is for the DHS so I'll have to get some clearance though it's not much.

7

Excellent, another Knoxville-area guy. You make the fourth.