Unlocking the Secrets to Successful Firefighting Interviews with Ryan Coffey Ryan Coffey, a seasoned interview coach with a rich background as a professional firefighter at the Port of Seattle and previous experience in Everett and Spokane, brings his expertise to the table. Specializing in coaching firefighters, police officers, dispatchers, and correction officers, Ryan's insights are invaluable for anyone looking to excel in their interviewing skills. His unique perspective is shaped by his own challenging five-year path to becoming a firefighter, a role he passionately pursued by mastering the intricate hiring process and later contributing to it from the other side of the table.
In our conversation, we dissect the art of preparing for and excelling in firefighting interviews. Specifically:
Join us as Ryan Coffey shares his wealth of knowledge and personal experiences, offering a roadmap to success for aspiring firefighters and anyone looking to improve their interview skills. Whether you're navigating the complexities of the firefighting hiring process or seeking to make a lasting impression in any professional interview, Ryan's insights are sure to light the way.
Welcome to a duty to act with your host, Jennifer darling.Hey, everybody, this is Jennifer with the duty to act. I'm here today with Ryan Coffey, and we're talking about interview skills and how to get the job. My conversation with Ryan was so great that I decided to split it into two separate episodes. So enjoy today and be sure to come back in two weeks for the remainder of the conversation. Thank you so much for making the drive up here and coming into the studio.I really appreciate it. Ryan, I wonder if you could introduce yourself in the context that brought you here today and maybe tell us where you're working right now.Okay, sure. So my name is Ryan Coffey. The reason why I'm here is I'm an interview coach, so my primary focus is firefighters, but I also help police officers, dispatchers, correction officers, actually. Really anybody who needs help with their interviewing, because those skills are transferable. And so where I work right now is I'm a professional firefighter at the port of Seattle, but I started my career out as a firefighter in Everett.My professional firefighting career, that is. And then before that, I was a volunteer over in Spokane.Okay. Are you originally from Spokane?I am, yeah. Born and raised over there. Mom, dad, sister, myself. Just a little tight knit family.Very nice. I'll be graduating from Gonzaga in a couple months.Nice. What are you getting?Master's degree in leadership.Good for you. Yeah, they have a really good leadership program.They really do. I've been thrilled with it. But I shouldn't dwell on that because we have a lot of stuff to cover. So something that we just discovered out as you were coming in is that we have some mutual friends in your department at the port of Seattle there. So just to let you know, the story I was going to tell you is about saskia was my roommate at the state fire academy, and she was the world's greatest roommate.She was so fantastic. First of all, we had six women in our group, which is a high number for the academy. So it was really big. And she and I were roommates. And I'm older.I went to the fire academy older. And there was this moment where we'd be at dinner, and everything is so regimented. So dinner, it's like 630. We're eating and we're sitting there and we're looking at each other, and she said, I don't know about you, but I just want to go to bed early tonight. And I'm like, you're the greatest.Thank you so much. And, yeah, we were both in bed early. It was fantastic to have a roommate that wasn't sort of one of those people that was in and out all night or anything. And of course, the phones didn't work there, so you couldn't get cell signals. It's not like you could have a phone conversation.But, yeah, she was a wonderful person to be in the academy with, and I was completely blessed and fortunate to have her as a roommate. So I think of her often. Please give her my regard.Yeah, I will. Definitely.Absolutely. Okay, so you started off in Everett, and that's actually how I got linked to you. Those who listen will know that I had some interest in finding out about tattoos in the fire service, which is what led me to a previous recording with a police officer from Everett. But also a friend in Everett said, well, you should talk to Ryan Coffee, because he can probably give you some insight about job applications and who takes what and where things are. And then I found out about this interviewing thing that you do.What brought you to interviewing? What made you say, like, that's the thing I want to focus on. I want to have a business doing that. I want to help people with that.Sure. So when I was actually initially trying to get hired on, it took me five years. And I started off getting my fire science degree at Spokane Community College. And while I was in college, I was testing like my friends were, but I didn't really know what the hiring process was. And it's kind of like playing a game, and you don't know what the rules are.So I'm going through, and I'm just, like, taking this test, and I don't know what the next steps are in the process, and I wasn't really taking it that serious. And so, like I said, it took me five years to get hired. The first two were kind of passive, where I was just doing what my friends were doing. And finally I said, okay, I need to buckle down, and if this is the career I want to go into, I've got to get serious about it. So then I started understanding the rules and the different steps of the hiring process.So I got past the written and the physical portion, and I started to get interviews. And I got frustrated because you'd go and have an interview and you'd get no follow up, no feedback, like, you didn't move on, and there was no reason why. And so that was really frustrating to me. And so you'd talk with your friends, and you'd try to learn from them, and I'd do a bunch of research online, and still you kind of come up empty handed. And I wish that there was somebody there to give me a little bit of a helping hand, a coach or a mentor.And some people know firefighters, so they kind of talk to them. They kind of get the inside scoop, and that helps them out. I just didn't have those resources, really. And so when I was going through this process, I wanted that really badly. And when I got hired at Everett, finally, I actually started to help out with our hiring process.So I was on the panel, and I was on the other side of the table now, and I got to easily see who was prepared and who wasn't prepared. And it was hard sometimes to not see yourself across the table interviewing, and you're like, gosh, I know this person would be a good firefighter, but they're not showing that. They're not telling me that. And so there's a phrase that be the person that you needed growing up. And I always knew that I would be a good firefighter.I just wanted somebody