Tag Archives: prospective member guide

As happens pretty frequently, I had a fire chief call recently to ask for some advice on what has become a bit of an arresting matter in his volunteer fire department. It appears that a prospective candidate for membership was being ...

I’m so intrigued by firehouse live-in programs that later this week, the FireRECRUITER is traveling to Hyattsville MD — home to one of the longest standing and most successful bunk in programs in the fire service — and home to the X-Box ...

Having just completed a week-long National Fire Academy course in Advanced Safety Operations & Management, I was thinking of the correlation between safety — and recruitment — and retention. One could argue that the connections are both direct and significant. If ...

Congratulations to the members of FASNY’s Recruitment and Retention Committee for being proactive and planning a statewide recruitment effort for April 9 and 10, 2011. They’re promoting the simple concept of each volunteer fire department hosting an open house that weekend and have backed ...

"Roll With It!" is a part music video, part movie trailer --- full-on high energy - high impact web site for the recruitment of emergency services personnel.

If you had just 30 seconds to convince someone why they should join your volunteer fire department, what would you say?  What would your message be? Do you have a standard sales pitch that you use for just such occasions? ...

The FireRECRUITER joins FireCritic and FireDaily as their special guest on this week’s edition of Firefighter NetCast.

I took particular interest in the sample best practice document titled "Pledge to My Peers" that frankly, is appropriate to "kids of all ages" in our fire departments.

And while I think the author is right on the mark that prospective candidates should do their homework before signing on the dotted line, I disagree with emphasizing and entering fundraising into the conversation so early. There are too many other positive parts of our business that could be used to highlight the benefits of volunteering. Fundraising is one of those functions that some volunteers must do when they're not doing what they signed up to do -- fighting fires and providing emergency services.

Allowing interested candidates to specialize as fire police or pump operators is a great way to spread the work load. As the article says, not everyone needs to be the person running into the burning building as all the sane people are running out.