# The Clearance-Likelihood Read: Cleared, and to What Level

*You will be able to score any sourced profile into a defensible clearance estimate - likely active, lapsed, or none, plus a level band and a confidence flag - without asking the candidate for classified detail.*

- Canonical URL: https://www.refolk.ai/guides/clearance-likelihood-read
- Pillar: Recruiting and sourcing
- Format: Framework
- Published: 2026-08-28
- Last reviewed: 2026-08-28
- Reading time: 15 min
- Keywords: how to tell if a candidate has a security clearance, identify clearance level from linkedin profile, sourcing cleared candidates without a database, signs someone holds a clearance, secret vs top secret clearance recruiting

## Key takeaways

- A public profile rarely states a clearance, so you infer it from employer type, contract vehicle, customer agency, facility proximity, and skill keywords that match a Performance Work Statement - none of which alone proves active access.
- Default to Secret. In FY2019 ODNI figures, 67.4% of clearance holders sat at Confidential or Secret, and 'clearance required' without specification usually means Secret; upgrade to TS/SCI only on explicit SCIF, IC, or agency signals.
- Disclosure skews hard by level. In Refolk's index, 5,297 US profiles reference 'TS/SCI clearance' against just 253 that reference 'active secret clearance' - a 20.9x ratio that inflates how common TS/SCI looks.
- Status hinges on the 24-month rule: a break-in-service of two years or more, or an out-of-date investigation, forces a new application, so count from separation date, not last investigation date.
- You may verify eligibility in DISS pre-offer but not use DISS for recruiting, so treat every self-labelled clearance as an unverified claim until an FSO confirms it at offer stage.

Deciding whether a sourced candidate probably holds an active US security clearance, and roughly at what level, is a daily inference problem in defense and govtech sourcing. The profile in front of you will almost never say "TS/SCI," and even when it does, the text is a claim, not a fact. This guide is the scoring model: the public signals that carry weight, how to read them into a level band and a status, and how to attach a confidence flag you can defend, all without asking a candidate to violate disclosure rules.

It is written for in-house recruiters, sourcers, and talent leaders working cleared roles. The ranking pages tell you to buy a cleared-talent database and post to niche boards. That is procurement, not sourcing. The actual skill is the read.

## Why you infer a clearance instead of reading it

A public profile rarely states a clearance, so the job is inference from context, not lookup. You are reading employer type, contract vehicle, customer agency, facility location, and posting language into an estimate, then flagging how confident that estimate is.

Start with scale, because it tells you where the signal lives. Over 85% of clearance holders work with the Department of Defense, and DCSA oversees over 95% of federal background investigations. That concentration means the vocabulary you are hunting for is DoD and contractor vocabulary: program names, agency customers, and the language of a Performance Work Statement, which is the contract document that spells out what a contractor must deliver.

There are three formal levels under Executive Order 13526: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret, each tied to the level of damage unauthorized disclosure could cause. SCI (Sensitive Compartmented Information) and SAPs (Special Access Programs) are not separate levels. They are additional read-ins layered on top of a Top Secret eligibility. So "TS/SCI" is one Top Secret clearance plus a compartment, not a level above Top Secret.

**85% - Share of US clearance holders who work with the DoD**

The vocabulary you source against is DoD and contractor language, not generic tech language.

The signal you most want - an explicit self-label - is also the least reliable, because it is self-reported. That tension runs through everything below. You build the estimate from weak, corroborating signals and reserve certainty for a formal check that happens after the candidate is interested.

## The signals, and what each one proves when it lies

Six public signals correlate with holding a clearance. Each proves something narrow, and each has a specific way of misleading you. Read them as a set, never one at a time.

| Signal | What it proves | How it lies |
|---|---|---|
| Defense prime/sub employer | Cleared-work context | Person may sit on unclassified commercial work |
| Contract vehicle / customer agency | Proximity to classified programs | Support role may need no access |
| SCIF or facility location | On-site classified access nearby | Location is context, not clearance |
| PWS-matching skill keywords | Alignment to a cleared statement of work | Keywords copied for search visibility |
| ClearanceJobs presence | Active or current clearance to register | Level typed on profile is self-reported |
| Self-labelled level ("TS/SCI") | A claim of eligibility | May be lapsed or inflated |

The one signal that carries structural weight is a ClearanceJobs presence: candidates must have an active or current US federal clearance to be on the platform at all. That is a gate, not a self-report. But the level shown on a ClearanceJobs profile is still self-reported by the user and not verified by the platform. So presence is meaningful, level is a claim.