to give me that chance. They're not giving a chance out. You've got to earn it, and you've got to prove that you're worthy of this career. There's a reason why they say when you get hired on as a firefighter, it's like winning the lottery. One, it's not only a rewarding career, but two, the ods of you getting hired are really low.And so it is like winning the lottery. And so I wanted some help, and I also like helping others. That's part of the reason why I got into this career. And so I wanted to help people where I knew where I needed help.Wonderful. That's a great way to give back. What did you do to prepare yourself? Besides the initial online research and talking to your friends and people who were interviewing, what else did you do to get ready for this role? Do you mean as were there certificates or school or anything like that? No.So the majority of my experience is all hands on. So, one, preparing myself and going through that process, but then two, sitting across the table. So I was on the hiring panel for over six years at Everett. And you learn a lot, me who's interviewing and what a prepared interview looks like. And so then on top of that, I started doing my own research, and then I built my own system that helps prepare candidates for the interview process.Okay. It's an interesting phrase that you said. You see what a prepared interview looks like, like an interviewee looks like, I imagine, and I think this about myself. I know now, but I think I started off this way thinking, well, I shouldn't be prepared. I should go in and be genuine.I shouldn't have researched or have pre made answers to these questions in my head. To what degree do you think spontaneity beats preparedness or preparedness beats spontaneity?I think it kind of translates to the job of firefighting. Right. We train for certain situations, but those situations are never going to be exactly how you train for. And so the point is to know what to do in those situations or know how to answer the variety of interviews or, sorry, the variety of questions, but being able to work in the moment and understand that you might be asking me a difficult situation I've been in, and I can have a variety of different experiences to draw from to tell you about that. And so it's not going to be rehearsed necessarily where I'm telling you word for word, an example or a story, but I have something prepared.So where I have, my thoughts are more organized, because I want you to see me as a firefighter when I'm interviewing. That's the goal, right. If I can get you to imagine me as a firefighter, then I've succeeded. And part of that is, one, how you present yourself in your physical appearance, but then two, is how you present yourself in your oral speech and the content that you're presenting.That's a fantastic way of looking at it. I've been involved in hiring panels, and I've done a fair amount of being interviewed for jobs or promotions or whatever. Every time you want to promote up, you have to go through a whole set of oral boards and so on. And I've never thought about the analogy or likening it to being prepared at work as being prepared for the interview. But that's a really great way to think of it.You mentioned how you look, so let's talk about that for just a little bit. I'm going to just ask you your best advice there. What's your best advice for people dressing for an oral board or a chief's interview for fire, EMS, police, any of these sort of public service jobs.Invest in a nice looking suit and men and women both like you want to do. I think dark gray, navy blue. I think a black. It depends on the black. You don't want a tuxedo.You don't want to be like step brothers coming in there in a tuxedo, but look really professional and clean cut. Guys get a fresh haircut, you always feel you're most powerful. Actually, I think when you look good and that translates into your interview as well. So come in with a fresh cut, clean shaven. I know that there's a lot of men out there with mustaches.That's kind of a risky move. I think during an interview, some departments might look okay on that. It's hard because that's a little subjective, but if you've got a beard, you're not looking the part, and that's really hard. Fit for women, a nice pantsuit, something with a nice jacket, you can wear a skirt. Just make sure it's not too short.Stockings are preferred. Look professional, nothing too flashy. Not a lot of bright lipstick and a ton of makeup. More natural look, not a ton of jewelry, no heavy colognes or perfumes. And I would also say for women, too, hair up looks more professional than having their hair down and in their face.And it's an interesting conundrum there, aside from sort of the male female thing. But actually, you want to come in and look like you would fit the part of a firefighter, but you also want to do it in a suit, which is not what firefighters wear. So clean shaven is typical because, of course, beards, you can't wear the SCBA masks with. And some police departments still have prohibitions against facial hair, excessive facial hair, or creative beards and goatees and things like that. They still have preferences against that.For women, we're going into a suit, which is not what we'd be wearing at work, which is not necessarily how we present ourselves our best, necessarily. It's not. Maybe not the first instinct for a lot of people. But then you think, okay, well, then if I'm in the suit, then I have to put the hair a certain way. I need the makeup to look a certain way, I need the jewelry to look a certain way.But that's where you actually dial it back a little bit and say, I'm wearing the suit to show respect for the moment, that I'm here, for what I'm doing, that I take myself seriously. But I also want you to be able to envision me in the work uniform.Correct.And that's an interesting one. I dwell on clothes a little bit.Well, we do dress up, too. Special occasions, wear a class A uniform, whether it's something sad like a funeral, or it's something great, like a retirement. So we do dress up from time to time, too.Absolutely. And I think the time for the mullet haircut is not in your interview, it's not in your first year as a firefighter, not during your probation year. It's more like, wait and see what the culture of the department is like and then decide if that's the right way to express yourself.Absolutely.I'm not a fan of the mullet thing that's going on right now.I'm kind of am. Some people can rock it. Really? Well, I wish I was one of those people. I'm not.Very nice. Very nice. Well, I actually have a handful of male partners. My hair is shorter than theirs. That's the joke right now at work is my hair is much more classic than theirs.So with dressing up, I mentioned oral board, I mentioned chiefs interview, but there's actually often a lot of phases for it. So if you're going through and you're going in for a hands on skills station that's not tied to an actual interview, what's your recommendation of dressing for that?Is there