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USIS

Background, Culture: USIS is a small to medium private company. The company began in the mid 1990s under the Clinton-Gore administration after a decision was made to privatize security clearance investigations, in part. In part, because the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) maintains a federal workforce that includes investigators known as "Special Agents" and support staff. This federal workforce is minuscule compared to the number of contract companies/contract workforce that has evolved over the years. USIS performs security clearance investigations under contract with OPM. USIS is by far the largest contract company. But it should be, USIS evolved directly out of the government’s privatization. Other major contract companies include Keypoint Goverment Solutions (formerly Kroll), CACI, and Omniplex. As an employee of USIS (or any of the other contractors), you are known as a "Contractor Investigator". Contract Investigators carry credentials with a silver badge and Contractor Investigator label, while Special Agents carry credentials with a gold badge and Special Agent label. This is about the only difference between the two when it comes to work performed (although, there is one other small difference that pertains to swearing under oath versus unsworn declaration). There is a federal manual that dictates how investigations are to be performed, regardless of one being a Contract Investigator or Special Agent. USIS maintains some support services that require all contractors (regardless of the contract company that employs them) and Special Agents to call USIS for assistance. This is pretty unique. In contrast, employees of USIS are forbidden to have any contact with OPM, unless employed in some high level managerial capacity. USIS likes to think it has total control, because it is the largest contractor and has been able to perform functions of the contract better than OPM federal workforce, but ultimately OPM rules the day because it grants the contract. USIS depends totally upon OPM, make no mistake about it. If you keep reading, I’ll explain how this relationship has influenced the climate at USIS over the years.
Compensation/Benefits, Management, Job Security/Advancement: Keep the following in mind, USIS is a for profit entity. Basically here is how it works; OPM awards a contract to USIS. OPM assigns cases to USIS and it pays USIS for each case completed. Many years ago, employees reaped the benefits of USIS’s strong presence on the contract. Back then, the more cases an employee completed and the faster, the more bonuses the employee received throughout the year. Those days are long gone! Since USIS greatly influenced OPM’s ability to rid a backlog of cases and become current, the atmosphere of the company has changed. Unfortunately, I began my employment in the midst of this change and missed the era of quarterly bonuses in addition to one’s base salary. I’ve been told these were overall good times for employees.
Periodically, USIS and other contractors submit rebids to OPM to continue performing investigations. Over the years, OPM has tightened some facets of the contract. For instance, if USIS submits a case to OPM and OPM finds additional work is needed on the case, OPM will deduct a percentage of the amount typically paid on that particular case. This form of disincentive and an overall reduction in the amount of investigations performed has caused USIS to rebrand itself and look for other means of revenue. Due to a tight federal budget, many federal agencies are not hiring. Therefore, OPM has seen a reduction in the amount of requests for security clearance investigations. In the past, the OPM contract accounted for up to 50-75% of the company’s business. In an effort to become less dependent upon OPM, USIS has purchased other companies and now belongs to Altegrity, a group of companies. USIS has sought many other federal contracts and private sector services (for example, providing background investigation services to law enforcement agency applicants, truck drivers, etc.) in an effort to grow the business. These efforts have taken place while employees’ salaries have remained stagnant and promotion /advancement is nonexistent. It is my opinion that the company is seeking to do more with less.
Employees who previously worked only one contract, now work numerous contracts such as subcontract work for the USDA’s food stamp program, subcontract work involving pharmaceutical sales rep’s inventories, subcontract work for Medicaid/Medicare fraud initiatives, subcontract fingerprinting services, etc. These additional roles have been daunting on employees and strained the workforce. USIS has not disclosed the impact of these additional contracts on the company’s bottom line. This lack of communication is rampant within the organization. USIS also uses an unfair system to rate employees. USIS continues to only review employees’ performance based on the OPM contract. An employee could work four contracts, but only receive a review based on the OPM contract. This review determines an employee’s ability to receive a raise or obtain promotion. Additionally, the company is experiencing a huge change in management. Some managers are waiting to hear if they will continue as managers or receive a severance package (keep reading, this is discussed below). The company appears to be headed toward a philosophy of passing disincentives to employees. Currently, the rating system used to review employee performance determines an employee’s ability to receive a raise or be promoted. This is the case with most private companies. However, USIS is researching a rating system that will review employee performance to determine at what percentage an employee’s salary will be paid. An employee could receive anywhere from 80-85% to 110-115% of his/her base salary based on performance. In other words, if an Investigator turns in cases that OPM deems to require additional work, USIS will withhold money from the Investigator’s check!.
Current base salary ranges: Associate Investigators at 34,000. Investigators at 40-41,000. Senior Investigators at 50-55,000. Advancement is a joke. All will be hired at Associate Investigator and struggle to be promoted to Investigator. The only Senior Investigators in the company are those who were promoted to such several years ago. After these three levels of Investigator, the only option for advancement is to be promoted to the first level of management known as a Team Leader. Team Leaders report to a District Manager. Currently, a new Altegrity CEO and management changes will result in a restructure of Team Leaders/District Managers. Supposedly, some will no longer be employed after January 2012 (this is the management change I referred to above). The most secure job in the company is to work as an Investigator. Investigators perform the duties of the company’s various contracts and their function directly affects the company’s bottom line.
Work/Life Balance: Investigators work solely from home and set their own schedule. About 85% of the work is performed in the field through subject/source interviews and record reviews, while the remainder consists of written reports from home. Here is where things can be misleading. Often times Investigators work in the field late into the evening when many sources are available to provide reference testimonies. Too often, case assignments are heavy with short deadlines, ultimately necessitating 40+ hours to complete. USIS assigns cases to employees that are received from OPM based on the company’s monthly revenue projections. The company has frequently entered periods where overtime is prohibited, especially as of late. This has resulted in a culture where Investigators sometimes work long hours off the clock in an effort to get cases completed and appear more favorable during the rating process. Occasionally, and I do mean occasionally, OPM slows up on the amount of work released to USIS and therefore Investigators may have to take paid time off, work in some other capacity or detail (4 weeks) across the country to a location where the workload is heavy until OPM releases more work. This doesn’t happen too often, maybe 1-3 times per year. The company provides a laptop, smart phone, fax/printer/scanner and company car/gas card. The company car/gas card can be used for private use, although employees pay approximately $150.00 per month to offset the company’s lease of these vehicles and gas expenses. Employees have to be mindful though, because too much personal use will result in additional money being withheld by USIS due to IRS reporting guidelines regarding personal use. Medical benefits are slightly below average in my opinion as far as employee contributions per pay period. You have a normal 80/20 health plan or health savings plan option, medical, dental, short term/long term disability, etc and 401k savings option. The company 401k plan contributes 50% of an employee’s salary up to 8%.
I have found employees most pleased at USIS are those who retired from federal civilian or military service who work for USIS to supplement their retirement pay or stay busy. Most of them are only irritated by the oppressive work environment, constant emails and phone calls from management. Most frustrated employees appear to be mid career Investigators who struggle to balance work/family demands and the inability to receive a merit increase/promotion. Recent college graduates with little to no work experience are pleased to finally earn a check and carry credentials, but surely awaken to the reality of things when they figure out how hard they work, but how little they earn compared to their college schoolmates.
By the way, most of the other contractors pay a better salary (but do not provide a company car/gard card) and have a more relaxed work environment.

