December 7th 2009

Fire “Captain Bob” Smith is a retired 28-year fire Captain, a coach, publisher, and author. For 39 years he has helped countless entry level and promotional candidates gain their badges. The Captain is a speaker/author of the CD/DVD programs “Conquer the Job Interview,” “It’s Your Turn in the Hot Seat!,” the books, Becoming a Firefighter—The Complete Guide to Your Badge,” “Fire Up Your Communication Skills” and “Eat Stress For Breakfast”.  [17 min.]

To learn more about how Captain Bob can help you gain your badge Click Here

Captain Bob, walk us through the process of getting hired as a firefighter.

Well, there are several steps involved in becoming a firefighter.  First of all, there’s usually a written test, then an agility, an oral board, a background, psychological evaluation, polygraph, medical, background investigation, these can all be included in becoming a firefighter.  And the important thing here is you can’t go to the next step unless you pass the one that you’re at right now, so what we try to do is prepare candidates for every step of the hiring process before they show up, then they can advance to the next level.

Captain Bob, can you walk us through the steps for answering an interview question?

This is one of the biggest problems that candidates have is the actual answers to the oral board questions themselves.  And what really happens here is too many candidates become clones of one another, and its grueling to be in those oral boards and all of a sudden, it’s the third or fourth day, and you’ve got more days to go, and you go in and you ask a question, “Why do you want to be a firefighter?” and you hear the same story that you’ve heard from the other candidates for three or four days already.  It’s just not working to your best favor.  Like candidates, when they’re asking questions, they don’t realize that this firefighter interview is different than any other interview they’ll ever take in their life—corporate job interviews do not apply here.  And there are six steps in the answering of an oral board question.  First of all, you want to actively listen to the question.  If you’re actively listening to the question, your blood pressure will rise, your eyes will actually dilate a little bit—too many candidates step on the answer, they get analyst paralysis.  Step number two: make sure you understand the question.  If you don’t, make sure you ask to have them repeat it or rephrase it.  And then pause.  Now this feels like an eternity, but do a little pause, you’ll see the wheels turning, and think about the answer you’re going to have.  We have too many candidates that are so nervous that they just blurt out the answer.  So listen, understand the question, pause, and then ask a question or make a statement which you can do to clarify the question more and maybe get yourself some more points.  Let’s me give you an example.  You get a direct order where you’re at the front door and the fire captain is telling you to go get the ax and bring the ax up, we’re going to take out the door.  But before you go to get the ax, you can ask the question, “well, can’t I just try the doorknob and see if it’s open?”  Well, they’re going to tell you its locked, but you still got the points for thinking about that in advance—you’ve made that statement.  And then, use KISS—“Keep it Simple, Sweetie.”  Don’t complicate this process, keep it simple, and deliver the nugget answer.  And bonus points is, is to deliver a story they’ve never heard, a personalized experience story that nobody else can tell but you.  That’s where you make a difference between yourself and the other candidates.

What are some of the biggest mistakes that firefighters make when answering interview questions?

They’re not prepared.  They’re not prepared before they show up.  They’re going to wing it, they’ve listened to the firefighters, they’ve gotten books, they’ve not practiced, and they think they’re going to come in and just wow the interview panel, and you just can’t do that.  What you’re looking for here is a seamless, no-surprises interview, one question after another.  You’re trying to maximize your points on your answer, get the top score on that answer, and cause them to go on to the next question.  All you’ve got to do is stumble one or two questions, be a point or two out, and you’re out of the running entirely.   And again, too many people don’t practice, and one of the key ways to practice is using a handheld voice recorder.  Probably 95% of the candidates that I’ve talked to have never heard themselves on a voice recorder, and when they do, they’re baffled.  The first thing they say is, “that’s not me.”  “yes, it is.”  You’ve got to get married to the handheld voice recorder because it will help you condense your information, cut out pause fillers, time stealers, get all those key words—ands, uhs, all those things—out, get it timed down, and it will actually let you know if you really sound like Donald Duck.  A lot of people do and they don’t know it.  Timing inflection is important.  This is all about presentation skills.  That’s what’s going to get you the job here.

Walk us through some of the steps firefighters should take in preparing for an interview.