a. I would follow what the department gives and directions. So I think this is a critical point for a lot of people, is they just don't read the instructions. So follow their instructions. So if they say wear athletic attire, you're going to come in for a physical evaluation of some sort, dress that according to what they want.If they give you like, I have a client right now that's going through an assessment with Seattle and they said, kind of wear whatever. I told them, look professional. Don't dress up in a suit necessarily, but wear nice slacks and maybe a polo shirt because it's not going to be a physical assessment, but they will be doing some oral assessment of some sort.Okay. All right. That's a good thought, too, is I don't know that I've in helping out with interviews at Mount Vernon, where I work. I don't know that I've ever looked at the instructions that are given to the applicants beforehand. And that's a really good thing.I do notice when people come in and they're not in a suit, it makes them stand out more than a suit actually makes them stand out in.A good way or a bad way.Well, they can look quite nice, but not fit with everybody else who's there. And it makes you wonder, why did you make that choice? There are seven people here interviewing one through six are all in suits. Number seven, you're clean. You could go to church on a date with something in that outfit, casual Friday. But what made you pick that outfit?And the hard part with the oral boards, those kind of interviews, is that you don't ask that question. It's a regimented list of questions that your department has come up with. So then you wonder for me, I.Don'T want somebody thinking that about me. Right. I want them going, well, why do they want to be a firefighter? That was a really good answer. I don't want them focused on what I'm wearing. And hopefully your attire isn't distracting.Right. We don't want it to be distracting, but you want to look nice. And there's actually. We had a speaker come into Everett and help us out with our mission, vision and values. We recreated the whole department.Values. And one of the things that he talked about was the clothing that you wear when you are presenting something. And I think he said it was seven. You don't want more than seven items to distract from. So you don't want a busy pattern.And there's going to be like, you could wear a jacket and then a vest and maybe like a pair of glasses and like, a watch. I can't remember the exact number, but the point was to not be distracting in what you're wearing.Yeah, it's a very coco Chanel thing. Little black dress, but that's it. Okay, well, I'll move off of clothes. That's a place where I kind of live is like being dressed appropriately for the part. Dress for what you're doing at right footwear, it comes down to work.My work boots, beloved work boots, all of that stuff. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about tattoos, because again, that is sort of what puts you into my orbit. And I began to find out more about you. What's your thinking on tattoos and interviewing and applications and so on?Sure. I think that really depends on the department. They have different policies in regards to tattoos. I will say this is probably a really good blanket statement. If your tattoo is offensive or it could be construed as offensive, it's probably not going to pass.So you either want to get that removed or covered up or think of a different career. If those aren't one of your options. I will say, I know a lot of firefighters with tattoos. They've got full arm sleeves and some of the department policies say that it's okay. And if they're visible, some of them say you have to wear long sleeves.Like, your tattoos cannot be visible while on shift. So if you're pursuing this career in public safety, just check with the departments and that might actually help change your decision as to which departments you want to work at. Because your tattoos are a part of who you are. It's an expression of your personality and yourself. And I think that's really important.Just some departments might not like that expression as much as others.Yeah. The hands and the neck and the face are really the areas where it can become like full sleeves, partial sleeves. Arm tattoos are pretty much very normal now in departments. My department has a tattoo policy that can't be visible. But in general, most departments I'm encountering these days really don't have as strict policies.But that seems to be the limit with, like, the hands, the neck, the face are problematic.And I think it kind of goes back to our earlier point of looking the part. And when I think of a firefighter and a lot of people, when they think of firefighters, they don't think of somebody who's completely tattooed up. That's not necessarily a realistic image, of course, but do you want somebody that's coming to provide medical care to your family member and they've got a Mike Tyson tattoo on their face? I don't, and that's. It's really hard because that's definitely a biased opinion. They're probably a really good medical provider, but it's the image that they're portraying.And, I mean, technically, they'd have to be a really good medical provider. I think if you've got either Mike Tyson tattooed on your face or a Mike Tyson style tattoo on your face, because I had both popped into my mind. But if you've got that going on, then you've really got to a lot to overcome in convincing people that that's not what they should focus on.Agreed?Absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about interviewing. Have you encountered much going on with this speed date type of interview? That's a real popular thing right now. Do you see that sort of Zoom meeting, nine minutes interview? It's popular up here in Watcombe county.Yeah, it's very popular. If you think of the whole hiring process, it's really a filtering, right? You're filtering through people and you're separating who's prepared and who's not prepared. And at each phase you're looking, it's a different bar to entry. So the written exam actually backing up. It used to even be the application.I remember when I was first taking tests, and I'm pretty sure it was Spokane Valley. Their application specifically stated that you had to fill out your application in blue ink. Right. If you didn't follow the directions, there went your application. Right.So that used to be kind of one of the first filters. Now in the digital age, things are a little bit different, and so the filters have changed a little bit. So you have the written test, then you have the CPAT. And then you start getting into the interview portion. And speed dating is a really quick way for fire departments to go through a long list of candidates and separate who's prepared and who's not prepared.And I think that's a really valuable tool. And if you look at this whole process, it's expensive to interview people, and you're hiring three plus firefighters, depending on the size of your department, to go through