Draft Choices

Volunteer fire departments, whether they realize it or not, compete for recruits. Sometimes with other volunteer fire departments but most often with a busy home life, other community organizations, volunteering opportunities and a wide array of social activities.

What if our recruits, like in college recruiting, were in competition with other recruits wanting to be selected by our fire departments? Would we see more or less candidates? More or less qualified? Or are they already in competition with each other?

More importantly, what can we learn from college athletic recruiters like the NCSA who set up this registry for potential recruits? Do you use language like: “SEIZE the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – and change your life” to describe the benefits of joining your volunteer fire department?

Can you rise to the challenge?

An article posted to FirefighterNation.com today outlines the challenges faced by volunteer fire departments in Pennsylvania in recruiting and retaining their members. Although these types of articles are becoming all too frequent, this one in particular is better than most in that it focuses on the positives of being a volunteer firefighter — not all the negatives. I’ve cited many examples of what not to say if you’re actually looking to solve your R&R challenges in a previous post titled “Is this our best approach?” Too often, we hand a prospective candidate all of the reasons and excuses why they wouldn’t join on a silver platter.

FireRECRUITER Goes to Indy

Tiger Schmittendorf, aka the “FireRECRUITER” will be going back to Indianapolis later this month to present at FDIC – the Fire Department Instructors Conference – the largest gathering of firefighters in the world.

He’ll be presenting “Understanding and Motivating Today’s Firefighters” as a repeat performance of “From the X-Box to the Box Alarm” presented at FDIC 2010.

Here’s all the details from http://tigerschmittendorf.com/2011/03/07/x-box-live/.

See you in Indy. Look me up.

Walking the Walk and Living it up like a Live-in!

Photo Courtesy of http://www.RaisingLaddersPhotography.com

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 Firefighters who created FDLiveIn.com. And to get a better understanding and appreciation for the program, I’ll be bunking in the station Friday night and they’ve arranged a tour of several live-in fire stations for Saturday.

Is this the ultimate bunk-in program?

Last week’s release of the highly popular article: Can you afford to live without a live-in? garnered a lot of attention and peaked my own attention to the idea. Thus, the FireRECRUITER has significant plans to connect with www.fdlivein.com soon to expand on this innovative concept and share success stories of staffing firehouses with college students or other appropriate team members who live at the firehouse in return for volunteer service.

Before we get to that though, I thought it important to highlight a particular bunk-in program that claims to offer the “ultimate college based firefighting experience” – the College Park Volunteer Fire Department – located on the campus of the University of Maryland.