First of all, be prepared and have your answers to the questions, as many questions as you can get.  Write things on those 3×5 cards.  Then, when you go at that question, when you play back that recorder, if there’s something that you don’t like, you turn it over and put that on the back of the card. When you go back to practice that same question, you turn the card over first and see what you don’t want to say.  What you’re trying to do is get this all condensed down.  Now we have a home study program that’s off our website at eatstress.com.  We also have 300 pages of free information on that website, a free newsletter that people can sign up for, a lot of free information on that site.  If people get our home study program, get a handheld voice recorder, practice those answers, and then take advantage of our private coaching sessions, candidates, they do mock orals, they deal with other firefighters, they get anybody that will stand still to listen to them, but they’re still not prepared because those people can’t tell them how bad they really are.  We really will.  And we offer that private coaching session.  Most of them are done by phone because of time and distance nationwide, but those candidates that follow that process dramatically improve their chances once they get to that oral board.  You don’t want to waste any opportunities.  If you’ve gotten that far, especially in this economy.

Captain Bob, most interviews ask you in one way or another to list your strengths and weaknesses.  Talk about some ways to prepare for this type of question.

Here’s one that people don’t prepare well enough for, especially on the weakness.  You want to have something on your strengths: loyalty, reliability, dependability.  You want those things that will stand forward that demonstrate that.  If you have loyalty, you have everything, and not to put words in the candidate’s mouths, but they don’t realize the key things that the job is looking for.  So that’s one way, strength.  Weaknesses—they usually ask only one weakness, they may ask up to three strengths.  On a weakness, boy, people make mistakes here.  They come up with big ones that they should never use.  And I tell them, you’re not going to use this, in coaching sessions.  You’re not going to use that.  Let’s get something that’s simple and something that you can identify with and something the panel can identify with that will get you the opportunity to deliver that question and cause them to go on to the next question.  We’ve had candidates state because their medic skills are low, because they don’t have enough experience, that’s their weakness. You don’t want to use those things.  You want to use something that you have and you’re currently working on it and it’s something they can identify with and you can answer the question and satisfy them and go on to the next answer.  A good one is possibly you’ve taken on more than you can handle at times, and what you’ve done is you started taking on those things that you know you can bring to conclusion and you try to delegate the others.  People can identify with that kind of an answer.  Again, we don’t want to put words in people’s mouths, we want to pick one that’s good for you.

Firefighter oral boards can be intimidating and sometimes nerves get the best of us.  How does a candidate control their nerves in order to answer the interview question in the best way possible?

Here we go back again to the biggest problem, and its stage fright.  Because really what we’re doing is we’re auditioning for the part to be a firefighter.  That’s what we’re doing there.  And we get stage fright.  When you show up for the play down at the college, you show up with your lines in place and practice and you have something good to say and it sounds right coming out of your mouth.  That’s why you use the voice recorder.  Everybody’s got butterflies; the key is to get them to all fly in the same direction during this interview.  Now we expect that you’re going to be nervous, we don’t expect you to be perfect, every candidate, cause we’re just not.  But just like an actor, if you see an actor in performance, who do you see?  The actor or do you see them in the part?  Usually you see them in the part, and that’s what you want to be.  You want to be in the part of the firefighter because that’s how you’re going to be in the firefighter in the field.  And the big thing here, again, is the candidates are not prepared.  And they’ve turned to stone sometimes, they just draw blanks.  I had one kid tell us one time, he says, “You know, can I come back to this?  I’m just drawing a blank,” he says.  “I can hear tumbleweed going around in my head here.”  We gave him that opportunity and we came back later with the same question and he was prepared for it and we moved on, and he was very successful at that.

Captain Bob, how important are the opening and closing statements in an interview?