and interview all these candidates. And if you have 20 minutes per candidate, that's a lot of time. That's a lot of person hours to be putting forward towards this process. So the speed dating portion actually really helps them see a lot of candidates, and it helps keep costs low.All right. The money that you mentioned, the expense of putting on an assessment center, and that's what the hiring process is commonly called these days, is sort of an assessment center. But the expense of that, it's often not just the panel of three firefighters or line firefighters or officers that are doing the interviewing, but then, in my experience, there's an additional station going on, and then it's a whole day devoted to this or multiple days or multiple days devoted to this. And then finally you get down to the point with the psychiatric evaluation, the physical agility testing, the CPAT and all of those sort of things. So the expense, do you have any idea on numbers for things like that?I mean, like overall cost?Yeah.For the individual or for the departments?Oh, let's do both.It's really tough to say for both, really. I think for the individual. If you think about the cost of just taking the test alone, it adds up. You pay per department, and that's just for the written test. You pay for the CPAT as well.And then let's say you don't do well on those tests. You've got to retest. Or let's say your score is not quite well enough to get you up to the next bar. You've got to take that test again, and that cost adds up. Then let's say your scores do well enough for you to move on to an interview round.Well, depends on where you applied to, but you might have to drive. So you have the cost of fuel, you've got food, maybe a hotel. And what's your time worth? Right. So it's really hard. It depends on the person.But I know I've spent thousands of dollars in testing just myself in driving and time, and not to mention trying to figure out time off from work. Right. So you have not just this monetary value, but this time value. And your time, you don't get back. You can make more money, but your time you can never get back.For a department, gosh, it really just depends on the size of the department. When I worked at Everett, we had multiple groups of panel interviews going on at the same time over a span of a week for the first round of interviews. So you think of that, and you have anywhere from a firefighter to captain's wages, which that's expensive for a city. And then you have HR on top of that, that's sitting in, and then they're doing more work after the interview, going through the paperwork, emailing the candidates, who's moving on. So there's a ton of person hours that's devoted into that.But I can't honestly give you a cost associated with it because that's a little bit above my pay grade.Sure. I totally understand. Let's actually go back to the speed date interview for just a moment. When you're working with clients, how do you tell them to prepare for that? What are the tips or the keys? A tip or a key for the speed date there. That helps you think of them as being a better prepared candidate?Sure. So what I focus on is actually not necessarily the speed dating portion. I focus on a longer interview because I think it's easier to pare down than it is to build up. So what I do is I'll actually just kind of go through my whole process with you.If you're comfortable with that. I would love to hear it.Yeah. So the first step is a single session, right where we go in, we start doing a mock interview right off the bat. I need to know what your baseline is to know where I need to get you to be. And so the first thing is, I do a mock interview. I understand where you're at, and then I dissect your answers.First I ask, how do you feel like that went? Because I want to know what their thought process is. How do you feel like that interview went? And I had a client the other day. I asked him six questions. We had 20 minutes for the whole interview, and the interview was over in six minutes.Oh, wow.It was quick. And that's not good or bad necessarily, but it depends on what your answers that you gave me. And they were short, not a lot of meat to it. And he ended up following up with me today, I gave him homework, and he goes, hey, how long should my answer for tell me about yourself be? And I said, about three minutes or so, because it's easier to scale that down than it is to scale it up. So we go through the questions, I dissect their answers, and then I give them some homework to help.I'm not going to give that part of my process up.No, that is just fine.But then I give them the homework to improve on it. And then every time I do a session, we start off with a mock interview, and if they do well on a question, I swap that out for a different question so we can start giving them more complexity to who they are.Okay. All right. I like that. I have spoken to several people who've interviewed locally with a speed date where I don't mean to say that in Watcombe county they originated it. It's just the first that it came on my radar was Bellingham fire department doing it and all two of them interviewed at Bellingham.And the speed date was, I think, nine minutes, and it was one on one. There was not a panel. It was just one on one with somebody on the screen. And they said that it was both really enjoyable to do, unlike the regular interview, that that was really enjoyable to do. But they sort of left kind of wild eyed and, like, I don't know if I did well or not.I have no idea. But they enjoyed that one, at least. Interesting, because it was one on one and it was sort of just up here asking you questions. But they got to the oral boards and then they were just like, that was not as much fun.Well, I think this, people get in their heads about things, right. And part of that is just lack of experience in that arena. And so you're having a conversation with somebody, it's just kind of one sided. It's kind of like a courtroom, right? You're being asked questions and you're up on the stand and you're saying your answers. It's just a very controlled conversation.And the biggest thing is be yourself. But you're also going to be prepared and know what the best aspects of who you are and how it relates to the fire service, what those are, and you're going to be fine.Okay. Let's skip over the oral board because that's definitely where I want to talk about questions. I want to ask you some. I have a little book here, but let's skip over that for a second. Let's talk about the chiefs interview.Okay.Let's say that you make it through all of the filters all the way up, and you are given a chief's interview, which is sort of that last step before the commitment is made. How do you prepare for a chief's interview, or do you prepare any differently for a chief's interview than you do for the oral board and the speed date?I would say yes.Okay.Chief's interviews are different from department to department. And actually, the whole hiring process can be different from department