I have worked for the company for many years. This company used to be about national security, integrity,  and providing a good product. Now, the company is money hungry, profit driven and lost all sight of what product we are producing. We are supposed to be doing thorough background checks to ensure people are okay to hold a security clearance. Instead, we are rushed to deliver whatever we can in a short period of time and not properly follow up or we will miss the bonus incentive for completing early...IS THAT WHAT WE WANT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY...rushed background checks so executives can make a bonus???? This is why USIS is in hot water and is currently being investigated. Personally, Background Investigations for Security Clearances should NEVER be PROFIT DRIVEN. Executive greed will always see money versus safety!! Upper management is uncompassionate and GOD forbide you take time off, you will pay the price for work and missing deadlines because some bosses are not willing to adjust deadlines or even care to call to see how you are doing. They only call to ensure you are back at work and producing so THEY can get their bonuses and raises. Like most companies, bonues and raises don't trickle down to actual field staff who works night and day to make unreasonable deadlines and has gone years without promotions and raises because every time you get the job down, they change everything to make sure it is impossible to make Quality, Deadlines, and any other metric required to get a raise. Most of my colleagues are extremely stressed out and constantly hounded by our Team Leader. In my area, there is no flexibility in the job that once was set up for us to schedule our own days now that we have to check out cases and credentials during certain timeframes not leaving realistic room for us having to accomodate meeting sources or references during their business hours. I used to be a top performer and now, I have been given no training on new procedures and taken hits left and right. I feel like I have no idea what my job entails. My Supervisor tells you to read the updates and training manuals and be self taught. First off, if I read every email in regards to update and looked over each training manual, I would NEVER be able to do fieldwork to get my job done. I challenge my boss to go back in the field and do what I do with all the new changes and I guarantee, my boss couldn't!!!  Also, it typicallly comes down to a reviewers interpretation so what one reviewer of your report says goes could be different with another reviewer so you waste, yet, more time disputing what you were informed to do prior. BUT If you don't dispute, your stats take another hit. USIS is no longer a company of integrity, honesty, or a good place to work. They have caused many of employees emotional distress and enjoy threatening taking your job if you dont work off the clock or somehow magically work major caseloads within 40 hours...it is not humanly possible to achieve unless people are taking shortcuts...THIS IS NOT NATIONAL SECURITY!!! BEFORE APPLYING...do your research...you will see it is not a place to work.

