Bridge My Return opens to spouses, caregivers | VAntage Point

Bridge My Return (BMR) is now open to military and Veteran spouses and caregivers to help them find meaningful employment.

Military spouses often make personal career sacrifices to follow their service member’s military career. These may include moves every 2-3 years, postings to remote duty stations with limited career opportunities, or multiple deployments of their service member, effectively leaving them as single parents.

Sarita Connelly is a Veteran spouse of a retired Marine. She has a stellar bio that includes professional achievements in financial services, non-profit management and education. She’s received leadership awards, graduate certificates and professional licenses, and is currently pursuing a graduate degree.

As her career was skyrocketing, she began a 13-year trek as a military spouse. This created mandatory job changes and limited promotion opportunities.

Now, she is a caregiver for her disabled father, an Illinois National Guardsman from the Korea Era. Her search for a new job has been met with scrutiny over resume gaps and job changes rather than employers being wowed by her achievements and sacrifices.

Connelly is not alone.

Today, the military spouse unemployment rate sits at a staggering 38%, according to a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hiring Our Heroes study. The national rate stands at 5.9%.

What is BMR doing to improve the situation?

Leveraging Technology
Bridge My Return software uses a skills-to-skills matching algorithm to circumvent skills misunderstanding and prevent pigeonholing. BMR members build a profile, which takes about 20-30 minutes to complete. For service members, BMR has mapped skills to their MOS. They select the skills BMR suggests for that military job and indicate their skill level.