to department. And I think the chief interview is interesting because I've had quite a few chiefs interviews before it finally clicked with Everett, with Kent. It was literally going over my background packet. We went over question by question, what did you say yes to?And that was my chiefs interview. I've had other chiefs interviews where they asked me the same questions as my oral board. I also find that some departments, you can kind of assess the culture a little bit based off of the questions that they ask, or you can kind of assess some of the incidents that have popped up. They're going to be some behavioral questions, like, you see a coworker grabing a watch off of a dresser. What would you do in this situation?Well, that might be an indication that that department's dealt with theft before or what they thought was theft, and they want to see how you react in that situation. And so, as far as preparation goes, it's really similar to the oral board. We just try to prepare the individual in a variety of situations. And how I do that is, we all have these experiences that make us who we are, and there are skills or attributes that are related to the fire service from those experiences. And so we draw on those, and that's how I want my candidates to stick out, because all of our experiences in life have prepared us for any job, any role.So I've been doing this for 30 years. And back in the day, what I knew about fire department interviews were those Kobayashi Maru questions where they would say, like, you're on shift and your captain gives you an order, but you smell alcohol on the captain's breath, what do you do? And it was this sort of answer, like, well, I mean, obviously, I don't let the captain drive. I talk to the captain. But the question was one where you could never win, because if you reported the captain, then you were a tattletale. But if you didn't report the captain, then you were a bad practitioner.You were allowing something illegal to go on. So there was no right answer. And I understand that sort of, that was more about the situation, like, how do you react in that clench, that time? It's my experience that that's not the nature of question that's asked anymore. Are you seeing those kind of no safe answer questions anymore?Not too often. You might find a behavioral question. Right. Because while that question is assessing a certain situation, there isn't technically a right answer and there isn't technically a wrong answer. But what is being assessed is the thought process that the candidate goes through.Right. And so it depends on the department and what they're looking for. It is subjective, unfortunately. And so you're really looking at how that person thinks and their behaviors.Yeah, I can imagine that. It'd be really good to be conflicted on that one. It would be a good question to say, well, I don't want to be a tattletail, but I do want to do what's safe. So being conflicted might be a good thing in that question.And that could be part of your answer. Yeah. I think saying, hey, I'm a probationary firefighter, and this is my superior officer, and what I think I smell is alcohol on their breath. It could be mouthwash. Here's something that a lot of candidates don't understand.You're given the question, and you can kind of turn it into what you want. Well, guess what? I thought I smell alcohol in my breath. I actually went and talked to the captain, and I was like, hey, cat, did I smell some booze on your breath? And he's like, no, I just rinsed my mouth with mouthwash. Oh, okay. Yeah.So it turns out it was nothing and it's no big deal. And I looked at his actions later. He didn't seem inebriated at all, and everything was fine. And that could be an answer whether department likes that or not. That's another question.But you can kind of turn that answer into or that question into whatever.You want it to kind of make a little screenplay out of it. Like, here's the story, the way I'm going to tell it exactly. Oh, that's interesting. I've never thought about that. That's a good one.Okay. So one of the first questions is usually something like, tell us about yourself, and maybe there's a stated, you have three minutes. In three minutes, tell us what we need to know about you or tell us about yourself. How do you recommend or where do you recommend people start? Do they start like, well, I was a child growing up on the east coast, or do you want them to start with their career? Do you want them to start with their family? Pick what's most important to them. What do you think?There's different ways to tackle this question. For me personally, my objective when I'm interviewing is to connect with the panel or the chiefs. And so I like to do that in three ways. First is just talk about my family, then talk about my hobbies, and then talk about my work experience. And I like to finish on work experience because that's kind of what you're going to remember most.Their pens or pencils probably aren't going to be moving too much during the family portion, but I like to talk about my family like, hey, I grew up in a small household, mom and dad. My mom's handicapped, actually, and I grew up helping take care of her. And I learned a lot of responsibility from a young age, taking my mom grocery shopping. I had to think ahead and plan ahead for a lot of these things because she is handicapped. And that taught me a lot about who I am, and that gave me my kind of caretaker's personality.I learned that from my mom. As far as my hobbies go, I like to snowboard. I like to be up in the mountains. The mountains are my happy place. I love backpacking.And you really have to think ahead about your hikes that you're going to go on. You have to think about weather, where you're going to camp out. You just can't camp anywhere. And that's taught me a lot of different life skills that transfer over into the fire department. As far as work experience, you want to talk about your most relevant work experience.And so for me, I started off my working career at Hollister clothing when I was 17 years old. I was still in high school. Probably not the most relevant work experience, but not everybody's going to have the work history that I've got. So if you don't even have work experience, that's fine. Did you play sports?Were you a mathlete? There are skills that you can talk about that you've learned from all of those different hobies or sports. So the point I'm making is there is gleanable skills from everything that you've done, and it's just how you present it. Ideally, you would want to talk about the skills or the work experience that relates to the job the most. Whatever job you're applying for.Okay. And certainly starting off in retail, someone who doesn't have much of a background in fire, ems, police, they could say, I worked retail, which helped me deal with the public, and I realized that I enjoy talking to people, or I realized that I have a need or I want to do these things. So there's always something there. I think that's probably