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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.
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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.