About SkillBridge Connect
Every year, roughly 200,000 service members leave the military. The Department of War's SkillBridge program lets many of them spend their last months on active duty interning with a civilian employer — full pay and benefits intact — so they land with experience instead of a cold start. It's one of the best-kept secrets in transition.
The problem was never the program. It's that finding the right opportunity means digging through a directory with thousands of listings, no way to tell an active program from one that quietly died two years ago, and no signal for which employers actually answer their email.
SkillBridge Connect is the trust layer. We index every listing from the official skillbridge.mil directory daily, then add what a directory can't: response-rate transparency, activity and freshness signals, dead-mailbox detection, verified federal hiring credentials, anonymous candidate reviews, and the SkillBridge Health Score that rolls it into one honest number. Employers can't pay to change any of it.
The platform is built by Civic Hacking — technology for the common good — and it is free for transitioning service members, veterans, spouses, and the counselors who guide them. Always will be. Employers pay for recruiting tools, never for trust signals.
- Nothing is pay-to-play. Featured placement is clearly labeled and never touches trust signals or rankings.
- Missing data never counts against anyone. Scores renormalize over what we actually know, and thin data is labeled provisional.
- Every claim links to its source — federal awards link to the Department of Labor, wage estimates cite the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and listing data traces to skillbridge.mil.
- Candidates control contact. Employers can only message candidates who raised their hand first, and any candidate can mute any employer permanently.
- Not affiliated with the Department of War. SkillBridge Connect is an independent, unofficial project. It is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the DoW, any branch of service, or skillbridge.mil.
- For candidates: nothing here is a guarantee. Using this site does not guarantee you a SkillBridge placement, an interview, an offer, or a job. Program approval runs through your command, not us — and an employer's response rate or Health Score describes their past behavior, not a promise about yours.
- For employers: we cannot guarantee data accuracy. Program listings, points of contact, and employer details are pulled from the public skillbridge.mil directory, which we do not control and which can be incomplete, outdated, or wrong. Always verify program details directly with the employer's point of contact and your installation SkillBridge office before making a decision.
One address reaches us for everything — candidate questions, employer claims under review, counselor dashboard access, corrections to a listing, or press: help@civichacking.org.