Employer is the signal most people over-trust. Named cleared employers - the likes of Leidos, GDIT, ManTech, Amentum, and Peraton - surface constantly in these searches. But a defense-prime badge only tells you the person works somewhere that does cleared work. It does not tell you they personally hold access. A govtech role adjacent to a prime, with no facility access, is the classic false positive.

> **Rule:** Two signals or none
>
> Never assign a clearance estimate above Low confidence on a single signal. Require at least one context signal (employer, agency, facility) and one that speaks to access or level (self-label, ClearanceJobs presence, SCIF language).

## Scoring the level band: default to Secret

Default every estimate to Secret and upgrade only on explicit evidence. Secret is the workhorse level, the majority of cleared positions sit there, and "clearance required" without specification usually means Secret.

The population data backs the default. In the FY2019 ODNI figures, most holders sat below Top Secret.

| Band | Holders | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Confidential/Secret | 2,859,877 | 67.4% |
| Top Secret | 1,384,060 | 32.6% |
| Total | ~4.24M | 100% |

Confidential is rare in practice. Relatively few positions are cleared at Confidential alone; most roles that need access need Secret or above. So your practical band is a binary in most cases: Secret unless proven otherwise, or TS/SCI on explicit signals.

Match the level to the reinvestigation cadence too, because dates on a profile can hint at level. Top Secret is reinvestigated every 5 years, Secret every 10, and Confidential every 15 - though continuous vetting is replacing that fixed cadence for many positions.

| Level | Damage standard | Reinvestigation |
|---|---|---|
| Confidential | damage | 15 years |
| Secret | serious damage | 10 years |
| Top Secret | exceptionally grave damage | 5 years |

Upgrade to TS/SCI only on explicit signals: SCIF work described in the profile, an intelligence-community customer, a stated polygraph, or the TS/SCI label itself. Everything else stays Secret.

#### Level-band decision

Horizontal axis runs from No explicit TS signal to Explicit TS/SCI, SCIF, or IC signal. Vertical axis runs from Weak context to Strong context (agency, prime, facility).

| Quadrant | What it means |
| --- | --- |
| Unspecified, weak context | Estimate Secret, Low confidence |
| TS signal, weak context | Estimate TS/SCI, treat as claim, Medium confidence |
| Unspecified, strong context | Estimate Secret, Medium confidence |
| TS signal, strong context | Estimate TS/SCI, High confidence |

*Read explicit TS signals against corroborating context to place a level band you can defend.*

## The disclosure skew that distorts every list

Disclosure skews hard by level, so your raw search results over-represent TS/SCI and under-represent Secret. Correct for it or your pipeline will look more elite than the population is.

Refolk's index makes the skew visible. Compare the two most common phrasings on public US profiles.

| Phrase on profile | Profiles | Ratio vs Secret |
|---|---|---|
| "TS/SCI clearance" | 5,297 | 20.9x |
| "active secret clearance" | 253 | 1.0x |

Set that against the population. Top Secret was only 32.6% of holders in the ODNI figures, yet TS/SCI appears 20.9 times more often than the "active secret clearance" phrase in the index. TS/SCI holders disclose far more, partly for search visibility and partly because the rarer, higher-value clearance is worth advertising. Secret holders, who are the majority, often say nothing specific or write only "cleared."

**20.9x - How much more often "TS/SCI clearance" appears than "active secret clearance" in Refolk's index**

Disclosure over-represents Top Secret; the median cleared professional is a quiet Secret holder.

There is a second lesson in the index: disclosure phrasing clusters by role. Of the 253 profiles that reference "active secret clearance," only 14 carry the title Intelligence Analyst, and 11 of those 14 sit in that single role. The exact phrase you search for shapes which roles you surface, so vary phrasing when you want breadth. If you only search for TS/SCI, you will miss the larger, quieter Secret population that never types the level at all.

