Sunday, March 9, 2014
Social Media and Your Reputation
When it comes to social media, it can be a valuable tool to promoting yourself to potential clients and employers. This also goes the other way, in that it can also work against you. Social media must be constantly managed to keep business and personal platforms separated. Posts by others need to be screened on a regular basis, even though you didn't post it, it can be scrutinized just by association. Good luck and talk to you soon.
Blog Tips
Tips
for blog design
Vertical alignment is important,
keeping everything uniform gives you a better look. A crowded Keep important links in plain view,
categories, featured posts, search box, links to archives, and other links to
resource/static pages.
A
tip for choosing colors
keep your blog layout neutral so
that you can go color wild in my blog posts. If both your layout and blog posts
are colorful, it becomes confusing because there isn't a focal point the eye
can rest on.
Podcast script
Firefighter
Retention
One problem that plagues volunteer
and combination fire departments around the country is retention of members. I am here to give you some tips that will let
potential candidates make an educated decision and have a realistic view of
what is involved with becoming a firefighter.
The way I like to start out is to
form a committee of 3 firefighters of
various levels to conduct the interviews.
Keep them short and to the point and conduct them as more of an
orientation.
With that being said I like to
present the candidate with the statistics of the department and initial
training process. Such as:
·
We have approximately 500 calls a year
·
65% of our calls are medical in nature
·
3% are actual fire calls
·
20% are false alarms
·
12% are other calls such as hazmat car
accidents CO2 alarms and such
So very little of our time is
actually fighting fires.
·
It Takes around $2500 of the tax payers
dollars to get you your initial training
·
You have to commit about 150 hours of
your time for that initial training
So it is a significant investment
on everyone’s part and that does not include any continueing education.
·
You must participate in 2 3 hour
trainings a month
·
You must respond to at least 10% of the
calls
This paints a realistic picture of
what it is all about. Some think we are
heroes and we just go rushing in to fight fires all day long, in fact it is a
lot of training and little fire action.
I follow this up with a station tour, question and answer session and
let them know that I will follow up in a couple of days to make sure they are
serious about making the commitment. Our
department has shown improved success on retention since this
implementation. Good luck and always be
safe.
Monday, February 10, 2014
Sawtooth F.O.O.L.S Advanced Firefighter Training
Registration will be open soon on regonline. You can see the Sawtooth Fools on Facebook.
What it is all about.
With the increased use of social media and the Internet, the fire service is starting to embrace it more with caution. The goal of this blog is to provide information for the training of future firefighters of all levels. Large or small, volunteer, combination or full time, east coast or west coast, we all have the same issues. We still talk about communication issues. We still talk about member retention. Pro Board vs. IFSAC. All of this set aside, all firefighters agree that the more mental tools we have the better we serve our customers and the safer environment we provide for everyone. There is so many great instructors with different schools of thought out there to tap into. We must get outside of our box and find outside training on a more regular basis. That is what this is all about.
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