When I started with USIS I thought I would be doing an important job. I found out that this job was simply a number game. The management is only concerned about how many reports your push out with unrealistic expectations. The company culture is CYA, with reviewers reopening cases to prevent failing metrics of their own while the investigators suffer. This is huge because it creates an us against them atmosphere. In addition, there is no standard review process so you have cases reopened just because a reviewer felt the need to, even if the information they were requesting was not needed by OPM. 

Work life balance sucks with this company. You spend tons of hours typing and chasing people. Although you make your own schedule it is really based on the availability of others. I will say that the job has afforded me the opportunity to take real vacations and not have to request time off for dr appointments and such. On to the benefits. The benefits package is the worst that I have seen since becoming part of the work force. Be prepared to spend lots of money on dr visits.

The company car is a great bonus but it's also a pain in the butt. The company actually charges you to have the vehicle and forces you to use the vehicle for personal use. I would assume because it allows them to write the charge off some way on the company taxes. Basically if you dont document some form of personal use mileage you get charged for a full month of business mileage as personal use.

The expectations stay the same with this company while everything else changes everyday. As a contractor the company has promised OPM work that the company cannot handle. The turnaround times on cases is sometimes less than a week and any extra money that OPM has paid the company to get work completed at a faster pace, the company takes for themselves. 

This job is done in complete isolation from colleagues unless you get together for team meetings. There is little supervision, and team leaders have a huge team usually consisting of about 20-26 people. The Team Leader is not always available to take care of things you need. Also, you have a lap top and cell phone which grants access all the time by anyone in the company. The company does not pay you to be accessible at all hours of the day. My team Leader thinks that it is okay to email me after midnight and expects a response since we have company phones.


I hate this place.