This is precisely the friction a plain-English search removes. Rather than guessing which of a dozen phrasings a candidate used, you describe the person and let the index handle the variants across GitHub, LinkedIn, and the open web.

I ran this search: `Find intelligence analysts near Huntsville, Alabama who mention an active Secret clearance and DoD contract work.` - [see the full result list](https://www.refolk.ai/s/8gd4z518jz).

*Returns cleared analysts in a defense hub, letting you test the Secret-band read against a real role-and-place cluster instead of a phrase guess.*

## Scoring active versus lapsed: the 24-month rule

Status turns on one rule. If the periodic investigation is out of date, or there has been a break-in-service of two years or more, the person must be nominated for a new clearance and complete a fresh application like someone who never held one.

The exception is the person still in the seat: a clearance stays active as long as they are in a job requiring access to classified information. So the read is simple in shape and easy to get wrong in detail.

- **Likely active.** Currently in a cleared role, or separated less than 24 months ago with a strong self-label such as "Active."
- **Likely current/inactive.** Holds eligibility but not accessing classified daily; "Current" or "Eligibility on file" phrasing inside the window.
- **Likely lapsed.** Separated 24 months or more ago with no reinstatement signal.
- **None.** No cleared footprint, or a clean-transfer gap that broke reciprocity.

Two phrasings do heavy lifting. "Active" means holding and actively using it. "Current" means holding but not accessing classified daily. And "Eligibility on file" denotes someone within the 24-month reinstatement window but not currently in a cleared billet - a useful, reachable state worth its own search.

Count the window from separation date, not last investigation date. Continuous vetting - over four million positions had enrolled by September 2021, eliminating periodic reinvestigation for many - does not extend the lapse rule. That timeline still applies from the day the person left cleared work.

> **Watch out:** Do not read reciprocity as SCI portability
>
> Clearances are reciprocally accepted government-wide absent a 24-month-plus break, but SCI access requires the receiving agency to indoctrinate the holder even if the TS transfers cleanly. Polygraph requirements vary by agency, so never assume a poly moves with the clearance.

## The scoring procedure

Run these seven steps in order. Steps 3 and 4 can swap - resume-focused writers lead with status, sourcing writers lead with level and vehicle - but do all of them before you spend outreach. Budget about 45 minutes per profile until the reads become automatic.

#### Score a profile into a clearance estimate

1. **Establish clearance context** - Confirm the profile sits inside the cleared ecosystem: a defense prime or sub employer, an agency customer, or a SCIF or facility location. Done when the person plausibly works cleared, not merely in tech.
2. **Read employer and contract-vehicle language** - Extract named agencies, program vehicles, and keywords that match a Performance Work Statement. Done when you can name the likely customer agency.
3. **Score the level band** - Map role and facility to a band, defaulting to Secret. Upgrade to TS/SCI only on explicit SCIF, IC, or agency signals. Done with a band assigned.
4. **Score active versus lapsed** - Apply the 24-month break-in-service rule against the last cleared role end date, counting from separation. Done when status reads likely active, lapsed, or none.
5. **Capture disclosure phrasing verbatim** - Distinguish Active, Current/Inactive, Eligibility on file, and Previously held. Done when the self-label is captured word for word.
6. **Assign a confidence flag** - High is an explicit self-label plus corroborating employer or facility; Medium is strong context, no self-label; Low is a single weak signal. Done when the estimate carries a flag.
7. **Verify only after interest, within policy** - Queue a pre-offer DISS eligibility check for the FSO at offer stage. Never ask the candidate to reveal classified detail. Done when verification is routed correctly.

The output of the procedure is one line you can paste into a sourcing note. Keep it short and structured so the next person can audit it.

