You won a piece of work on a prime's contract. Now you have 30 days to put a cleared body in a seat. The prime holds the customer relationship. The prime holds the badge office. And the prime is fishing the same small pond of cleared veterans you are. As a subcontractor, you do not get to set the rules. You have to be faster and smarter with less leverage.

This guide is for subcontractors. Not primes with a dedicated recruiting team and a household name. You. The midsize shop holding a sub line on a task order, trying to staff a cleared role before the prime starts asking questions. The good news is that cleared veterans are a real, reachable talent pool. The hard part is competing for them when you are not the company on the building.

I am a Navy veteran who built Best Military Resume after my own messy transition. Over almost two years we have worked with veterans on both sides of the cleared market. Here is how a sub actually wins cleared talent without a Fortune 500 budget.

Why is hiring cleared veterans harder for a subcontractor?

A prime sits closest to the customer. They get first look at the requirement. They set the timeline. They often own the badging and the facility clearance for the program. You inherit what is left.

That changes your hiring math in a few ways. You are working a tighter clock, because the sub line usually gets staffed after the prime fills its own seats. You are working a thinner margin, so you cannot always match a prime's salary. And you are working with less brand pull. A cleared veteran has heard of the big names. They have not heard of you.

None of that means you lose. It means you compete on the things you can control. Speed. Honesty. A real read on the candidate. And knowing exactly where cleared veterans actually are when they start looking.

What clearance does your company actually need to win?

This is where subs get tripped up. There is a difference between a person's clearance and your company's ability to hold them on classified work.

A person holds a personnel security clearance. Secret, Top Secret, or TS/SCI. A company holds a Facility Security Clearance, or FCL. To put a cleared worker on classified tasks, your company usually needs its own FCL, or you ride under the prime's facility for that work. You cannot sponsor or hold a clearance without that piece in place.

The Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency runs the National Industrial Security Program. It oversees facility clearances and personnel investigations for cleared industry. If your firm does not have an FCL yet, the prime or the government customer has to sponsor one. That takes time. Plan for it before you bid, not after you win.

For the deeper version of this, we wrote a full piece on the facility security clearance your company needs. Read it before you commit to a cleared sub line.

Should you hire an already-cleared veteran or sponsor one?

You have two real paths. Hire someone who already holds an active clearance at the right level. Or hire a strong candidate and bring their clearance back, or sponsor a new one.

An active clearance is the fast path. If a veteran left service with a Secret or TS/SCI that is still in scope, they can often start sooner. A clearance can transfer between programs through reciprocity, which lets one agency or contractor accept an existing eligibility instead of starting over.

The catch is supply. Active-cleared veterans are exactly who the primes chase too. So do not write off the second path. A veteran whose clearance recently lapsed may be reinstatable. A veteran who never held one but is clearable can be sponsored. Both widen your pool when the active-cleared shelf is bare.

If you go the second route, you need to judge clearability before you invest. We broke down how to screen veterans for clearability when they do not hold a clearance yet, and the timeline for how an employer sponsors a clearance step by step.

Where do cleared veterans actually look for work?

Subs lose time posting a cleared role on a general job board and waiting. Cleared veterans do not job-search the way other candidates do. They cannot post their clearance level in the open. They lean on word of mouth, cleared-specific channels, and recruiters who already know the space.

So go where they are. Reach into transition programs at the bases near your work site. Build a bench before you win the next task order. And use a candidate database where veterans have already translated their service into civilian terms, so you are not guessing whether a 25-series soldier fits a network role.

The DoD SkillBridge program is one of the most underused tools a sub has. You host a transitioning service member for an internship while they are still drawing military pay. You get a working tryout. If it fits, you offer when they separate. They are not your employee during the internship, so this is a long-look hire, not a same-week fill. For a sub building a bench, that is exactly right.

For the channels view, we keep a running guide to finding cleared veteran talent for defense roles. It pairs well with this one.

How do you read a cleared veteran's resume without missing the fit?

A cleared veteran's resume often reads thin to a civilian reviewer. Military training teaches people to be brief, to credit the team, and to never oversell. That is the opposite of how a civilian resume sells a candidate. So a strong veteran can look weak on paper.

Do not let your applicant tracking system make the call for you. An ATS racks and stacks resumes by keyword match. It does not reject anyone. A weak keyword match just sinks a resume to the bottom of the list. A great cleared veteran who described their work in military terms can sink right past you while you wait on the prime.

So read for scope, not just titles. A platoon sergeant ran people, budget, and equipment accountability. A 25B managed networks under fire. Search for the work the person did, not only the civilian job title you expect.

If you want the long version, our guide on how to read a security clearance on a resume and the GovCon LCAT mapping for veteran experience show you how to slot a military record into a billable labor category.

How does a sub compete on speed instead of money?

You may not win on salary. You can win on speed and clarity. A cleared veteran on the market gets pulled in five directions. The company that moves cleanly and respects their time often wins, even at a slightly lower number.

Move fast on the things you control. Pre-clear your FCL question with the prime before you post. Have your Facility Security Officer ready to verify a clearance the day a candidate accepts. Give a real start date instead of a vague "pending."

Speed only works if you have candidates ready to move. That means building a pipeline before the award, not after. To shave weeks off a hard fill, our piece on how to reduce time-to-fill on hard cleared roles walks through the bench-building play in detail.

Can a midsize sub afford to source cleared veterans?

Yes. The cost worry is usually about the clearance premium and a recruiting budget you do not have. The answer is to spend less on broad job boards and more on a focused pool.

A cleared veteran hire pays back fast. They show up able to handle a secure environment, follow process, and lead under pressure. The savings come from a shorter ramp and lower turnover, not a lower salary. We laid out the math in our guide on the cost savings of a cleared veteran hire.

Speed matters even more in a tight labor market. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics veteran employment data shows veteran unemployment sitting near historic lows. Cleared veterans get pulled off the market fast. If you wait, the prime gets them.

One more point to know as a sub. If you hold or expect federal contracts above the threshold, veteran hiring rules under VEVRAA may apply to your firm. We covered VEVRAA compliance for federal contractors hiring veterans so you can check whether it touches you.

How do you hire cleared veterans without friction with the prime?

As a sub, your hire often has to badge through the prime's facility or work in the prime's secure space. That means the prime has a say in the timeline. It also means you need a clean working relationship, not a turf fight over talent.

Talk to the prime early. Ask how a new cleared hire gets badged and verified on the program. Ask whether the contract has any non-solicit terms that limit who you can recruit. Some prime and sub agreements restrict pulling staff off each other's lines. Know that before you make an offer, not after.

Then bring the prime a solved problem. When you show up with a cleared veteran who fits the labor category and is ready to start, you make the prime's life easier. That builds the kind of trust that gets you on the next task order. A sub that staffs fast and clean is a sub a prime wants to keep.

How does Best Military Resume help a sub find cleared veterans?

Most of a sub's time is lost in two places. Finding cleared veterans in the first place, and decoding whether a military record fits a billable role. We built our candidate side to close both gaps.

Best Military Resume is a veteran talent platform. Veterans use it to translate their service into civilian terms, so when you search, you see a record you can actually read. We add more than 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, and over 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. For a sub competing against primes, a fresh and growing pool is the edge you need.

You do not have to out-spend the prime. You have to find the right cleared veteran first and move clean. If you want access to BMR's veteran talent pool, reach out through our hire page and we will help you staff your cleared roles.

For the broader picture, see how government contractors hire cleared veterans and how a midsize company hires cleared veterans even without a defense background. The DOL also keeps a set of employer resources for hiring veterans worth a look.