I have been UNLUCKY in having a position with this company for about a year and have turned several away who thought they would like this position. I came from a law enforcement background and I took this position of back ground investigations serious and was concerned with the quality of work I produced. However, my overall thought of the position and requirements was far from what the companies were. They were more worried about production of numbers and spitting out stats they did not care about the quality at all.
In the year I have been with this company I have been a part of two company meetings for my region and each meeting all I heard was stats of this and that. I personally giggled in both meetings and shook my head to the unrealistic goals the company tried to set for me. You cannot measure a position of national security on stats and the evaluations of the investigations by the team leaders should not be based on the unrealistic stats. I made it perfectly clear that I was not there to make stats but produce quality work and since then have been placed on all types of repeated phone calls with my TL (the only time I hear from her) to question why I am missing my deadlines.
When you are given 10 to 15 case to investigate and 5 to 7 days to finish there is no accuracy or quality there,  especially  when it is known that an investigator with OPM will get three to four weeks to work on a case.  I am not here to meet deadlines and make the company money I am here to do an extensive investigation and determine if the person seeking a clearance should get it. The company is only concerned with turning more over to OPM to get the money they don’t deserve as they do not pay the investigator enough money to do this job.
As for the fleet vehicle that is a joke, when you pay $220 a month personal usage you are paying that vehicles lease fee and to be told if I go over 30% of personal usage a year I have to pay, for what? I am already paying for the vehicle period.
National security investigations should not be handled by private companies and should only be accomplished by those who have been in law enforcement of the military.

I was a full-time employee of USIS for four years advancing from Investigator to District Manager I.  The emphasis on investigators was for production.  Quality was given lip-service.  The review section gave continuous reopens of cases for conflicting reasons.  It all depended on the reviewer.  The investigators were given - maybe - six month pay raises based on production and having a low number of reopens.  The review staff was given bonuses based on the number of cases reviewed and not getting reopens from OPM Reviewers.  Hence, cases would be reopened often due to USIS reviewers trying to avoid OPM reviewers which caused reopens for insignificant reasons as CYA.  Investigators spent many extra hours which could not be claimed for work purposes due to keeping up stats for six month raise purposes rewriting and resubmitting cases.  As a District Manager, I saw cases reopened that had been closed for six or more months, and one even reopened to contact and reinterview a source that had been interviewed eighteen months earlier!  USIS was not a good place to work.  I resigned after a year as District Manager due to the treatment of the investigators by upper management and the denial of pay raises to the good performers because USIS upper management wanted to show increased earnings to the investors.  My four year full-time experience with USIS was not good.  I wondered when I was initially employed why the Federal government would contract out something as serious as personnel security investigations for Secret and Top Secret clearances which should be detailed and thorough investigations done by in-house Federal investigators and not by private companies focused on profit.  OPM has since started reorganizing and restoring its Federal Investigative Service with Federal Special Agents.  After the current scandal with the NSA, I am hoping that all personnel security investigations will be restored to the Federal Investigative Service of OPM or other Federal Agencies such as DoD and removed from private companies.  National Security is important.

i was a good employee, never called off. I went on sick leave for surgery after being w/this company for over 5 yrs. When i wanted to return they would not give me my security clearance back, hence i was fired. Why? Because i had ran into a financial difficulty helping my sons and i notified OPM of it. They conveniently said they never received my paper work...So how was that my fault... I used a lawyer, paid my debts off, but they said since i did not use a debt consolodation outfit that my lawyer was not good enough because i did not have a number from one of these companies...lawyer told us no to pay he was settling all accounts one at a time and we paid, but OPM/USIS felt if i would have had a number from one of the other get the monkey off your back companies who did not pay off anything for years until they had enough to pay off one credit card etc. that it was better than me using an authenticated lawyer....I felt i had very very unfair treatment. I was a good employee, never missed work and always made my numbers. USIS/OPM ruined my life as far as i am concerned...i discourage anybody from working there...but others filed for bankruptcy and never lost there jobs...credit issues should not be an issue to get or to hold a job, everybody in that economy and in this economy is having it tough, and they made my life even tougher...so fire me for trying to do the right thing. And by the way, i did pay off my debt....not like some.

