How to Fill Out and Submit the SF-85 Questionnaire for Non-Sensitive Positions

The SF-85 questionnaire arrives after a federal agency or contractor extends you a conditional job offer, and you complete it inside an electronic system called eApp — not on a downloadable PDF.¹² To fill out the SF-85 correctly, you need continuous five-year timelines for where you lived, worked, and went to school, non-relative verifiers for the most recent three years of each, and honest answers to the questions about police contacts, drug use, and prior job separations. The form is short by federal standards, but the timelines have to be gap-free, and errors after submission are hard to fix.

What to Gather Before You Open eApp

The version of the form on the OPM website is a reference PDF. The working form lives in eApp, part of the National Background Investigation Services platform run by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.² Your sponsoring agency sends you an invitation to log in once the process begins.

Have this written down before you start:

Every address for the past five years with move-in and move-out dates accurate to the month. Temporary stays under 90 days that were not your permanent or mailing address can be skipped.¹
A non-relative verifier for each address in the last three years — someone who knew you there and ideally still lives nearby. Spouses, cohabitants, and other relatives don’t qualify.¹
Employer names, addresses, phone numbers, and supervisor contact information for every job in the past five years, plus periods of unemployment and self-employment.
School names and dates of attendance for any post-high-school education in the past five years, and any degree or diploma earned at any time. A verifier is required for any school attended in the last three years.¹
Your Selective Service registration number if you’re a male born after December 31, 1959. Look it up at sss.gov.³
U.S. passport number and issue and expiration dates if you have one.
Details of every citation, arrest, charge, or conviction from the past five years, including anything sealed, expunged, or dismissed.

eApp lets you save and return, but tracking down a former landlord’s phone number in the middle of a session is the kind of interruption that stretches a two-hour task into two weeks.

Working Through the Sections

The SF-85 has 18 numbered sections. The opening ones ask for identity information — full name, date and place of birth, Social Security number, physical descriptors, contact numbers, passport information, citizenship, and any current or prior dual citizenship.¹ These fields are straightforward. The sections that cause problems are the ones with continuous timelines.

Residential History (Section 11)

List every place you lived over the past five years, starting with your current address and working back. eApp enforces continuous dates: if one address ends in March 2023, the next has to begin in March 2023. A single unaccounted-for month produces a validation error that blocks submission.¹

For each address in the past three years, name a verifier who is not a relative. A former neighbor, landlord, or non-family roommate works. The form asks for the verifier’s name, address, and phone number. Older addresses still get listed but don’t need a verifier.

Employment History (Section 13)

List every employment activity for the past five years — paid jobs, self-employment, and stretches of unemployment — with the same continuous-timeline rule as Section 11. For each employer, give the company name, address, phone number, and a supervisor’s name and contact information. For unemployment, name someone who can confirm how you supported yourself. For self-employment, name someone who can confirm the arrangement.¹

Section 13b asks whether, in the past five years, you were fired, quit after being told you would be fired, left by mutual agreement following misconduct allegations, left following unsatisfactory performance, or received a written warning, reprimand, or suspension. Answer this honestly. Investigators verify employment records, and a mismatch between your answer and your former employer’s records is a bigger problem than the underlying event.

Education (Section 12)

Report any schools attended in the past five years, plus any degree or diploma earned at any time. Don’t list education before your 18th birthday unless you need it to reach two years of education history. For schools attended in the past three years, name a verifier — an instructor, a classmate, or someone else who knew you while you were enrolled. Online and correspondence programs count.¹

Selective Service (Section 14)

If you’re a male born after December 31, 1959, confirm whether you registered. Registration is a condition of federal employment eligibility. If you never registered and are now over 26, you can no longer register, but you may still be eligible if you can show the failure wasn’t knowing or willful. Pull your registration number from sss.gov before you reach this section.³

Police Record (Section 16)

Disclose every summons, citation, arrest, charge, or conviction from the past five years. The form specifically directs you to include incidents where the record was sealed or expunged or the charge was dismissed. Domestic violence protective orders issued in the past five years also get reported. Forgetting a traffic ticket is understandable; omitting an arrest that shows up in a database check is worse than whatever the arrest was for.

Drug Use (Section 17)

The SF-85 asks whether you illegally used any drugs or controlled substances in the past year. That one-year window is much shorter than the seven-year lookback on the SF-86 used for security clearances. “Illegally” here means under federal law, not state law. Even though some forms of medical marijuana were reclassified from Schedule I to Schedule III in April 2026, recreational marijuana remains a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law, and federal agencies have not changed their drug-testing policies. If you used marijuana recreationally in the past year, disclose it regardless of whether it was legal where you live.¹

Fingerprints

Your sponsoring agency captures your fingerprints, typically on an SF-87 or FD-258 card or through an electronic scanner. DCSA won’t process your eApp submission until it has the fingerprint results, and if fingerprints don’t arrive within 14 days of your eApp submission, the request is flagged as unacceptable and returned to the agency. Fingerprint results must be no more than 120 days old when DCSA receives the investigation request.⁴

Fingerprinting runs through your agency’s security office or a designated vendor. You generally won’t need to find a location yourself. If your agency does send you to an outside vendor, fees vary but typically fall between roughly $15 and $50.

Reviewing, Signing, and Submitting

Once every section is complete and eApp’s validation checks clear, you move to certification. Reread every answer — dates, phone numbers, spelling of names — because corrections after submission require your agency to reopen the form. You then digitally sign the questionnaire, affirming that your answers are true and complete. You also sign a Fair Credit Reporting Act release authorizing investigators to pull credit reports and other records. The electronic signatures carry the same legal weight as ink on paper.¹

After submission the form goes to DCSA for processing and you can no longer edit it. If you spot an error, contact your agency’s security office immediately so they can flag it before the investigation begins.

What Happens If You Lie

Deliberate falsehoods or omissions on the SF-85 carry consequences beyond losing the job. Administratively, OPM can debar you from the competitive service and career Senior Executive Service for up to three years from the date of the unfavorable suitability determination, and can impose additional debarment periods if warranted. That debarment covers all competitive-service federal jobs, not just the one you applied for.⁵

Criminally, a materially false statement on a federal form is a felony under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.⁶ Prosecutions for minor omissions are uncommon, but intentional concealment of criminal history or an unfavorable employment separation is the kind of conduct that draws attention. Disclosing an unflattering fact is almost always better than having that fact surface after you denied it.

When the SF-85 Is Not the Right Form

The SF-85 covers non-sensitive, low-risk positions and triggers a Tier 1 investigation.⁷⁸⁹ If your invitation from the agency points you to a different form, use that one.

1
U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Questionnaire for Non-Sensitive Positions, SF 85
2
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. National Background Investigation Services (NBIS)
3
Selective Service System. Men Born Before 1960
4
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. Fingerprints
5
eCFR. 5 CFR 731.204 – Debarment by OPM in Cases Involving the Competitive Service and Career Senior Executive Service
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1001 – Statements or Entries Generally
7
Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency. Case Types and Forms
8
USAJOBS Help Center. What Are Background Checks and Security Clearances?
9
Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Security vs Suitability