Boy, here we go!  Here we go on this one!  Because people will tell you you’ve got to come out swinging, tell us a little bit about yourself, and they come out and they dump the whole load.  Everything that they’ve prepared for.  That’s not what this question is about.  It’s an icebreaker question to get you comfortable in the chair.  A minute or less, a little about you, your hobbies, nothing about how you’ve prepared.  “Why do you want to be a firefighter,” your experience, what you’re bringing to the job—none of that information.  Because here’s the big thing that people don’t understand, and the candidates, is that question is usually not scored.  Neither is the closing, usually.  So here you come in, and they ask you, “Tell us a little bit about yourself,” and you dump the whole load, so now, the next question comes up, “Well, what have you done to prepare for the position?” “Well, just like I JUST said…” and then you reiterate, and it doesn’t have the same impact and you’re not getting the maximized points out of that.  So a minute or less, jobs, hobbies, and then end it, because it is an icebreaker.  Now he’s the key: if they look baffled after it, they want to hear more.  Most chances, they won’t.  Now the closing itself, this is your opportunity, they might say, “Do you have any questions,” which you never do, “Would you like to have a closing?”  Sometimes they allow you to do it and sometimes they won’t.  But think about this for a second and understand, again, that this is not scored, so people think, well, at the end here I’ve been told I’ve got to raise the flag and beat the drum and bring the band in and just really close it up.  Well, if you’ve never done it in the body of your interview, you’re not going to make it up in the closing because the scoring is already done.  People don’t understand that.  Again, you’re not going to make it up in the closing if you haven’t done it all the way through your interview—that seamless, no-surprises interview, one question after another, that’s the one we’re looking for.  But if you do say something good—or bad—could cause them to go back and change the score in one of the other questions.  You want to be there to ask for the job in that closing, thank them for the opportunity to be in there—so many people just don’t ask for the job.  “I look forward to going further in the hiring process,” something simple, not overwhelming.  You’re a rookie, you’re prepared like a rookie position. This is not a corporate interview, too many people try to come in and close the deal—you can’t do that here.  This is not that type of interview.  I’ve had candidates say, “Well, if they say that you have any questions, don’t you have to have questions?  I’ve been told you always have to have questions or they don’t think you’re interested.”  Well, we don’t expect them on a fire interview.  It’s different than any other, it’s a semi-military organization.  I had one candidate that just went on and on and he wanted to know if he could start at a second pay step because he lived far away and it would help pay for the gas.  Questions like that or, “Do you know when you’re going to hire?” or “How many are you going to hire?”  A lot of people on the oral board are not from that department, they wouldn’t know the answers to those.  Simply you can say, “You know, I think we’ve covered everything.  Thank you,” and move on.

Captain Bob, are there some effective steps you can take to prepare for the written exam or is it pretty much a case of “either you have it or you don’t?”

Well, the tests now are including a lot of psychologically-based questions.  They’ve done away with a lot of the mechanical aptitude, things of that nature, and they’re trying to eliminate the candidates early on in the process so that they don’t have to wait until they get to the psychological test, which costs them money to run and you might fail, so they’re going to try to eliminate you early on.  And that’s what’s throwing a lot of the candidates, and they can’t figure out how to answer these questions.  We actually have a sample, written test on our website with answers.  It’s free.  People can go take a look at it.  Take that test, get an idea.  If you’re stuck on whatever area of the written test, you don’t have to go back to college and take a class.  For instance, on that, say it’s a math problem.  All you need is twelve formulas, and if you know those 12 formulas, that will get you through a firefighter written test.  It’s being able to determine where you fell down in that written test, and that’s not always easy to do, but the more tests you take, the better you get at taking tests, and people just are not prepared for that portion.  They’re trying to prepare for the other things, the agility, and so on, but if you can’t get past that written, you’re not going to go forward.  Likewise, they’ve got a testing out there called Fire Team Testing, which is a video testing that eliminates the written portion of the test—there’s still going to be an oral later—and what it is, HR can get all these people together in one auditorium and get this test, it’s cost effective, and again, here it is, it eliminates and culls the herd early on in the process.  That’s a test you prepare for.  You can go on their site, Fire Team Testing, and pay a fee and take their test.  And it’s interesting that people who have had trouble with this test told us that if you’re concerned about your answers sometimes, if you go to your feminine side, and answer from your feminine side, your chances are better of answering the question.

Captain Bob, if you had to list the single biggest obstacle in getting a firefighting job, what would it be?

It’s preparing for that oral board, because every step of the process to getting hired as a firefighter as I first mentioned—the written, the agility, the psych, background, the polygraph, the medical—all those are pass/fail.  Usually, 100% of your score to get hired is in that oral board.  100% of your score.  And I’ve seen candidates with great credentials—they had EMTs and paramedics and they had military experience and volunteer time and had degrees and certificates, and every merit badge you could think of—and yet they couldn’t present that package.  And if you can’t present the package, you will never, ever see a badge.  As Steve Sabrowski, a battalion chief here in Santa Clara County, California, said, “Do whatever you have to do to make yourself more marketable so you can take more tests and have something more to offer to the department, but remember that it all comes back to that 15-30 minute interview, oral board.”  I’ve seen some candidates with awesome credentials with resumes full of accomplishments and they couldn’t even sell themselves in the interview to even make the top 50%.  Can you imagine that, after spending all the time, education, treasure in getting to that part and you don’t get the job because you can’t present the package.

Captain Bob Smith, thank you so much for joining us today.

It’s my pleasure.

If you’d like more information about Captain Bob’s coaching programs for firefighters, you can visit his website at www.eatstress.com.