To do with recruits, could ya work it so that you have 2-4 new member every few months come online after doing the BFF1 weekend? More like a rolling induction, Join up in Febuary, become online in March, while a few more join up in march,etc,etc... 12 at once seems rather rather large for at once.
Zippy, many years ago we chose to take on recruits in a batch, normally one or two recruit squads each year. Because we have so many people applying each year (normally around 20 - 30) we run an information night early on to get them all down and explain what the CFS is all about, how we operate and the sort of things expected of them, we also do a one on one interview with them all to weed out the good from the bad.
From that night we decide how many and who we will take on based on the current needs of the brigade, the recruiting committee then put forward a recommendation on each applicant to the brigade where each person is voted on.
We then put the successfull applicants through our three month recuit training course, this covers all the basics and is held on a Wednesday night, they also participate in Monday night trainings, we have a sixteen session training program that must be completed prior to them becomming operational. Towards the end of the recruit squad we also put them on a BFF1 course, which they generally go pretty well at because they have already covered most of the stuff during our training sessions.
At the end of all of this we hold a graduation night for them where partners, friends and families are invited to the station and the recruits put on a series of drills for them, normally culminating in a live fire drill (often a car fire).
We find that by putting them all through in one squad they form a very close bond with the others in their group, it also means we can do more with them with an increased number of people. This year due to an increase in our SFEC prescription for fire fighters we took on 14 people, knowing that we would loose a couple throughout the course - this left us with the 12 we have now.
We normally give them pagers within the first month or two so they can get used to them and come down to the station for calls and see what goes on, also means they know of any training changes or brigade info , also makes them feel a part of the brigade. This year however we had to wait for the pagers to become available from HQ before we could issue them but they finally recieved them last night and are now operational. With some luck we should be ok now and once our regulars come back from holidays we will be set for another year.
For info during our interview sessions we ask each person how they found out about us and what makes them want to join, in the last two years I would say that 90% of our applicants are getting their info from our website, this seems to be a very important component of our recruiting strategy now. If your brigade doesn't have a good website with lots of recruiting info then you may be missing out on some potential members.
Happy to answer any other questions you have.
Matt B
Lieutenant
Morphett Vale CFS