**Clearance estimate line**

```
CLEARANCE ESTIMATE
Level band: Secret / TS/SCI / Unknown
Status: likely active / current-inactive / lapsed / none
Self-label (verbatim): "____________"
Basis: employer=____ | agency/vehicle=____ | facility=____ | ClearanceJobs=Y/N
Last cleared role end: MM/YYYY  (months since separation: __)
Confidence: High / Medium / Low
Verify at: pre-offer DISS check by FSO (not requested from candidate)
```

*Fill each field from the steps above. Keep the self-label verbatim and the confidence flag honest.*

> Presence on a cleared platform is a gate; the level typed beside it is only a claim.

## How the read goes wrong

The failure modes below are where defensible estimates collapse into wishful ones. Treat this as the most important section: a scoring model that overclaims is worse than no model, because it sends outreach and offers into dead ends.

- **Employer equals clearance.** A defense-prime employee may sit on unclassified commercial work. The false positive is a FAANG-adjacent govtech role with no facility access. Check for agency and PWS keywords, not just the employer name.
- **Self-label taken as verified.** ClearanceJobs and LinkedIn levels are self-reported. Someone may type "TS/SCI" for search visibility on a lapsed clearance. Only a DISS check confirms it; treat text as a claim.
- **Level inflation.** Assuming SCIF or IC context means TS/SCI when the role is Secret. Default to Secret without explicit TS signals, because most roles that need access need Secret or above.
- **"Active" versus "Current" conflation.** A profile that just says "clearance" may be inactive. Listing a long-dormant clearance misleads recruiters about true availability. Check the last cleared-role end date against the 24-month window.
- **Break-in-service miscount.** Continuous vetting does not extend the lapse rule. Count from separation, not last investigation.
- **Reciprocity over-read.** A clean transfer does not carry SCI or a polygraph across agencies. Do not assume either moves cleanly.
- **Compliance drift in outreach.** Pushing a candidate to name programs to "prove" a level invites spillage. A detailed war story may be classified. Steer to functional scope only.

The most expensive of these is level inflation crossed with self-label trust: you flag a candidate as TS/SCI on their own typed label, build a slate around it, and discover at offer that the clearance is Secret and lapsed. The disclosure skew makes this easy to do, because TS/SCI is the loudest phrase in the data and the rarest state in the population.

#### From cleared population to a defensible estimate

| Stage | Figure | Note |
| --- | --- | --- |
| US clearance holders (FY2019) | 4,240,000 | ODNI population |
| Top Secret holders | 1,384,060 | 32.6% of the population |
| Profiles saying "TS/SCI clearance" (index) | 5,297 | The loud minority |
| Profiles saying "active secret clearance" (index) | 253 | The quiet majority, barely visible |

*Public disclosure narrows sharply, so most cleared people never surface by an explicit level phrase.*

## Staying inside the disclosure and verification rules

You may estimate freely from public signals, but you may not push a candidate toward classified detail, and you may not verify through DISS for recruiting. These two limits are not optional; they protect the candidate and your program.

DCSA's DISS Account Management Policy governs verification: industry companies are authorized to verify a prospective employee's eligibility in DISS prior to an offer, but they may not use DISS for recruiting purposes. In practice, that means the DISS check is an FSO action at offer stage, downstream of your estimate. Nothing in your sourcing workflow touches it.

On the candidate side, unacceptable disclosures include compartmented programs, classified system names, specific polygraph results, and mission details. Ask candidates to clarify roles, levels of access, and security responsibilities without asking for classified details. If a candidate volunteers something specific, redirect to functional scope.

#### What you may touch, and when

1. **Public signals** - Employer, agency, vehicle, facility, self-label - all fair game for the estimate
2. **Candidate conversation** - Roles, access levels, security responsibilities in functional terms only
3. **Pre-offer verification** - DISS eligibility check by the FSO, never for recruiting, never from the candidate

*The estimate lives entirely in public signals; verification lives entirely with the FSO after interest.*

Get this right and the value is concrete. A cleared candidate saves an employer six to twelve months of processing and tens of thousands in investigation costs, and end-to-end processing across all tiers averaged about 243 days in DCSA 2025 data. The whole point of the estimate is to spend outreach where that saving is real, not where a self-label is bluffing.

