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?