Hiring managers are still unhappy with the time it takes the government to processsecurity clearances, according to a survey by a security clearance job-seeking site.

“Despite declines in the government processing times to obtain security clearances, 63 percent of respondents said their recruiting practices have not changed,” according to asummary of the reportreleased by ClearanceJobs.com. ClearanceJobs.com is the leading career network dedicated to matching security-cleared professionals with the best hiring companies, according to its Web site.

Nearly half (48 percent) of hiring managers say they’ve lost good candidates because of long wait times to process clearances.

"While we've seen advancements, Top Secret clearances are still taking two to three times as long as Secret clearances for end-to-end processing. Even within clearance levels, hiring managers tell us wait times are haphazard and without rhyme or reason," says Evan Lesser, founder and Managing Director of ClearanceJobs.com.

Lesser says improved wait times aren’t the only thing that could change the system and that recruiting practices need to be reformed as well.

Current recruiting practices favor hiringpeople who already have clearances, says the summary. Fifty-six percent of managers of jobs that required clearances looked for people with current clearances. Seventeen percent said they only recruit people withactive clearances.