Top 10 Cleared Recruiting Firms and Hiring Platforms (2026)

By Jeff Packard, Founder and CEO of BizFirst (two decades in GovCon and technical recruiting). Published September 8, 2026. About a 10-minute read. Corrections: info@bizfirst.net.

Disclosure: BizFirst publishes this guide and is one of the firms included. “Top 10” means 10 providers we believe merit consideration for this hiring need, not a 1-to-10 ranking. Providers are grouped by buyer fit, evaluated using the same factors, and no placement is paid. Company-reported figures are labeled. See our methodology.

The top 10 at a glance

This is an unranked shortlist organized by service model and buyer fit. Best fit identifies the clearest use case. Confirm before choosing gives you a practical point to verify with the provider.

The short version. Cleared hiring is its own market. The candidate pool is narrowed by clearance eligibility, agency access, polygraph requirements, location, and program fit. The providers that work well here have real reach into the cleared community and can calibrate a search beyond a resume keyword. This guide compares sourcing platforms, national staffing firms with government practices, GovCon specialists, and boutique senior-led search by the situations each appears best suited to.

Contents

• What counts as a cleared recruiting provider
• How to choose a cleared recruiting partner
• Cleared sourcing platforms
• National staffing firms with cleared practices
• GovCon and cleared specialists
• Boutique, senior-led
• What we looked at
• FAQs
• Source ledger

What counts as a cleared recruiting provider

Three different purchases get lumped together here, and it helps to keep them straight. A sourcing platform or job board gives you reach into the cleared community, but you still run the search. A staffing or recruiting firm manages the search and delivers vetted candidates. An embedded RPO adds ongoing recruiting capacity for a sustained ramp. A prime contractor that recruits only for its own programs is not a third-party recruiter at all. Decide which purchase you are making before you compare firms.

One terminology point matters. Public Trust is a suitability designation, not a national-security clearance. Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret are clearance levels. Sensitive Compartmented Information is an access determination, and a program may also require a counterintelligence, full-scope, or lifestyle polygraph. If a provider treats all of those as interchangeable checkboxes, slow down.

How to choose a cleared recruiting partner

Ask each finalist to work through one real requirement with you, then listen for precision:

• Eligibility and recency: How will the provider verify current eligibility and whether the investigation or access is in scope?
• Agency access and polygraph: Has it recently filled roles with the same agency access and polygraph requirement?
• Location and compensation: Does its candidate network match the on-site, hybrid, shift, travel, and pay realities of your program?
• Service model: Are you buying database access, sourcing help, a completed search, contract staffing, or an embedded recruiting team?
• Delivery ownership: Who runs the work, who validates each submission, and what workload does that person carry?

Cleared sourcing platforms

ClearanceJobs (DHI Group)

Owned by DHI Group (NYSE: DHX) and founded in 2002, ClearanceJobs reported reaching 2 million registered candidates in June 2026 (company-reported). DHI expanded beyond subscriptions and sourcing by acquiring AgileATS in 2025 and Point Solutions Group in March 2026. Point Solutions Group adds government staffing, technical services, federal past performance, and a Top Secret facility clearance to the broader offering.

Best fit: broad reach into the cleared community with an expanding path to managed staffing. Confirm: whether your proposal covers self-service sourcing, recruiting services, staffing, or a combination, and who owns day-to-day delivery.

ClearedJobs.Net

A veteran-founded cleared career site and job-fair company, founded in 2001. Employers get a clearance-filtered resume database with veteran identification and AI auto-match, flexible job-posting packages, and in-person cleared job fairs. Company-reported: 98% of the companies that attend its job fairs say they expect to make an offer to a qualified candidate.

Best fit: face-to-face cleared hiring events and direct sourcing into a cleared audience. Confirm: what your internal team must run after sourcing, what event access includes, and how candidate eligibility is represented.

National staffing firms with cleared practices

Insight Global

A large national staffing firm with a dedicated government practice that recruits cleared IT and professional talent for federal programs.

Best fit: high-volume cleared IT and professional staffing with a large recruiting network. Confirm: the named delivery owner, workload, submission review, and recent experience with your exact clearance, access, and location requirements.

TEKsystems

Part of Allegis Group, TEKsystems runs large IT and engineering staffing programs, including cleared and public-sector work, and is built for enterprise delivery.

Best fit: large cleared IT and engineering programs where scale and process matter. Confirm: minimum engagement size and recent experience with your exact clearance, access, labor category, and agency.