where preparation comes up. Best is the story that you know the best in the world is your own story.Hopefully.Hopefully lord of the Rings. But the story that you should know the best in the world is your own story, and you have your own meanings for things, but getting those meanings, unless you actually think very thoughtfully about those meanings, you don't necessarily tell your story as well.Right.So knowing yourself is. That's what I always think of as just being the best preparation.Well, and I think it's interesting, an example that I try to use for people. I actually went over to Spokane Community College. They have the fire science program. I graduated from there, and I went and did a presentation on interviews with them, and I was like, you know how many people are in here are good at math? And, like, three people raised their hand, and I was like, okay, well, what's two plus two? And everybody was like, four. And then I gave another simple math problem, and they could solve it really easily in their head.And I said, well, these interviews are like a more complex problem. How easy is it for you to solve these in your head? And they're like, well, it's not. And that's right. Write it down. Write down what are the best parts of who you are.Write them down on the piece of paper and what skills transfer over to the fire department. Right. That's the thing. A lot of people don't want to put the effort and time into this, and that's what it takes. You're not going to solve this problem in your head.Yeah. And you mentioned for a previous question that there's usually no right or wrong answer. There's no answer. Like, we're listening for them to say, I've got three years experience in fire, and I grew up in a nuclear household, and my hobbies are exactly the hobies of everybody in the fire department. Speaking of hobbies, it makes me think of the culture of the department and sort of the nature of the department.I think culture of the department speaks to how people define themselves at work. Like, as an organization, we define ourselves this way. This is our work ethic. This is the way we treat one another, the way we treat the people around us. It's where I think of as sort of the culture of the department.But the nature of the department tends to be like, we're all together as a team all the time department, or we're the kind of department that we go on vacations to Whistler together, or we're the kind of department where we really like each other at work, but we go our separate ways. We're a department. The nature of our department is family oriented. How much preparation do you think that the candidates, your clients, how much preparation do you think they need to do to interview at the departments?I think that really depends on the candidate, obviously. I think this question makes me think of, how do you find the right department? That's what I think of with this.Question, and also, I asked the hardest way possible that. So let's just start there. How do you find the right department?I'm actually a big proponent of, initially, the shotgun effect. Right. It is a game of probability, and getting as much experience interviewing as possible is going to be helpful. And when you interview at these different departments, you're going to hopefully research them and learn more about them, and you're going to. You know, this really attracts me to Seattle, or, gosh, this really attracts me to know that was the case.For know I did the shotgun approach. I was interviewing all over. I was just like, I'll take a fire job anywhere. And if you're a fire department, you don't really want to hear that. You know what I mean?It's kind of like, oh, I don't have any standards, and I just want to go, whoever's going to pick me up. I think the reason that I got hired at Everett was because I had a real reason. I wanted to be there. So I'm gay, right? And firefighting is a very hyper masculine industry, and there's just not a lot of gay male firefighter representation. And just before I had gotten hired at Everett, they had done, and it gets better video.And the premise of that video is all these LGBTQ adults who are talking about their life and their experiences and then coming to the end and saying, hey, it gets better. And the point of that was actually all these LGBTQ youths were committing suicide, and their goal was to show it like, life gets better. There's more beyond this. And for me, I always thought I was going to have to be in the closet in my career as a firefighter, and I don't know how I even thought that was going to be realistic, living in the closet, so to speak. That's a lot to carry.And here was my opportunity to be myself, which, looking back, and after getting hired, I didn't even know what that was, to be perfectly honest, because I had been hit in the closet for so long. So that was kind of a scary endeavor. But I had a real reason why I wanted to be at Everett, which was I could be myself, and I want to work at a department where they encourage that. That's something that's really important to me, and I want to help cultivate that.A huge, just let you know, huge fan of Everett Fire department. And there's a couple don't want to. This is not what the podcast is about. It's not about me promoting Everett or anything. But actually, I did have a chiefs interview at Everett.That's okay. I had a chiefs interview at Everett. I had a job offer. The job offer came, the invitation to apply came because of some work with a couple of the msos that I did in my part time job as an administrator in Snohomish county. It's kind of just how that sort of came up.And there are a few things that are sort of personal stories about the people that I've met and the way that they viewed their job as leaders at Everett that were a real attraction for me. And I didn't end up taking the job. It was, oh, my God, like a brilliant mind psychic physics board with all of the equations and this and that and the other thing. And there were some reasons that came down where I stayed at Mount Vernon. But anyway, I had these reasons.I have this bond that I really appreciate a couple of things, but you just told me the best story, the best reason to work forever, is that you found some initiative that they did something that was important to them, that they didn't just keep internally, they put it outside in the world. You spotted it, and that was something that made you want to work. I really, I appreciate you telling me that, because I didn't know that they did that. Just like I said, I have these people and I've seen these things.No, it's a fantastic, you know, I work at the port of Seattle now. I've been there just over two years, and I still miss the people up know it's a family, and you create those bonds, and some of them are trauma. Know, you go through those sleepless nights together and you kind of bond over are just, those are memories and people that you just don't forget.And that's really neat about this career, is that you'll have bonds. I'm