Well it finally happened, after all
these years of hearing things firefighter candidates have said in interviews,
that some expert has told them was the right thing to do, I hear it first
hand. I was sitting in the office of the fire station were I was working, the
engineer’s son had a friend testing for our department and he wanted him to talk
to our firefighter, the newest guy on.
I’m sitting there, and from the other
room I hear him recommend that this guy tell the board that he wants to be a
firefighter because the pay is good and there are lots of days off. Now I’m
waiting for them to laugh, and tell him they’re kidding. It doesn’t happen. The
engineer has been on for 26 years, and hasn’t had an interview for 19 years. The
new guy was a lateral medic, and didn’t have much of an entry interview. So I
can see how this poor guy can be thinking, he’s in a fire station for the
department he’s testing for, and he’s got a guy with many years on, and a guy
who was the last one hired. He must be getting the straight scoop. He was
getting the exact opposite. He had signed up for the “How To Fail An Oral Board”
class, and he didn’t know it.
As I walked into the room, I couldn’t
let this go, the new guy was telling him that a good weakness to share with the
board is that you’re a perfectionist. Now I’ve worked around perfectionists and
it’s no walk in the park, they think they don’t do anything right, and neither
do you.
The candidate was Hispanic, and I
asked him if he spoke Spanish. He told me he spoke a little and could understand
a little more. I asked him if that might not be his weakness, that while he
spoke some Spanish, it needed improvement. He bought some language tapes on the
way home from the station, so he could demonstrate he was doing something to fix
the problem.
Now I find myself arguing with the
new guy about what the best response is to why you want to be a firefighter. His
theory was the board really wants to know why you want to be a
firefighter. Trust me on this one,
We Don’t Care
if you like the hours, pay, and status the job will bring you. You need to
tailor your responses to match what the board is looking for, not what you feel,
save that for your girlfriend. But you can take those things that motivated you
to become a firefighter, and make a beautiful response to this question, and
then it’s your story.
I worked with this same guy, the
expert new guy, again the other day. I mentioned to him that I thought his
responses were about the worst I’d heard. He said, “Yeah, I’ve always been lousy
at oral interviews.” I asked him why he was giving advice and he said, “Well,
everyone keeps sending people to me because I’m the new guy, so I figured I’d
try to help.” I told him he was, if anything hurting their chances, not helping,
and he agreed.
Know this. There are people out there
who know their bad, but will still give you advice because you asked.
Types of Questions
In entry-level interviews we are
going to ask three types of questions:
1. -Situational questions: to find out how you will handle lying, cheating,
stealing, drinking, drug use, and getting along with others.
2. -Information questions: What have you done to prepare. What do you know about
our department? These questions have definite answers, it’s like a math question
two plus two is always four. There is a way, on our ratings sheet, for us to
indicate you got it right or you got it wrong.
3. -Subjective questions: Why do you want to be a firefighter, what first got
you interested, what is customer service, ethnic diversity, your closing
statement. These are questions that do not have a right or wrong answer. We are
going to rate you, basically, on if we liked your performance, and if you drew
us in. It’s more like an English exam; your score is based on you getting us to
identify with you.
You want to think of the responses to
these questions like a military operation. You want to get in, hit all the
targets you can, and then pull right back out. You don’t get any points for just
talking, and you run the risk of loosing the board.
Take every opportunity you can get to
practice your oral interview skills; you can even take police tests. Every time
you speak in front of others you will get better, and more comfortable doing
it. But please understand everybody on the fire department is not an expert,
some of them don’t even know how they got hired, and after listening to them
talk I can’t figure it out either. Captain Rob at nrtc@sonic.net
The above is from the book Becoming a Firefighter---The Complete Guide to Your Badge! www.eatstress.com