Background: In early March 2003, CNNfn (Financial Network) produced  a story on how government contractors, specifically the DoD, was hiring job seekers even though most other employers were still in a hiring freeze. When CNN needed expert information on the current state of affairs relating to defense-related employment, they naturally came to ClearanceJobs.com to gather both opinion and fact. Veteran reporter JJ Ramburg interviewed Evan Lesser, Co-Founder of ClearanceJobs.com for the television spot. The interview aired on CNNfn at 5:30pm EST on March 19th, 2003 to millions of viewers worldwide. A partial transcript of the interview follows: Ali Velshi, CNNfn - New York: As we told you earlier, the job market is showing little sign of strength as tensions continue to mount in the world.  In February, the number of jobs dropped by 308,000.  That's the largest decline since October of 2001.  But there is one area that's bucking the trend, desperately looking for employees: government contractors.  JJ Ramberg joins us from Los Angeles with more.  Hi, JJ. JJ Ramburg, CNNfn - Los Angeles:  Hi Ali. You're right. Well, according to the Brookings Institution, there are going to be about 20,000 government contractors working on this military effort in the Middle East, and that's about one civilian for every ten or fifteen people in the military, and that's up significantly from 1991. In the Gulf War, there were about 5,000 government contractors. And what that has done, is provided a very hot job market here, especially for anyone who has government security clearance. Evan Lesser, ClearanceJobs.com - Atlanta: One of the things that we are seeing, is that a lot of military reservists with clearances that are currently working with employers are being called up for active duty.  With that in mind, these employers have to find someone to cover positions left open by reservists during the time that they're going to be overseas fighting and supporting our war. JJ Ramburg, CNNfn - Los Angeles: Now getting a security clearance is a long and costly process for employers. According to the Pentagon, it takes anywhere from 80 to 200 days just to get the initial investigation complete. And then it can take another whole year after that to actually get the clearance in place. Ali? Ali Velshi, CNNfn - New York: JJ, tell me about ClearanceJobs.com. JJ Ramburg, CNNfn - Los Angeles: We just interviewed ClearanceJobs.com, and what they do is get people who have active security clearances matched up with employers who need cleared workers for government contracts. Ali Velshi, CNNfn - New York: Alright, and what are some of the things that ClearanceJobs.com is saying are going to happen over the next little while. Are there added tensions that we're going to be talking about? JJ Ramburg, CNNfn - Los Angeles: Well, what Mr. Lesser said, they've seen activity increase significantly on ClearanceJobs.com in the past few months, so it was up about 300% from 6 months ago. And they have some interesting employers  listing jobs on their site, it's not just the ones you'd think of like Lockheed Martin or Raytheon, but even people like Google and Microsoft had jobs listed on there. So, everyone is getting contracts with the government. Ali Velshi, CNNfn - New York: Okay, JJ, thanks so much for joining us.  JJ Ramberg in Los Angeles.