SA Firefighter

I received the "keep fit" letter, a mate received a plain "unsuccessful" one.

I also got a letter a few days ago, but no mention of a 3 year wait to reapply.... See below:

Thank you for you attendance at the Personality Profiling and Abilities Assessment as part of
your application for the position of Firefighter with the South Australian Metropolitan Fire
Service.

The MFS received a very large number of applications so your patience has been appreciated.

The purpose of the Profiling and Abilities Assessment is to the assess applicant’s suitability for
the role in terms of traits and characteristics, compared with those associated with successful
performance in the role of Firefighter.

Unfortunately in this instance, your application will not advance to the next stage because other
applicant’s results more closely match the job requirements.

As understood by you by way of signing a declaration, the MFS and SAFESELECT will not
provide additional information regarding this stage of the process.
Once again, thank you for both your interest and the effort you have made in this process.

Seems like it will be wrapping up soon - waiting for something in writing before I truly believe I made it into the service.

Well done and congratulations! 

Far from whinging and doing nothing about it, I am trying to do something that enables myself and others to understand what they have to do in order to progress further in the career they want to pursue. Doing nothing means you might as well not bother applying in the future, because the process won't have changed and neither will you. The result will be the same.

So help me understand this... you attended the psych & abilities assessment, stayed in the room when they asked anyone who doesn't agree with the terms & conditions to leave the room now, signed those same terms agreeing that you will not have access to your results and yet here you are... thinking you are entitled to something. 

Why is it so hard to believe and understand that the assessment methodology used by SAFESELECT might contain proprietary information which, if made public, could result in a financial loss to the company, OR an unfair advantage to yourself should you undertake the test again.

Your badgering might have the opposite effect to what you're hoping to achieve.... if anything you will force them to strengthen their legal clauses and processes to ensure that no amount of emails, FOI applications etc. can ever result in anyone gaining access to their results.

Let it go man.

I work with a lot of current SAMFS employees, some of who are involved in training the recruits. All of them have indicated that the candidates who get through are not always very suitable. Some are great, but a lot aren't especially on the first few drill squads taken from a recruitment process. They generally get better as they get to the candidates from further down the selection order.

This is not just my opinion, many of the SAMFS people I work with have worked with him too. They'd happily swap him for many of the people currently riding trucks in SA.

I call BS on all of this.  First of all, if there was any evidence that personality traits of candidates 'further down the selection order' produced better firefighters, I would have thought that this feedback would filter up the chain and the selection criteria adjusted as a result.  Especially since it apparently came from 'people involved in training'

Second, I have worked with dozens of individuals in my profession (finance/accounting) who I thought were absolutely hopeless (and so did many of my colleagues).  But there were still others in the organisation who thought that those same individuals were the best thing since sliced bread.  In other words, opinions vary greatly from individual to individual - what makes your opinion the right one?

We agree on one thing - the abilities part was piss easy.  If anything, there's a quick way to eliminate a bunch of applicants if they perform poorly.

As for the psych test - my attitude was this:  I answered all of the questions as honestly as possible.  I figured, why lie or pretend to be something I am not, only to be selected based on those lies and potentially not fit in the workplace at the end of it all. 

My personal opinion is that you should let it go.  If you had 20 years of experience in recruitment and training of firefighters, then maybe you'd be taken seriously in relation to 'feedback on how to improve the selection process'... but at the moment you just look like some disgruntled applicant who has decided to be difficult and stick it up to SAMFS HR. (Not saying that this is the case, but if it sounds like a duck........)  Also, what makes your think that opinion on the topic is right?  Or wanted?

Have you ever though that maybe you didn't get through this time because there's simply a red flag next to your name due to the hassle you caused with FOI etc last time around?

There you go.

I've confirmed the following with HR on the phone.  There are basically four groups - in the order of preference they are:

The group of people who have been invited to do PAT1 - they believe that the number of people invited so far will be sufficient to fill the number of firefighter positions available.

Furthermore, there is a very small group of people who have been advised that they are suitable, and to keep fit - as they may be called in case a high number of people from the first group fail PAT1.

The third group is where people like myself are - this is the email advising that we are not required to contest PAT1 and that further information is forthcoming.  Basically, it is very unlikely, but still possible to be called up (e.g. new positions open up).

Then there is also the fourth group - these are all the people who were advised that they "have not reached a satisfactory result" in the psych & abilities assessment.

The person I spoke to repeated several times that the process is extremely complex and that MFS are still crunching through the relevant data on applicants in the first 3 groups.

Ferret, seems we are different to the 'keep fit' group?

Yeah he got an email, as has been the case with all communication so far.

No reason given, and basically repeating that they won't release the results of the psych testing or give a reason why he was rejected.

Morning all, I play indoor soccer at the MFS city headquarters on Wednesday's and next week's game is cancelled.  We received the following email on the 27th October:

"Dear Captains, Please note we have been informed today by the MFS that the gym is unavailable from 14/11 to 17/11 inclusive"

Myself and a mate are yet to receive an email like a most of you - he did his psych assessment on the 5th and I did mine on the 10th October.  Both our surnames are towards the end of the alphabet (fingers crossed).