assuming you have some bonds with that over in Spokane, and you have some bonds with that at Everett and just the places that you've worked. It's a great way to be a part of a family for four years or five years or two years, and you learn pretty quickly if that's not the family you want to be a part of, but those friends, those relationships, I know I could call people from places I've worked before, having been a member of a department that broke apart. We were a large county based agency, and we broke down into four separate fire based agencies. But our best times are when we all bump into one another at training and we can catch up, and that's really cool.And then bonding with the new department has been awesome.And it's a community, whether you're in your own fire department or others, it's a big fire family. And we'll go on trainings and you'll run into people or the stairclimb. The firefighter stairclim is a really big reunion, and you get to see all your old friends and you all celebrate at once. Absolutely.Bottle changer right there.Nice.Yeah, so I'm doing it this year. I hope to do better than last year. Fastest bottle changer ever. My team has requested that he slow down his bottle change so they can get a little bit more of a break. I know I did some complainers over there.No, I can relate. I definitely like. You want that break for a minute.The mask is off. Just let me have a moment. Absolutely. Well, actually, I'm hoping to do some recording at the stairclimb this year, but there's so much noise in the background, I don't know if we'll be able to record anybody or not. Anyway.Okay, I'm going to get kind of focused back, but I really appreciate that story about Everett, because what I know of Everett and is a personal thing for me, that's been internal interactions with a handful of people compared to something that they put out in the world. And I really like that, especially big departments. And everything that is good is often kept very quiet and everything is bad is what makes the news or what goes around and so on. Good to know. Okay, let's get with some questions.Yeah. And also, too, just to kind of circle back a little bit, too, as far as the approach to finding the right department.Oh, yeah, right. We were on a question. We had a whole thing going. Please, you go now.Okay. Like I said, I'm all in on the shotgun approach, but in that process of applying to all those different departments, you're going to learn about yourself, you're going to learn about what your wants are. There's going to be different departments that are better for certain reasons than others. And hopefully you're going to learn about that during that process. And like for me, with Everett, hopefully you've got a good reason that you connect with that department, because ultimately, when somebody comes in and they interview and they're like, I want to work here.And this is the reason why. And it's something that's really meaningful that goes a lot further than somebody is like, I mean, I've had candidates that are like, well, you've got highways and there's some water around here. I'm like, okay, you're just like, tell me about the city, but why do you want to work here? You know what I mean? And I'm just like, come on, say you've got it in you. There's got to be a reason that you want to work here. So hopefully that gives somebody a little bit of an idea to shotgun approach.And then as you're through that process, you can hopefully find some good reasons as to why one department attracts you than another.I was in an interview panel with a guy named Matt beach, who's also been on the show. And we interviewed a couple of candidates, and one of them was born and raised in Mount Vernon and said, I want to work in Mount Vernon. I was born and raised here. I live down this road. I want to live down this road again.And another one was, by the way, they were both paramedics, but another one was, I'm a paramedic. I want to be a paramedic. I want to do paramedic stuff. I love the medical, and that's it. So this was my first year in the fire department, and I said, this is my candidate.I love that answer. That was a great answer. I was thinking, like, I'm going to be working with this person as a paramedic who really wants to be a paramedic, as opposed to sometimes there are people that get their paramedic certification just to get the job. That is a thing that's out there. And so I was really, and Matt beach was like, but this other guy, he was born and raised in Mount Vernon.He wants to be here. He's what we need, and he wants to be here. And Matt convinced me in that moment, but I started from a different perspective, and we were part of a three or four person panel. And of course, we hired the young man that was born and raised in Mount Vernon. He just scored higher.I don't know how he did on the rest of his stations, but we hired that guy. And it's one of my favorite people. I love working with Wayne. Wayne is a lot of personality. He kills it at karaoke, and he was the right fit.And I didn't think about that. And I was on the panel doing the interviewing. He had a reason to be with us. And that moment, just talking to Matt between the interviews, that changed the way I think about the interviewing, and it's the way I change about how I help prepare my students in the EMT class for their interviews. Find out where you want to be.Yeah.Shotgun approach. Okay. Yeah.It's a good initial step, but really, what's going to connect and have a department pull the trigger on hiring you is a real connection, whether it's to the community or the department.Okay. Very cool. When the candidate is preparing for this, when they're doing their research, one of the things that it's talked about is, like, sort of this buzzword, learn the mission statement or the vision statement and so on. And occasionally questions come up that tie into the vision or mission statement. Sometimes I've heard of overtly, like, what is our mission statement as being a question.I know that at Mount Vernon, we ask a question that is tied to our vision statement, and it's, tell us about a time when you have made it a positive improvement in someone's life. Tell us about a time when you've made a positive improvement in someone's life and that's directly tied to our mission statement. To what degree do you prepare your clients for memorizing those things? Or what do you think about that sort of research?I think the mission and vision and values are really important aspects of the department. They tell you, overall, what is your mission? The vision is, where's the department going? And then the values kind of tell you about the culture of the department. And oftentimes departments will ask, our values are integrity, trust, and respect. How do your values incorporate with ours? And I think that can be a really difficult question because a lot of people don't even know what their personal values even are. Part of my program is we go through that, and I give them a little assessment online, and