How do ClearanceJobs and LinkedIn Differ?

LinkedIn is a generalist career site. They have no security-clearance or polygraph filter. Recruiters must identify cleared candidates by including keywords such as “Top Secret” or “Secret” or “Full Scope” in their Boolean searches. Entering clearance levels as text in Booleans is inherently problematic and will always yield deficient results. And recruiters will spend hours closely reviewing resumes to determine clearance level and status – both of which are critical.

LinkedIn doesn’t collect security-clearance information. They rely on candidates providing cleared information in their resume or as a "skill". ClearanceJobs collects clearance level, status, issuing agency, and polygraph level, plus a Notes space for candidates to provide detail.

LinkedIn has no safeguards in place to guide accurate disclosure on security clearances. ClearanceJobs requires candidates to self-verify their status before registration. We make it very clear that they must have an active or current clearance, and be a U.S. citizen, in order to register on ClearanceJobs.

Candidate information on ClearanceJobs is only available to recruiters who have been vetted and approved by ClearanceJobs. Candidate information on LinkedIn is publicly available and searchable to everyone.

This is a significant concern to security-cleared professionals, who greatly value and protect their privacy. They don’t feel safe posting their complete resume on open networks like LinkedIn, so the information they share is limited.

LinkedIn is prime breeding ground for China, Russia, and other countries searching for blackmail targets. Recent articles warn users about the phishing threat on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has thousands of groups for any topic you could think of. This spreads candidates thin and makes them harder to find. On ClearanceJobs, there is ONE group per niche, so recruiters don’t have to figure out which one to join.

ClearanceJobs Groups have many other benefits over LinkedIn Groups as well.

When candidates haven’t logged in to ClearanceJobs for three years, we remove their profile, resulting in a more engaged candidate database. LinkedIn keeps members in their database, meaning the “perfect” candidate that appears in search results may not have logged in for 5+ years.

LinkedIn displays limited information on dates associated with candidates, so it’s hard to determine how engaged or active a candidate is.

ClearanceJobs is focused on the cleared market, and when we add features or enhance existing functionality, we do so with the cleared marketplace in mind. Only a very small portion of the LinkedIn resume database is cleared, so their innovations are not focused on the cleared marketplace.