BUSINESS leaders and former military personnel have reacted strongly in support of a new campaign launched last week to help former service men and women into work in Gloucestershire.
Jobs For Our Forces, launched by The Citizen and Gloucestershire Echo, has captured the interest of employers and members of the business community keen to ensure the welfare and utilise the skills of those that have served in the Armed Forces.
The campaign, launched in The Business, strives to help former service personnel into work in the face of thousands of redundancies.
We aim to do this by making business owners and leaders aware of the attributes ex-servicemen and women can have, including strong work ethic, leadership and teamwork.
Chris Mears, relationship director at Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking, spent 18 years as a Gunner Officer. Chris said he was "very happy" to support the campaign and do his part to help ex-service personnel into the county jobs market.
He said: "I left (the military) nine years ago. I have since been working within commercial and corporate banking in Gloucestershire.
"As well as my own experience, I work with a lot of SMEs so have a good understanding of their requirements also."
The campaign, in association with country recruitment company Omega Resource Group, is launched after it was revealed last month almost 4,500 service personnel had received redundancy letters as part of plans to cut the number of regular soldiers from more than 100,000 to 82,000.
Alan Beresford, pictured, is director at Omega Resource Group, which has focused on ex-service personnel for the past four years.
He said the company assessed the skills of military leavers before discussing with them how to articulate their skills to prospective employers.
He said: "We try to tackle the pre-conceptions employers could have about ex-servicemen that they are inflexible, only able to take orders and are non-customer facing."
