As holders of the Ministry of Defence ERS Gold award, IoSCM are proud to work closely with serving or former military personnel, reservists, cadets, military spouses and their families. This includes anyone who may be wounded or unwell. Our team work tirelessly to ensure we can help bridge the gap between military and civilian life, map skills and experience gained in service to careers outside of the Armed Forces. We break down barriers between potential employers and the candidates, make job opportunities within our network as visible as possible and we provide an extensive range of free resources to everyone linked to the Armed Forces. This includes free training, dedicated support and an in-house team of former military personnel and spouses to connect with.
Our team are always looking for new ways to extend the support we offer, as employees, as individuals, and as professionals. With many members of our team coming from military backgrounds, their passion is always going to be supporting their wider networks who may be having similar experiences to their own, who need specialist support and are unsure where to turn, and spreading news of tools, help and support that will help during and after service. This includes extending their reach to the entire armed forces networks.
The Institute already have an exclusive members platform, a learning platform, a LinkedIn forum, and a Facebook group that are all great places to head for practical guidance, expertise, news and downloadable industry-relevant resources. Using the success of these initiatives as our driving force, we decided to create a place that would be accessible to individuals from outside of our network where everyone linked to the Armed Forces (individuals and businesses alike) could connect and stay up to date with information that would help them, where vacancies could be advertised, opportunities could be shared and success could be celebrated. After considering the different platforms and options, we decided that a LinkedIn group would be perfect place to create a group to meet our objectives. We created The Military Chain.
The Military Chain was created with just six founding members and officially launched in 2020. Since its inception, the group has gone from strength to strength, in April there were 500 members in the group, and today we are almost 600 members strong.
There are an average of five new posts every day from members of the group, some days, we hit double figures. With news of new initiatives, promotions, job opportunities, free support, and fundraising just some of the topics that are shared our members have created a strong sense of community and a very inclusive, welcoming atmosphere. This was exactly our aim, the group was to be a one-stop shop and not a ‘selling’ tool – although we do welcome our Armed Forces personnel to share their business ventures with the group and for members to share services that will benefit other members of the group!
As we progress through the year and look to the future, we aim to continue growing the group and strengthening the support The Military Chain provides to every member. We hope to encourage more professionals to participate in discussions, share best practice and their experiences, and we would like to welcome more companies who are keen to work with or support the armed forces, service leavers and the wider military community.
If you would like to join The Military Chain, click on the image below to be directed to the LinkedIn group or when you are on LinkedIn, type The Military Chain in the search bar.
We look forward to welcoming you to the group.