Job-matching platform continues to keep public servants in public service
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A platform launched last year by Work for America is helping state and local governments recruit former federal employees to their agencies.
In the first year since President Donald Trump’s second term, nearly 300,000 federal workers found themselves unemployed after the administration’s mass layoffs and early retirement offers. But data shows many of those who left public service in the federal government turned to state and local government as their new path forward.
The Civic Match platform intends to help former federal workers transition to public service at the state and local level. It was launched November 2024 by the nonprofit Work for America and enables employers to post their open positions and initiate the hiring process with candidates who can leverage Civic Match to share their qualifications and skills and search for job listings.
More than 12,000 civil servants have uploaded their resumes to the platform since then and 258 state and local governments across the U.S. are leveraging it to find job seekers at no cost, said Shifra Goldenberg, chief programs officer of the nonprofit Work for America.
In essence, Civic Match can “connect the dots between people who are looking for opportunities in public service and the state and local government employers who are also excited about this opportunity for all of this new incoming talent,” she said.
Data collected from the platform shows that one job placement is made roughly every two days, and more than 30% of hired individuals relocated at least 100 miles or cross-country to pursue a state and local government job opportunity.
Of people who found employment through Civic Match, roughly 40% of them assumed roles in human resources or operations, plugging persistent gaps in state and local governments’ hiring, budgeting and service delivery teams, Goldenberg said.
“These are skill sets that local government has a really hard time finding, and that's why they were so ready to pounce when they found these like operationally-minded, public service-oriented candidates,” she said. State and local leaders can capitalize on a formal federal worker’s experience with, for example, managing large budgets and work with them to translate those skills to a smaller agency environment.
Former Education Advisor at the U.S. Agency for International Development Nathaniel Haight, for instance, leveraged Civic Match to find work in Indianapolis in June 2025. In his previous federal role, Haight managed international education programs, but he now serves as a grants administrator, overseeing grant compliance at state and local agencies.
“At USAID we always talked about localization – finding local solutions,” Haight said in a statement. “Now I get to be part of the local solution, and that’s motivating and inspiring.”
Indeed, the platform offers state and local employers the opportunity to better recruit potential workers, particularly as they strive to fill seats left empty by retiring staff, Goldenberg said.
With Civic Match, employers have data insights on what kinds of positions candidates are looking for and that can inform how agencies frame job descriptions and other marketing efforts. In fact, nearly 60% of hiring managers using the platform reported they completed at least one active recruiting action, such as inviting candidates to apply to a certain position, she explained.
New features on the platform deployed over the last year are intended to accelerate state and local government hiring, including the incorporation of automation and artificial intelligence capabilities that streamline creating user profiles, uploading job postings and confirming approvals throughout the hiring process. Work for America also improved functions like including more defined search filters, enabling saved search features and deploying notifications for users, Goldenberg said.
In coming months, the platform will undergo further enhancements that include an AI-enabled scoring tool based on how well a candidate’s skills match a position, refined location-based searches and additional resources that inform job seekers about, for instance, a city’s cost of living, she said.
Despite Civic Match’s growth in use and functionality, it “does not replace any government's existing [hiring] systems. It's really about accelerating the discussion, the discovery and connection process for job seekers and governments,” Goldenberg said. “We want to help public servants stay in public service.”