I worked daily in managing and working with my inside and outside sales representatives to sell our products. I spent a lot of time in front of customers with my sales representatives, and started building an understanding of customer product needs. I also took it upon myself to start educating my sales team in complex selling.

I learned that some holes in product portfolio can really limit growth. I also learned that selling products that required constant legal documentation adjustment, utilizing law/legal professionals, can be time consuming, can limit productivity, and tend to bring great frustration in your sales team. Things need to be fully baked before they are consumed.

Management can't be sweepingly changed without bringing in a mass of professionals with experience with the products they are going to manage and produce.

My co-workers here were new outside sales representatives, and limited experience inside sales representatives. Good people, with potential, and they needed a structure that could hold their enthusiasm.

The hardest part of the job was dealing with a big hole in the portfolio, and the long and constant legal negociations necessary to secure sales.

The most enjoyable part of the job was helping my outside sales team present the products, and helping them to grow an understand complex selling.

This is the 2nd review I put here, indeed.com removed my first one... not sure why I didn't violate any of their rules.  Anyway, USIS is a joke. I have years of investigating and report writing experience with my previous job and this is just insane.  First of all the salary is a joke, I felt like I was working in a first job right out of college. Secondly, the caseloads are ridiculous and completely unmanageable.  As an associate investigator, you are assigned the same caseloads as senior investigators but paid half as much...then you won't get promoted to investigator because you aren't reaching the impossible numbers they expect you to meet each month.  You have a week to get an entire case done and they expect that it is supposed to be perfect and complete in that amount of time; on top of managing all your other cases, dealing with reopened cases and everything else.  Supervisors? Ha! I maybe spoke with my Team Leader once a month, but that is pushing it.  I work very well independently, but to be put in the field with no direction, no expectations being told to you and no help at all is absurd.  You are set up to fail at this job from the moment you finish OJT and they want it that way... that way when they decide to let go of more people they have a reason to blame it on so you can't sue... because you aren't making your numbers.  They know it's impossible to reach those numbers, but they set them anyway to cover their butts.  I am so glad I got out when I did.  I suspect with all the criminal and federal lawsuits against the company that it's going to completely go down sooner than later.

Ensuring that all requirements are met daily and that employees show up for work on-time.

I learned that on a cost-plus contract as a sub to the prime, you really don't have much control over your program and if the prime does not manage the contract properly, it affects everyone.

Working as a manager you must continue to improve on systems in place to streamline the process, but you need full support from your superiors.

Co-workers must trust, respect, and support decisions made by company to get through these tough times in this economy (The Sequster).

Convincing employees on the program, giving them ownership and purpose on why they are essential as security professionals for the agency we are supporting. We are tasked to safeguard classified information to ensure the mission is not compromised.

The most enjoyable part of the job is helping people in their time of need. This allows them to take care of their families financially and to meet personal goals. Training employees to better understand their duties, which makes them more proficient and enhance the overall performance of the team providing services to the customer.

I worked as a contractor and never really had physical contact with the company and management.  My first project manager was excellent in keeping me abreast of things, which ceased when he retired.  I felt a disconnect to both  the company and the federal agency, in which you're constantly reminded that you're merely a contractor.

To complicate matters, I was contracted to one agency, but worked within the offices of another.  Also, there was very little job security.  You're holding your breath, waiting to see whether the contract will be extended.  I prefer working directly with the hiring agency (no middle man); however, I was fortunate to have a 4 year term before it came to an end.  

My benefits could have been better.  I had to work a full year before receiving vacation, paid over $300 a month in healthcare premium and was forced to use PTO when the government closed because of adverse weather.

As for the work itself, I enjoyed it and met some wonderful people.  I would have loved for it to be a little more challenging, but it was for a great cause.  Speaking with some of the radiation victims was quite humbling.

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