Ten Steps to Save Your Clearance from Bill Collector

References:

• Henderson, William. Personal Conduct and Security Clearances. ClearanceJobs.com. May 24, 2010
• Follow-up question from a reader on LinkedIn: What if you get caught up with the economy and get bad credit. What will that do to a security clearance?

RIF'ed after 25 years with Lockheed Martin, I’m looking for the right exit on the information superhighway, taking hat in hand to seek that temporary, entry-level job that the ruling party canceled my job to “pay for.” Sometimes -- specifically, after talking to the bill collectors, it so discourages me that I cannot stand to face the oncoming traffic, let alone the mirror.

Sometimes, I fear a Catch-22: I won't land a job because half a year (so far) of unemployment flushed my credit; but I can't make good on my credit because I can't land a job.

The following reflects my plan to face and mitigate bad credit's threat to my clearance and potential employment.

(Pardon me for shifting from first person to second, but this is too painful to write otherwise.)

Bad credit reflects a pattern of dishonest, unreliable, or rule-breaking behavior. You promised to pay your creditors and did not do so. That looks dishonest. Poor budgetary discipline at home presages poor budgetary discipline at work. Willingly or not, you broke your contracts. You now have trust issues with your employer and your government.

The mother of bad credit, overwhelming debt, renders us vulnerable to coercion. I am convinced that dealing with some collection agents fits the adverse sign of association with persons involved in criminal activity. It would not surprise me if some NSA analyst has passed around the office recordings of some of my phone conversations with them. Constant robo-calls and unreasoning, threatening collection agents can rend the heart of a sensitive, otherwise responsible person by debriding scabs from an already-wounded conscience.

As they say of torture, everyone has their limit. Anyone of poor character, or anyone with a lower threshold of emotional pain will eventually do anything to make the torture stop.

Since employers hire you to make money by properly handling their assets and the government entrusts you to create product or service by properly handling its assets, toasting your credit means burning your reputation; and that makes hiring you unpalatable.

Desperately clutching your privacy will not improve your situation. Living openly will decrease your vulnerability to exploitation. Clearance investigators know this. Create a budget, project out until you become debt-free. Offer to show them your plan for controlling your debts. As the referenced article says, [o]ccasionally security clearances are granted with conditions such as a promise to . . . pay off delinquent debts by a certain date.

Offer transparency not only to your employer; also avoid concealment of business or financial problems from family members. When the police interrogate the unfaithful husband on TV, what does he always plea? Please, don’t tell my wife! When investigators talk to your family, they will want to know whether your financial secrecy gives enemies leverage. Living openly not only mitigates your adverse information, it brings peace. It frees you from dealing with fear of exposure and allows you to deal with the real challenges of securing your employment and making ends meet.

Clearance adjudicators will consider you according to a whole person concept. If you need to, shift your life’s focus from satisfying your inward flaws to pursuing outward and upward goals. Correct flaws in your lifestyle, work toward educational or professional goals, or “give back” with altruistic service. You will balance the negatives with positives, become a better person, and live a more secure, peaceful life.

To recapitulate:

   1. Be honest with yourself about how you got into this situation. Accept the parts that were your responsibility.
   2. Be honest with yourself about the results of your situation. Don't blame the government, your employer, or bill collectors for what they have to do -- even if they are morons.
   3. Be open and painfully honest with your employer and clearance investigators.
   4. Be open and painfully honest with your family and any non-coworker associates that depend on your honesty.
   5. Make getting out of debt your primary hobby. Create a financial plan with realistic, measurable goals and dates for getting out of debt.
   6. Make reading Dave Ramsey's books and listening to him on the radio part of your plan.
   7. Turn to an accredited credit counseling agency if you need to.
   8. Make other lifestyle changes to live below your means, improve your character, and otherwise improve your life.
   9. Continue your education. Study towards a (higher) degree, earn a certificate, obtain a professional certificate.
  10. Serve others. You may have to exclude some religious activities from your resume', so consider adding involvement with charitable, civic, professional, or service organizations.

Steel yourself for painful honesty. Show that you have a plan to make good on your word. Create redeeming value in yourself. You just might save your clearance, your job, and your soul; so have faith.

Copyright 2010, Richard Wheeler. All rights reserved.

Time Management

I'm doing some reading that I should have done decades ago.  I'm half way through The 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management.  I hope I can make time to finish it.

My implementation of Hyrum Smith's system resembles a cross between requirements engineering and a trade study's decision matrix.   Start with Values, then flow that across to Outcome Goals, then to Performance Goals, and finally to Tasks.  A graphical tool like DOORS would be great for this.  The Goals are stated with completion criteria, cost, preparation, time, schedule.  Consider S.M.A.R.T criteria.  Smith (so far) stops there.

I took some ideas from MindTools.com.  They show matrices that I express as the Impact/Effort ratio and the equation,

Task Priority = Value Priority x Goal Priority x Urgency

I get a bit too introspective at times, so it's going to take a while to come up with a complete matrix.

This presents the problem of how to fit pick from the life-time worth of tasks that flow down from the values.  Maybe book #4 on my reading list will help with that.  It's on project management.  (Book #3, What Color Is Your Parachute, was recommended as essential reading during a job search.)  

Until I learn a better way, I'll proceed as follows:  The final step groups tasks together to creates greater efficiency and to fit with external factors.  For example, combining stops while shopping (e.g., {dog food = high urgency} with {finding a belt for my interviewing suit = low urgency}), and scheduling the trip for a slow time of day at the stores.  From there it's a matter of seeing a logical succession of events, scattering some time between tasks for contingencies, and ensuring that the most important tasks don't fall off the bottom.

