Manydepartments elect to use an outside consultant to administer their exam andhave their candidates evaluated by outside fire department raters. The purposeof external evaluators is to lessen the chance of favoritism, which in turnlessens the chance the exam, will be protested by an unhappy candidate. Manyagencies do not allow the candidates to interact with the raters. Some agenciesallow the candidates to greet the evaluators, but require them to introduceonly by using their assigned candidate number. Whichever the case, theconsultant’s goal is to reduce the chance of biased rating.
Related Resources
· Firefighter EducationalOpportunities
· Discuss Your Career with OtherFirefighters
The fire chief usually greets the raters. He or she will providesome background about the department and answer any department-relatedquestions. He will share any particular challenges currently being experiencedby the department and share his vision for the future. The fire chief willalways make one thing clear to the raters: if the candidate is not ready to assume the position tomorrow,they are to be scored in a way that reflects this.
Performingon game day is your biggest challenge. I encourage each candidate to take thetime he or she would have invested in researching the exam and put it intostudying his or her own department’s policies and procedures.
Whetherit is a private consultant or an in-house person who is assigned to write thepromotional exam, the process is usually the same. A committee is formed andthey meet with the fire chief. The fire chief will explain what he is lookingfor in the group to be promoted. This will include any current events in thefire service as well as political and/or social events that may be impactingthe fire service. For example, if the department has had a challenge withracial relations a wise candidate would have a plan on how he or she couldimprove them. If the department had a fire that did not go as planned I wouldexpect to see a similar event on the tactical portion of the exam. If thedepartment has a problem with firefighters following the proper procedures whenreturning to work following an injury, I would expect an interview questionregarding the injury procedures.
Recap: Parts of Assessment Centers
One of the most common scenarios that come to mind is with theRapid Intervention Crew (RIC). I understandthat in different parts of the country it is called Rapid Intervention Team.For the purpose of this article I will refer to it as RIC. We will give you a scenario that requires a lot of resourcesbe committed early in the incident. The OSHA policy states that anytime firefighters arecommitted in an environment that is determined to have immediate danger to lifeand/or health (IDLH) a RIC team mustbe established. Candidates struggle with the idea of not putting enough hoselines into effect quickly enough. To compensate for this they elect to forego RIC andassign a company to put in an additional hose line. As a chief officer who hasmanaged a few fires, I understand the desire to get water on the fire. I alsobelieve that the RIC policy was written for a reason. Committingfirefighters to an IDLH without a rescue problem is a clear violationof the policy. More importantly, it completely goes against our number onerule, firefighter safety! This is an automatic failure of the tactical.Candidates will be expected to follow the rules of speaking in front of a group. These include introducing yourself, explaining the reason for the meeting, motivating the audience as to why it is important for them to embrace what you have to say, delivering the sustenance of your presentation, summarizing your presentation, and leaving time at the end for questions. Most oral presentation exercises are timed. It is up to the candidate to manage his or her time. The candidate should note the time the exercise culminates so he can allow enough time to complete it. Once the time has expired, the candidates will be asked to stop speaking regardless of where they is in their presentation.
The most common mistake in an oral presentation is trying to write everything in paragraph form. It’s painful to watch a candidate try to read the entire presentation to the raters. Candidates who are able to speak to bullet points will fare much better than those who try to read what they have written. Teachers and people who have previous experience speaking in public usually excel in this area. The best way to prepare for this exercise is to practice with a topic, have a set amount of time to prepare a lecture, and present the topic to an audience. Using a video camera is the best way to critique oneself.
You will be amazed at what you see.
