Be a hero, save lives, join LVAC!

Great job by the Lancaster Volunteer Ambulance Corps (LVAC)  in producing this professional video demonstrating their capabilities and dedication to the community, just in time to celebrate their 60th anniversary of service to the Town of Lancaster and Village of Depew NY.

With lots of images of their hard-working team, radio traffic voice overs and realistic looking mocked up emergency scenes, the video matches their clean and professional website in doing it right in motivating citizens to get involved and volunteer with this active emergency services agency.

Check out their video and visit: www.lancasterambulance.org.

Recruit your replacements. Train them well.

Given the national decline in experience-building fire load (aka-the work we do as firefighters), I’ve written before about the challenge of today’s fire service leaders to dig in and invest more in their firefighters than ever before to prepare them for success – and succession.

While my first passion lies in recruiting the brightest and the best, training your replacements is one of the most important steps in retaining their valued services. A well structured, disciplined approach to company training is a proven incentive for your firefighters to invest more time and energy in learning their craft and “responding to the call.”

I encourage you to read “Train Your Replacement. Bob did. Paul does.” from my flagship site: TigerSchmittendorf.com and reap all the benefits of digging in and proliferating the TrainYourReplacement.com attitude.

Stay safe. Train often.

The Hiring Pool is Open – Leland NC

Advertisement for Hiring Pool

Leland Volunteer Fire/Rescue Department, Inc. is accepting applications for our 2013 hiring pool. This pool of applicants will be used to fill any part-time or full-time hiring that the department may need for 2013. Once the pool is created it will be used for all vacancies in 2013, until all qualified applicants are exhausted. The applicants shall possess one of the following:

NC Fire/Rescue Commission Firefighter II, Emergency Vehicle Driver, and Hazardous Materials Level I (Operations) and NC Office of EMS Credentials as an EMT- Basic or EMT-Intermediate.

Loudon County VA Hiring

Loudoun County VA has posted a paid Firefighter/EMT recruitment  to their website at: www.loudoun.gov.

FIREFIGHTER/EMT

Recruitment #13-F136-322

Date Opened:

12/18/2012 8:00:00 AM

Closing Date:

1/2/2013 5:00:00 PM

Hiring Range:

$40,925

Department:

FIRE & RESCUE SERVICE

Job Type: Open and Competitive

Full/Part-Time: Full-Time

Eligible For: Full Benefits

Schedule: Varies

Reg/Temp: Regular

“VetNet” To Help Military Veterans Re-Enter Civilian Life

Sgt. Don Keuck is a Citizen-Soldier-Firefighter with the Doyle Hose Co. 1 Volunteer Fire Company in Cheektowaga NY and the NY National Guard

As we’ve shared before, recruiting veterans into the volunteer fire service can be a great solution to our staffing challenges.

They might just be the perfect candidate as we don’t have to teach them discipline, respect, honor, loyalty, chain-of-command or teamwork. In return we offer the camaraderie, adrenaline rush, teamwork and sense of value that they miss from active duty.

Check out this article at our sister site and think about the “VetNet” we could create in the Volunteer Fire Service. There’s an army of volunteers out there just waiting to be asked. Recruiting a Soldier|Firefighter may be the perfect fit for your volunteer fire department.

Read: “VetNet” To Help Military Veterans Re-Enter Civilian Life

My Bologna Has a First Name

Grabbing and keeping the public’s attention for the purpose of promoting a product, service or a cause has become a billion dollar business.

As fire and emergency medical services struggle to find or maintain its identity in this generation of flux, what can we learn from the advertising and marketing industry that will help us build our brand?

A recent web-surfing adventure randomly brought me back to this commercial I remember from when I was a kid:

That jingle first hit the TV screen in 1973 but all I need to hear is the start of the theme music, and I can’t help but break into song. Now that’s a lasting marketing message.

When you market your fire department for the purpose of gaining financial support, recruiting new volunteers or simply building company and community pride — do you have a theme, jingle, motto, or tagline that makes your message memorable? Is it integrated into all of your community education, relations and recruitment efforts?

The Jury is Out on Criminal Background Checks

What you should and can ask an applicant about their criminal history is a smokey issue. What you can legally do with the information you receive can obscur your visibility even more.

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 honest when they checked off the little box on their fire department application that asks whether or not they’ve been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor offense. Essentially, they were being honest about being dishonest — now that’s what I call irony.

What to do? Deny the application. Case closed. Simple as that. Right?

Where is Recruitment on your list?

I just visited a volunteer fire department’s web site based on a referral from Facebook and was disappointed, if not dismayed, to find that “Recruitment” was listed at number 11 out of 18 options on their site’s sidebar menu.

I did a double-take just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious, like perhaps that the menu items were in alphabetical order and that’s why recruitment fell lower on the list. Nope. Not the case here.

Now in their defense, I don’t know too much about their fire company other than what I learned from their web site, and maybe they’re flush with members and recruitment doesn’t need to be their number 1 priority. Or, perhaps that’s simply the order in which the pages were added to the site and that’s how they fell. Intentional or not, there appears to be no rhyme or reason as to the order of the links, which is apparent in this list: Home, Apparatus, History, Archives, Events, Downloads, Guest Book, Members, Members Zone, Photos, and finally: Recruitment.

Burning Question: Is a Co-Op Campaign Right for You?

Has your fire department ever considered conducting a co-op advertising and marketing program for recruiting new volunteers, promoting fire and life safety or just generally good public relations?

Maybe you should. Think of the benefits of partnering with a local business, corporation or even another community group or non-profit organization. Cost sharing is the most obvious outcome but there are several underlying themes that could benefit both parties in the partnership.

A recent article in Fast Company Magazine got me thinking once again about what the fire service can learn from other industries and disciplines — both good and bad.

While the article titled “3 Ways to Win in a Brutal Economy” focused on retail businesses, it certainly offered great suggestions that we can apply to our service-driven business.

Engage: The Xbox Generation

As I’ve shared previously in “From the Xbox to the Box Alarm” and “Dig In!” — I’m continually conducting my own observational research of the people who are already, or soon will be our replacements in the fire service: GenY.

My personal research of what I’ve dubbed the “Xbox Generation” is supported and enhanced by more formal research conducted by folks a lot smarter than me (not that it takes a lot to qualify for that! LOL). As I often do when faced with a challenge, I look outside the fire service for resources from other disciplines to gain a fresh perspective and see how I can apply their solutions to the industry I love. For as two of my favorite authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath say, “Find a bright spot and clone it.” These resources may include books, magazines and other media outlets — especially if they mention the importance of storytelling as a means of conveying our message!

One such resource I regularly rely on to get a clue about these Millenials and their unique attitudes and attributes is a periodic eNewsletter titled “Engage: GenY” from MediaPost Publications. The short articles offer a variety of perspectives from a variety of contributors and you don’t have to read far to find titles that quickly grab your attention and correlate to our efforts to learn more about these young people infiltrating our fire service.