Digital Recruitment and Retention

Burlington Township (NJ) Firefighter Matt Stahlnecker checks his mobile device while returning from a run on Rescue 30. Photo by: Tiger Schmittendorf

The world is changing rapidly and the fire service is getting caught up in the tornado effect of technology on our society.

More and more fire departments are smartly using web sites, e-mail and social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter to recruit new firefighters, share life safety information and to stay connected to their community. There isn’t much you can’t do with a mobile device today that took a super-computer to do less than 30 years ago.

And while we’re making strides in keeping our folks safer on the incident scene, there’s probably few bigger challenges today than to keep your folks out of trouble on social networks and the Internet. Sometimes ‘retention’ in the fire service devolves to preventing our people from doing stupid stuff.

I recently had the opportunity to facilitate a conversation titled: “From the Xbox to the Box Alarm” with a large group of fire instructors  for the University of Kansas Fire and Rescue Institute wherein we discussed today’s and tomorrow’s generation of firefighters. The conversation focused not only on the challenges in understanding, motivating, training and leading this unique cadre of individuals, but also enlightened the participants as to the tremendous potential they possess for moving our fire service forward.

And, naturally, you can’t have a conversation about today’s generation of firefighters without discussing the importance of technology and the impact of social networking.

I had the daunting task of following a presentation by Curt Varone, an accomplished

Lots to Tweet About

Check out Burlington Township (NJ) Volunteer Fire Department's new pub ed banners

There’s been plenty to tweet about lately regarding recruitment and retention in the fire service. Some of the info shared is good news and some is bad news, regardless, it all contains lessons we can learn from. Sometimes there’s so much activity and so much being shared, that it’s tough for even someone as “connected” as I am to keep up with.

With many fire prevention activities wrapping up for the month of October, many fire departments took advantage of the added exposure to share and maximize their volunteering, public education and public relations opportunities; including the Burlington Township Volunteer Fire Department which the FireRECRUITER has been working with for the past six months. The featured photo shows off the new banners they’ve created for their successful pub ed efforts — which are smartly and directly linked to their recruitment efforts.

Some of my Tweets are original finds I stumble upon while others are retweets of others’ discoveries. Nonttheless, in case you missed them, here are some of the highlights of recent tweets with plenty of examples of what does and doesn’t work in in recruiting, motivating, leading, training and retaining today’s firefighters. Follow the links for great reads, resources, tips and tricks.

Venturing down a new path to the Volunteer Fire Service

There’s an interesting conversation started at FirefighterNation.com that suggests the BSA Venturing program as an alternative path for young people to get involved in the volunteer fire service.

The discussion host offers what he feels is a broader opportunity to get more young people involved in their volunteer fire department by not pidgeon-holing them into just being Fire Explorers and Junior Firefighters.

Here’s what I think. What do you think?

Discuss it here or discuss it there.

Live Netcast: Recruitment Challenges and Solutions

Join the FireRECRUITER live via the Internet on Wednesday-March 10, 2010 at 8pm ET at FirefighterNetcast.com for a conversation discussing the challenges of today’s fire service in recruiting and retaining volunteers.

Click www.tigerschmittendorf.com for all the details.

REVIEW: 10 Step Guide to Volunteering

I stumbled across a guide to becoming a volunteer firefighter while reviewing a list of web resources from FireCritic.com and found it to be very interesting.

First, inasmuch as the guide was created for potential volunteer candidates, I thought it interesting that the site FireLink.com was connected to Monster.com — the familiar job search engine. That’s not to say that it’s a bad thing, I just found it to be somewhat interesting.

Next, I found it interesting that the author, or at least, co-author of the 10-Step program was a two-year veteran of the volunteer fire service. While I appreciate his fresh insight, I also felt his perspective was somewhat limited as outlined in my next point of interest.