The finish line is in sight. If you have made it past the Medical and Security Clearance process (and every step before it), congratulations! You’re nearly there!

The Suitability Review Panel is a group of individuals working for the State Department/Foreign Service, that reviews every candidates application/security package head to toe, and decide if you are worthy of being hired.

This is typically one of the faster steps in the process, usually taking less than a month, and a denied suitability seems to be fairly rare. A lot of people waiting for their Security Clearance won’t even know it is finished by the time they go before the Suitability Panel, and the only way they know they got their Security Clearance and went through the Suitability Review, is an email informing them they are on The Register (which is the final step). Unless you are fairly vigilant about emailing HR about your current status, it seems this is fairly common.

Examples I have seen for denied suitability are history of excess drug use, failure to pay taxes for a few years, previous employers in a pattern giving less than stellar reviews, criminal conduct, and patterns of poor judgement. Basically, they will scrutinize your security clearance and application, give it that one last comb over, and decide if you are indeed worthy. Folks can and will get their Top Secret Security Clearance and still fail this portion. One specific example I saw is a history of heavy hard drug use (not Marijuana), that was long enough ago to give them the security clearance, but gave the Panel enough concern not to clear the individual. Another was a candidate that lived abroad for a few years and failed to file their income taxes during that time. Although they rectified the situation before even applying, this was apparently concerning enough to deny them suitability.

Again, failed suitability seems to be a rare occurrence overall, and once you passed this step, you’ve finally made it to the last step in the whole hiring process, The Register of Cleared Candidates. My next post will discuss this final step, and what it exactly means.

–Nick