• I'll revise this post as I learn.  
• Please leave comments if you have any.  
• Do you know of any freeware or inexpensive software designed for time and life management?
• What system do you use?
• What values or goals do you use?  I'm compiling several lists in Smith's book as a starting point.  Once I edit those down, I'll provide them here.

Job Searching: The Silence of the App

Follow-up seems to be a one-way street when job hunting.  Job hunters are advised at every turn to follow up on every lead. Give yourself name recognition, establish a professional presence on the Web, clean up your personal image on the Web, check on job status, send thank you notes.

Headhunters provide feedback.  Apply for a position and they'll let you know you're not qualified.  They'll even check back with you because you are the raw material for their product -- employees marketed to employers.

Faceless institutions, however, represent black holes.  Your app goes in, and nothing comes out; not even the gravitational waves caused by the bits of your resume' printout hitting the bottom of their shredder bin.  In the days before application via web-based databases, large employers received so many applications that the bottom line may not have provided labor hours to send out individual responses to job applicants.  With the automation that databases can perform, however, I see no excuse for not performing the courtesy of notifying job seekers when reqs close.

Granted, the flood of applications has grown even worse.  Web-based applications make positions far easier to find.  Some employers have even created mechanisms to screen out people who submit resume' spam.  That's right: Some people submit resume's for jobs not even close to those for which they qualify; and if you have the money, you can hire a business to submit your resume' for hundreds, even thousands of positions for you.  (According to What Color Is Your Parachute? 2000, (Richard N. Bolles, Ten Speed Press), that technique never works.)  If you have enough discernment to read this, you obviously would never get yourself blocked as a resume' spammer.

So, with the tsunami of job seekers, it's not surprising that you'll find little departmental information, let alone contact information, in the online career sites.  Some don't even identify the city.  The sites put up a shield of anonymity for their Human Resources departments and their hiring managers.

This quiet zone for managers creates two major problems for job seekers:  First, it destroys a job seeker's ability to prove creativity, persistence, and people skills during the application process.  Second, it cuts off any source of information that the web site fails to provide.

Several weeks ago, I wanted to apply for a low-level management position with a defense-related division of a conglomerate.  The company's career page on listed two positions, Manager I, and Manager IV.  The job descriptions were identical.  No clue was given about which reported to the other.  In some companies, a Manager I would be entry level and a Manager IV would be a department director; but in other companies, a Manager IV would be entry level the way a Second Lieutenant looks up to a First Lieutenant.

Trying to avoid becoming a blocked resume' spammer, I found some contacts in the company and called them with my simple question.  I left a voice message for all but the one who answered.  The one who answered transferred me to HR, where I had to leave yet another message.  Nobody ever returned my call.

Then I found a local facility.  Surely they would talk to me to answer such a simple question.  Wrong.  The company operator who answered would not forward me to HR unless I had a contact's name.  Instead, the operator told me to fax my question to a number reserved for faxing job applications.  The operator did not respond when I asked how many job seekers have access to a fax machine.  I just can't bring myself to investing an hour to drive all the way downtown to a Kinko's and then pay Kinko's the cost of a fax, just to get one little question answered.  I have since replaced my broken $50 scanner/printer with a $69 clearance-priced copier/scanner/printer/fax, but I doubt I would ever have received a response to my question.

I guess this leads to pet peeves about employers' career sites:  First, the wall of anonymity limits job applicants and their evaluation.  Second, not enough information is available about the structure of job titles.  Third, few provide any feedback after you submit your application.  (They usually send an automated e-mail to acknowledge the first application you submit each day.)  The only way to status your application is to go into their database.  If they track the positions to which you apply, some will give a one-word status if the job req is still open.  Otherwise, the job req simply disappears from their database.  In other words, the page for the job req no longer exists and the database forgets that you ever applied for the job.  But sometimes, even those two indicators conflict.

Before I conclude, I want to honor Eaton Corporation, GE, and Raytheon Corporation.  Their job application databases have informed me that jobs for which I applied have closed.

Hypnotic Language Patterns

Basic familiarity with hypnotic language patterns can help you defend yourself against politicians, advertisers, and salespeople who don't necessarily have your best interests at heart.

 Summary:

• Indirect hypnotic language avoids argument or resistance.  Instead of commanding -- you are feeling sleepy -- hedging and suggesting leave more choice to the subject.  For example, instead of telling the subject, imagine yourself, suggest, perhaps you can remember.
• Indirect hypnotic language gives freedom to interpret what is being said in a way that makes sense to the individual.  Instead of putting you on a beach, it lets you choose a peaceful place.
• This focuses attention inwards.
• The yes set is a series of self-evident statements that conditions you to agree with whatever comes next.
• Truisms can lead into a tag question to make the statement before it less direct and easier to accept.  It works, doesn't it?
• Splicing a suggestion to a truism, even if one phrases does not logically flow from the other, associates the truth of one phrase with the other.
• Illusory choices or double binds presuppose the same outcome.  Would you want to pay with cash or with credit?
• Nominalisations use words with ambiguous connotations to turn the mind inwards to attach individual meaning to them.

Language that bypasses disagreement and requires the mind to make subconscious choices prepares the mind to receive suggestions.  Hypnotic language then delivers suggestions in forms easily processed by the subconscious mind:

• Deliberate confusion
• Ambiguity
• Metaphors
• Puns
• Analogies
• Narratives