ClearedJobs.Net alternatives: what each cleared job site is actually built for
Five places cleared candidates and GovCon recruiters actually search, with the tradeoffs each one makes on pricing, AI matching, scale, and clearance-tier modeling. Plus the difference between ClearedJobs.Net and ClearanceJobs that everyone confuses.
If you're a cleared candidate or a GovCon recruiter, ClearedJobs.Net is one of the names you've seen since 2001. It's veteran-founded, runs the long-running Cleared Job Fair circuit, and is a credible posting board with an exclusive cleared-resume database. It's also one option among several, and the rest of the field has changed faster than the brand awareness suggests. Here's an honest map.
What ClearedJobs.Net actually is
ClearedJobs.Net is a job board plus resume database plus job-fair operator. Employers buy a "parking space" job-posting package (one spot you can swap in and out as roles open and close) and pay separately for resume database access, branded ad placements, and event sponsorships. The recruiter side advertises an "Auto Match" feature that surfaces cleared resumes against an open role. Pricing isn't on the page; the route to a number is a contact form that lands with an account manager at 703-871-0037.
For candidates the site is free. You upload a resume, indicate clearance level, get listed for recruiter search, and apply directly into employer applicant tracking systems. The clearance taxonomy covers Public Trust, Confidential, Secret, TS, TS/SCI, TS/SCI + CI Poly, TS/SCI + FS Poly, plus DoE L, DoE Q, and DHS. Close to what most cleared boards model.
Two things they do well that nobody else in the category matches at scale: in-person Cleared Job Fairs (Hyatt Regency Dulles, Hanover MD, Huntsville AL) and a long-running cleared-careers podcast. If those are how you find candidates or jobs, ClearedJobs.Net is a real channel.
ClearanceJobs vs ClearedJobs.Net: the 24-year confusion
Almost everyone in cleared hiring conflates these two. They are different companies.
- ClearedJobs.Net was founded in 2001 by veterans. Independent, employee-owned, headquartered in Northern Virginia. Domain Rating around 51 per Ahrefs at the time of writing, roughly 2,600 monthly organic visitors.
- ClearanceJobs.com was founded in 2002 and is owned by DHI Group, Inc. (NYSE: DHX), the same parent that runs Dice. Domain Rating around 73, roughly 46,000 monthly organic visitors. As of May 2026 the homepage advertises 58,034 active security clearance jobs from 1,776 pre-screened hiring companies.
ClearanceJobs is meaningfully larger by every public metric — traffic, job count, employer roster, SEO surface area. ClearedJobs.Net competes on community, events, and a longer-than-average customer support relationship.
If you've been hearing "post on the cleared board" and weren't sure which one was meant, the answer is usually whichever one the speaker happens to have used first. Pricing on both is gated behind a sales call, so the experience of "compare and choose" requires two demo conversations.
Why people search for alternatives
Three patterns show up repeatedly in cleared recruiting and candidate communities:
- Pricing is sales-gated. Employers want to compare options before booking a call.
- Resume search is filter-based; "matching" is keyword-and-clearance, not narrative.
- Active roles posted today on Workday, Greenhouse, or Lever careers pages from major primes don't always make it onto the board.
The alternatives below address one or more of those gaps in different ways.
Five alternatives, evaluated honestly
1. ClearanceJobs.com
The dominant cleared-jobs board, owned by DHI Group (parent of Dice). Larger employer roster than ClearedJobs.Net, larger candidate pool, deeper SEO surface area. Two operational facts: pricing is gated behind a demo call for employers, and the candidate side has a paid "Premium" tier that ranks your profile higher in recruiter search. Cleared candidates routinely pay to be more visible while job-hunting, which is an unusual product choice if you think about who has leverage in a TS/SCI hire.
Worth using if you want the deepest reach in the cleared space and you're willing to navigate sales motion and Premium upsells.
2. Cleared Connections
The other long-running independent cleared board, 24+ years old, privately held by US citizens with DoD clearance-management background. Featured employers on the homepage include BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin. Sponsor of the International Spy Museum in DC. Smaller traffic and Domain Rating than either ClearedJobs.Net or ClearanceJobs, but the same architecture (resume database, posting packages, employer-side search). Phone is 888-725-6997; pricing is sales-gated through a demo request.
Worth using if you want a third independent option alongside the two more visible boards, especially if you value the more discreet, privacy-conscious posture they emphasize.
3. Federal direct-hire portals (USAJobs and IntelligenceCareers.gov)
A different category entirely, but worth listing because cleared candidates often weigh both tracks at the same time.
USAJobs is the federal government's general direct-hire portal — civilian agency work across the executive branch. Application packets are structured (SF-86, OF-306, KSAs, DD-214 if you're a vet), filtering is rough, and timelines are federal. Salary bands are GS-grade public.