Beacon Hill

A large national staffing organization with a federal and government practice that supports proposal and capture hiring and maintains a substantial cleared candidate network. It spans many specialties well beyond cleared work.

Best fit: proposal, capture, contract, and surge support through a broad staffing organization. Confirm: which division and delivery team will own your work, its workload, and recent like-for-like results.

Day & Zimmermann

A long-established workforce-solutions company whose staffing arm supports cleared technical and intelligence hiring at scale for defense and intelligence-community customers.

Best fit: cleared technical and intelligence staffing for larger programs. Confirm: the exact delivery model, contract arrangement, and support for a small set of openings.

GovCon and cleared specialists

iQuasar

A GovCon-focused recruiting firm supporting DoD, DHS, NSA, and CIA contractors, with engagement models for concurrent roles (RecruitPro), urgent surge hiring (RapidHire, backed by a 48-hour backfill guarantee), embedded recruiting, and proposal-required positions (GovBid Recruit). It supports requirements from Public Trust suitability through TS/SCI access with CI, full-scope, and lifestyle polygraphs. Company-reported: first submissions in one to two business days for most Secret and TS roles, over 85% offer acceptance, and a database of more than 1.6 million resumes oriented to cleared hiring.

Best fit: proposal hiring, urgent backfill, and cleared recruiting programs. Confirm: capacity for your volume and the definitions and terms behind advertised speed and performance figures.

GDH

An independent firm that runs cleared IT and engineering hiring as an embedded RPO, vetting for Top Secret, TS/SCI, and full-scope polygraph. In one government engagement it reported delivering more than 25 candidates a week, cutting time-to-fill by 43% and cost-to-hire by 50%, filling 200-plus positions in four months, and scaling from 200 to 400-plus roles across agencies (company-reported).

Best fit: cleared IT and engineering ramps run as an embedded RPO that scales up and down. Confirm: coverage and comparable results for roles outside IT and engineering.

Sparks Group

A long-running Washington, DC-area staffing and recruiting firm with a dedicated government and security-clearance practice across the District, Maryland, and Virginia, placing cleared professional, administrative, and IT talent.

Best fit: cleared professional, administrative, and IT staffing across the DC metro. Confirm: coverage for nationwide programs, your specific role mix, and the recruiter assigned to the engagement.

Boutique, senior-led

BizFirst

A Northern Virginia boutique that runs senior-led searches for requirements from Secret through Top Secret with SCI access and counterintelligence or full-scope polygraph requirements, serving federal primes and subcontractors. A senior Client Delivery Lead who carries only three or four clients owns each engagement and reviews every submission. BizFirst publishes pricing across its models: DirectHire is contingent at 10% to 15% of first-year salary, HireSelect is a flat $3,500 single-role search, and PartnerHire is priced monthly plus a flat $1,000 placement fee. Company-reported: first qualified candidates in about three business days on PartnerHire and 94% of placements still in seat past 90 days. For an example, see the security-integrator case study and the cleared recruiting page.

Best fit: cleared search where a smaller contractor wants senior oversight and published pricing. Confirm: fit for enterprise-scale or very high-volume cleared programs.

What we looked at

This is an editorial shortlist, not a scored ranking. We reviewed current public information and grouped providers by what decides a cleared hiring purchase: reach into the cleared community, the eligibility, access, and polygraph requirements each addresses, whether it provides sourcing or managed delivery, evidence of scale, engagement ownership, and pricing transparency. To be included, a provider had to offer cleared recruiting, staffing, or a clearly defined sourcing service to outside buyers, not merely recruit for its own programs. Public information cannot show the quality of the individual recruiter assigned to a future engagement, so buyers should verify that directly. Metrics labeled company-reported are the provider's own claims, not independently audited.

FAQs

If you want senior-led cleared search with pricing you can see before you call, that is what BizFirst DirectHire and PartnerHire offer. See our cleared recruiting page and pricing, or compare the broader market in our GovCon staffing and recruiting firms guide. If a platform, a national staffing firm, or a specialist above fits your scale better, use this guide to choose it.

About the author

Jeff Packard

Founder and CEO, BizFirst

Jeff spent 14 years at Dimension Data (now NTT), where he grew the global consulting and professional services practice from a startup to more than $1 billion. He later co-founded and sold a federal IT staffing firm, and has spent two decades on the client side of recruiting as the hiring manager, P&L owner, and executive sponsor. He built BizFirst to do it differently: small teams, senior attention, and real accountability for outcomes.

Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn →

Source ledger

All competitor pages accessed September 8, 2026. Metrics marked company-reported are the firm's own claims, not independently audited.