> **Tip:** Search for the reachable window
>
> The "eligibility on file" and "inactive clearance" phrasings, combined with a separation date inside 24 months, surface people who are still reinstatable without a fresh investigation. That is often your fastest-to-onboard segment.

## Before you call the estimate done

Run this checklist against every profile before it enters a slate. Each item is a specific check, not a topic.

#### Clearance estimate quality gate

- [ ] The estimate rests on at least two signals, one context and one access or level.
- [ ] The level band defaults to Secret unless an explicit TS, SCIF, or IC signal is present.
- [ ] The self-label is captured verbatim and treated as an unverified claim.
- [ ] Status was scored by counting months from separation date, not last investigation.
- [ ] A ClearanceJobs presence, if any, is noted as a gate but its level as a claim.
- [ ] The confidence flag matches the evidence: High only with a self-label plus corroboration.
- [ ] No outreach language asks the candidate to name programs, systems, or mission detail.
- [ ] DISS verification is queued for the FSO at offer stage, not requested during sourcing.

## Keeping the model current

The rules in this model move on known mechanisms, so re-check the mechanism, not the number. Three things will drift: the reinvestigation-versus-continuous-vetting picture, the DISS verification policy, and the population totals. When you revisit, confirm the 24-month lapse window still governs status (continuous vetting has not changed it so far), confirm DISS is still off-limits for recruiting, and refresh the population split from the latest ODNI determinations report rather than trusting the FY2019 figures forever.

Re-run the disclosure skew inside your own tooling every quarter. The 20.9x TS/SCI-to-Secret ratio in Refolk's index is a snapshot of how people label themselves, and labelling habits shift. If Secret disclosure rises, your default-to-Secret rule stays correct but your search phrasing should widen. The model's spine - infer from context, default to Secret, count the 24 months from separation, verify only at offer - is durable. The dials on top of it are not, so treat them as things to re-measure, not facts to memorise.

## Frequently asked questions

### How can I tell if a candidate has a security clearance from a LinkedIn profile?

You infer it, you do not read it. Look for a defense prime or sub employer, a named customer agency, a contract vehicle, SCIF or on-site classified language, and skill keywords that match a Performance Work Statement. A ClearanceJobs presence is a strong signal because the platform requires an active or current clearance to register. None of these proves active access on its own, so combine at least two and assign a confidence flag rather than a yes or no.

### Does 'clearance required' on a profile mean Secret or Top Secret?

Default to Secret. Secret is the workhorse level, and in FY2019 ODNI figures 67.4% of holders sat at Confidential or Secret. An unspecified 'clearance required' or 'cleared' almost always means Secret. Only upgrade to TS/SCI when you see explicit signals: SCIF work, an intelligence-community customer, polygraph references, or a stated TS/SCI label. Level inflation is one of the most common scoring errors.

### What is the difference between an active and a current clearance?

Active means the person holds the clearance and is actively using it in a job requiring classified access right now. Current means they hold eligibility but are not accessing classified material daily. 'Eligibility on file' denotes someone inside the 24-month reinstatement window but not in a cleared billet. A clearance also lapses to none if there is a break-in-service of two years or more, which forces a fresh application.

### Can I verify a candidate's clearance before making an offer?

Yes, but narrowly. Under DCSA's DISS Account Management Policy, industry companies are authorized to verify a prospective employee's eligibility in DISS prior to an offer, but they may not use DISS for recruiting purposes. That verification is an FSO function at offer stage. During sourcing you treat every self-labelled clearance as an unverified claim, because ClearanceJobs and LinkedIn levels are self-reported and not verified by the platform.

### Why do so many more profiles say TS/SCI than Secret?

Disclosure skews by level, not by population. In Refolk's index 5,297 US profiles reference 'TS/SCI clearance' against 253 that reference 'active secret clearance', a 20.9x ratio. Yet FY2019 ODNI figures show Top Secret was only 32.6% of holders. TS/SCI holders disclose more, partly for search visibility and partly because the clearance is rarer and more valuable to advertise, so the phrase over-represents on public profiles.

---

*From the Refolk guide library. I revise these guides rather than replacing them, so the current version is always at https://www.refolk.ai/guides/clearance-likelihood-read*