F-1 OPT, currently job hunting. Wasted weeks early on applying to roles that looked perfect on Indeed but quietly required US citizenship or active clearance. Now I scan job titles for these markers and skip the posting entirely instead of reading the full JD:
In job titles:
- CTJ — "Cleared To Join" (Microsoft uses this for cleared roles)
- "- Poly" — polygraph required, US citizens only
- TS/SCI — Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information
- "Public Trust" — federal background investigation
- "Govt Cloud" or "Gov Cloud" — usually citizenship-only
- "Federal", "Defense", or "DoD" anywhere in the title or company name
In job descriptions (these are easier to miss because they're often buried mid-paragraph):
- "must be a US citizen"
- "permanently and without restriction" (this phrasing is a giveaway)
- "active security clearance"
- "ITAR" — export control regulations, citizenship-only
- "without sponsorship now or in the future"
What's also helped me: maintaining a personal list of ~40 companies with confirmed H-1B sponsorship history (validated on myvisajobs.com) and only applying within that list. My response rate jumped from ~2% to ~12% once I stopped wasting applications on companies that had never sponsored.
Two questions for the sub:
What other title markers should I add? I feel like consulting / defense firms (Booz Allen, Leidos, ManTech, SAIC) have their own conventions I haven't picked up yet.
Anyone have a smarter approach than maintaining a manual sponsor list? Curious how others on OPT are filtering at scale without burning out.