IntelligenceCareers.gov is the ODNI-operated portal for the 18 elements of the US Intelligence Community (CIA, NSA, NGA, DIA, NRO, FBI Intelligence Branch, and the agency-specific intel components of each service). It's the official IC direct-hire surface and the only place to apply to many IC roles. Apply.IntelligenceCareers.gov is the candidate-side companion.
Worth using if you want federal civilian or IC work rather than contractor work, or you're scanning both tracks in parallel.
4. LinkedIn
You can find cleared work and cleared candidates on LinkedIn, but the platform treats clearance as a profile string. There's no tier model, no agency graph, no JWICS or DCGS awareness, and recruiters routinely confuse Public Trust with Secret in boolean searches. LinkedIn Recruiter is expensive on an annual seat basis. For senior cleared talent who maintain a professional network, LinkedIn still functions as the relationship layer even when it doesn't function as the hiring layer.
Worth using if you're working a relationship-driven motion and you treat the platform as a Rolodex, not a matching engine.
5. ClearMatch
This is us, so read accordingly. ClearMatch is built as an agent rather than a board. Cleared candidates upload a resume and LinkedIn; Gemini 3 Flash parses both end-to-end into structured clearance, agency, program, mission, and skill data. The Recruiting Agent then scans USAJobs plus ~20 vetted GovCon employer careers pages (Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Eightfold, Ashby, iCIMS) every day, ranks every role against the candidate's actual profile, and writes a narrative on the top matches. Employers describe roles in plain English ("TS/SCI DevOps with Kubernetes supporting the IC in NoVA") and the Hiring Agent returns a ranked shortlist with a paragraph on each candidate.
Pricing is on the page. Employer plans run $149/mo, $399/mo, or custom Enterprise; talent is free forever, with no Premium tier and no asterisk. Every employer is manually verified before they see a single candidate. Clearance is modeled as a 7-tier numeric ladder; agencies and programs are first-class structured fields, not free-text tags.
Worth using if you want the matching layer to do the sorting work and you don't want to pay to be visible.
A note on CyberSecJobs.com
If you've searched for cleared cyber roles, you've probably hit CyberSecJobs.com and assumed it was a fourth independent board. It isn't. CyberSecJobs.com is operated by ClearedJobs.Net — the candidate flow on the cyber site routes straight back to ClearedJobs.Net's apply path, the support email is [email protected], and the same Cleared Job Fair calendar shows on both. Useful to know when you're auditing where your roles are actually posted: posting to CyberSecJobs.com adds reach to the cyber-curious search audience, but the underlying inventory and resume database are the same one.
At a glance
The matrix doesn't pick a winner. It tells you what each platform is built to do, so you can match the tool to the motion.
How to choose
Three questions clarify the picking faster than reading the marketing on any of them.
First: do you want to post and search, or do you want the matching layer to do the sorting? The traditional cleared boards (ClearedJobs.Net, ClearanceJobs, Cleared Connections) are post-and-search platforms with keyword and clearance filters on top. ClearMatch is built for the second motion. The agent scans, ranks, and narrates so you're reading the top of a sorted pile, not boolean-searching a database.
Second: how important is in-person? Cleared Job Fairs are a real channel that doesn't translate to AI matching. If your recruiting strategy includes a quarterly booth at Dulles or Hanover, ClearedJobs.Net is the operator with the longest track record and the only major board still running the in-person circuit at scale. If your strategy is digital end-to-end, the fairs are overhead.
Third: how much do you want to pay to play with a vendor before knowing the price? Sales-gated pricing is the industry norm in this category. If you want a number on the page before a call, the list narrows fast.
What we'd say if you cornered us at a Cleared Job Fair
ClearedJobs.Net is a credible, veteran-founded board running real recruiting events for 24 years. It's the right answer for some recruiting strategies, especially ones that lean on the fairs and the resume database. It is not the right answer if you've decided that cleared hiring should feel like AI matching rather than a faster spreadsheet. ClearanceJobs is bigger by every public metric but trades on the same architecture with a Premium-tier candidate upsell on top. Cleared Connections is the third name in the same architectural family, smaller in reach, similar in approach.
ClearMatch was built to test the hypothesis that the right architecture for cleared hiring is an agent that reads the market continuously and explains the fit. That hypothesis is either correct or it isn't, and the way you find out is to run us in parallel for 30 days against whichever incumbent you're using now.
Sources: home, About, Employer Services, and Job Seekers pages; home (58,034 jobs / 1,776 employers verified May 2026); home; home (operator confirmed via candidate-flow apply path and support email). and federal portals. Domain Rating and traffic figures via Ahrefs. Feature comparisons reflect platform public-facing documentation at time of writing; verify with each vendor before purchase.