they take that quick quiz.It takes, like, maybe ten minutes. And I wouldn't say it's like perfection, right? And I tell them, take it with a grain of salt. This is just to kind of give you an idea of what your values are, and then from there, you can kind of dive a little bit deeper and make it more accurate for you. But I think it's really important because you should know what your values are, because those are kind of the unwritten rules that guide you in this life. They're kind of like unwritten laws.So for me, I think trust is a huge one for me, because people are trusting when I say something that I'm going to do it, and vice versa. When you say, hey, I'm going to meet with you at this time. We're going to meet at that time. I'm a little bit late from some things like that, but overall, when I say when I'm going to do something, I do it, and that's important.That's a great personal attribute, to know about yourself and to share in an interview. I think, too, if you can sum up your credo, if you can sum up your belief system, I bet you you can be prepared for a lot of different questions.Yeah, absolutely. So part of the reason we go over the values is because there's a reason why those are your values. There's experiences as to why those are your values. So hopefully you can share those. You have the little rolodex of stories and experiences that you can pull out in an interview, so that way you are prepared.All right, let's hit a couple more questions.Yeah.Okay, so tell us about yourself. We've kind of covered that one, but what about the ones that are? Tell us about a situation, the situation based one. So tell us about a time in your career, work experience where you've had a conflict with someone, how you managed it, and what you did after that. How do you prepare your clients for these kind of questions?We just go over these options, right? I mean, we've all got conflict in our lives. If you don't have conflict in your life, then you've had a very privileged life, and you don't have a lot of life experience. And maybe this career is not quite right for you. I remember this interview at Everett. We asked him about a difficult situation they were in, and what was it?What did they learn? And he was like, well, my mom wanted me to do dishes, and I just didn't want to do them. And I was trying to hold back a laugh, and I'm trying to be as professional as possible, but I'm like, this is your difficult situation you were in. Was your mom asking you to do dishes? There's got to be something better than that. And I don't know. If he was not, he didn't seem prepared, and if he did prepare, and that was his story, then call me.Let's work on it. But we all have these life experiences and that shape us into who we are, and there's conflict in there. And if you don't have a difficult situation, whether it's like with a coworker, you've got to have something with a friend. There's got to be some interpersonal conflict somewhere. There's got to be an experience that you've learned from.And that's the ultimate goal I want to see. Do you have this life experience? How do you handle these stressful situations or these difficult situations? And what have you learned from it?How do you tell your clients to pick the stories that they're going to tell? For example, many, many years ago, I interviewed, it was my first oral board. I had just moved to Washington state. It was for a certain agency that trains its own paramedics south of here. And you were getting hired. I'd have to repeat all of my paramedic training as a tenure medic.And it was supposed to be the job of the job of the job to get. This was the greatest place to work. And they asked me, I had no preparation. And they asked me, what's the second most stressful time thing that's happened to you or the second most stressful time in your life? And so I laughed. I thought I was doing really well.I was like, oh, that's funny, because, of course, if you asked me the most stressful thing, then that would be a really personal question. So I said, well, this is what I think of as being a very stressful time that I've had recently. And I finished the question. They said, okay, what was the most stressful thing that ever happened in your life? And I was an idiot. I just came out with truly, like a bad boyfriend, ex boyfriend situation, something I would never share with people.And it just came blubbering out of me because I wanted the job. It was supposed to be the greatest job on the planet. They have a better way of doing things. I want to be a part of that. And so I did not titrate, I did not know how to do that because I had an answer that I thought was a really good answer.And they asked me to go deeper. So how do you tell your candidates to prepare for sharing and deciding what is appropriate to share like that?Preparation number one. The goal of my program is to give you a variety of your life experience and stories to tell. And I think I try to give credit to my clients that use your gut, you'll kind of know what is the right experience to draw from to answer the question. And I want a variety of those experiences. So that way you have this Rolodex to go through and go, this is the right answer for this question.And also, too, you're going to have some experiences that are very similar, but there's going to be different things that you've learned from those experiences. And so, yeah, I could have one experience, and it could answer probably a lot of interview questions. And what happens when I use that experience and I've answered one question and then they ask me another question, and that experience was probably better to use to answer that question? Well, we've gone through this program. Hopefully you have another answer experience that you can draw from to tell them. And maybe it's not perfect, and it's not always about perfection.Again, it is a numbers game, and it's not just about how you did, but it's how you did compared to the competition, too. There's the 10,000 hours rule, right? It takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. By the way, that number was just made up. I don't know who made that up, but Malcolm Gladwell, it's fars. It was in the book outlier.Okay, it's a made up number. But you know what? Do you know how much time people are really putting into their interviews? It's not a ton. And if you can put in, I would say, 100 hours of good work, you're going to come out looking really good compared to a lot of your competition because they're just not putting that much time into it. And 100 hours, I mean, that's 100 days of 1 hour a day. And I'm going to tell you that's just a little over three months.You got three months of work in you easily.I think three months is about a reasonable amount of time to prepare for the CPAT test, assuming that you have a baseline of fitness, not necessarily strength, length, or crossfit or cardio necessarily, but endurance, but to truly prepare for the CPAT, those are the recommendations that the trainers say, give yourself.