We encourage candidates to pepper their interview answers with personal life experiences. Since no one else can duplicate a person’s life experiences, candidates become unique, fresh and convincing.
For example, in a recent fire academy group, half the recruits were candidates who went through our program. However, they were to stand out from the others during the oral board because they were using their own material; they weren’t profile, robot clones of everyone else.
If you have the education, experience and desire to get that badge, but you’re not getting hired, you have to ask yourself why?
The answer may lie in your approach to oral boards. Since oral board scores are calculated in hundredths of points (82.15, 87.63, etc), the goal is to keep building on the smaller fractions of points so that they add up. You can gain additional points for including signature stories at the appropriate time and delivering the right answers. Just being one to two points ahead of the other “clones” can decide whether you will go forward in the hiring process or not.
The toughest thing for candidates to do during an oral board is to be themselves — on purpose. Your stories establish a natural bridge between you and the panel. When you’re yourself, the interview becomes conversational brings those involved onto the same turf. This alone can lower the pre-interview stress and the butterflies (and everyone has butterflies).
Stories are more than just facts. They can recreate the excitement, emotion, color and magic of the event, and capture the interest of the listener. A big part of getting hired is convincing the oral board that you can do the job before you get it. Stories are convincing and can demonstrate your experience and character, even if they’re not fire related.
As you are preparing for your interviews and collecting facts and dates, be sure to jot down a few illustrative details, quotations and other information for your signature stories. While stories shouldn’t sound rehearsed, you can still prepare for them ahead of time.
Practice those stories with a tape recorder and condense them down to a couple of minutes or less. Don’t go on a journey; the oral board is not packed for the trip. You also won’t have time to tell a story for every question you are asked, so you need to decide when it’s appropriate.
Put it before them briefly so they will read it, clearly so they will appreciate it, picturesquely so they will remember it and, above all, accurately so they will be guided by its light. —Joseph Pulitzer, (1847-1911) American journalist |
Choosing the right story to tell is crucial to making it work effectively for you. One of the best ways to highlight a story with impact, is to go back to the source. One day, I was coaching a candidate who was giving me clone answers to my interview questions. I stopped him and asked him to rewind the videotape of his life to the point where he first got the spark to become a firefighter.
He said, “Oh, I’m from South America. When I was growing up, we lived with my grandfather who was the fire chief of the city. I got to go with him and be exposed to the whole department.”
It was perfect. But he didn’t even think to use that story during the oral board, or how to go about telling it. I am reminded of another example where I was doing a private coaching session with a candidate. He was telling a story about being a federal firefighter in Yellowstone during a large fire. The story was not too exciting the way he was telling it. I told him to include the emotional details and answer these questions: Were you trapped? And did you smell the smoke and see the embers dropping around you? You have to bring your audience to the scene with.
I just talked to a candidate who was giving clone answers to the question, “Why do you want to be a firefighter?” Then he realized he could begin his answer with a signature story. His story made the panel members laugh, but also revealed his passion for the job. He followed this story with some standard answers, but by then, a more comfortable and easy going environment was established.
Start establishing your personalized stories. When you start lacing your answers with your personalized experiences, you shorten that gap between you and that infamous badge.
“You can’t control the wind, but you can adjust your sails.”
The proof is in the badges.
