The "I" Generation

By: Garrett Rice

from www.fireservicewarrior.com

 

I recently sat on our department’s interview board for first-round interviews.  I have done this before in past years, but this year I wanted to see if what I have been hearing about our “New Guys” is correct.  This would be an experiment to see whether or not the iGeneration, or whatever you want to call it, truly existed, and whether or not “OUR” fire service as we know it would, and will, continue on in the traditions that we have all come to love.
First, this is a hard task.  If we are like you, then your interviews are very structured.  For legality sake we have to ask all the same questions to all the candidates, but now realizing that this sets up our candidates up for very “canned” answers.  Stealing questions, chain of command questions, and integrity questions don’t have a lot of wiggle room.  They either get them right or don’t.  The open ended questions are what really matter.  We find out more about a person through these than anything else. 

We ask, “How did you arrive at wanting a career in the fire service?” The funny thing about that question is that it is different for everyone.  We get, “I’ve always wanted to ride the big red truck” (thank you for that) to very detailed stories of themselves that show us what type of guy or gal were hiring.  That question made me think about my story.  How did I arrive at wanting a career in the fire service?  That’s a question that needs to be asked from time to time to remind ourselves why we are here.  Do you remember being asked that, and how was your answer different then as it is now?

Our first candidate was older.  A lot of our candidates are looking at this career as a second lease on life.  His story was no different.  He had made a career change after coming home from a job that didn’t give him satisfaction.  His family noticed that he wasn’t fulfilled and an uncle suggested that he seek out a career that would fix that need.  His uncle happened to be a fireman and helped him through the difficult process of college and school all while having to maintain his family’s current life.  I felt and knew this guy would appreciate a job.  He has been somewhere.  He understands how good we really have it.  He isn’t going to bitch about working in the dead of summer in Texas.  He isn’t going to bitch about taking those extra steps and putting attention to detail to everything he does.  The problem with this candidate was that he set me up to feel as though we are never going to get that out of our iGeneration.  Was it possible? 

We sat through many more interviews of younger guys that led me to believe that what the guys have been saying is right.  Let’s call them the “Forgettables.”  They have middle-of-the-road stories and answers that we have heard all day long.  These kids don’t get it.  They don’t have life experience.  Their biggest disappointment was not getting selected for the Bachelorette, or The Real World… but I digress.

Towards the end of the day we had this kid with a different name.  Curious about the origin of his name we asked where he got his name from.  That one question opened this kid up to explain something we may have missed.  See, he got his name from his country of origin.  However it really didn’t match his last name.  He told us later that he and his two siblings were adopted from his country of origin at age 10.  Later in the interview he told us that he was in the U.S. military.  In fact, all of his adopted brothers and sisters were in the military.  They felt that for this gift of freedom and a second chance on life that they owed something to this country.  If you’re getting choked up, then you are like me.  Owed something to this country? That doesn’t seem like the iGeneration.  He had arrived at the fire service as a career because his military career has moved into reserve status and he felt that the “camaraderie” and the “brotherhood” could be continued in our profession.

My hope now is that we don’t let him down.  My hope is that everything he perceived and thought the fire service is meets his expectations, not the other way around.  I hope that I can live up to his standards because, honestly, they are high.  Isn’t that what we are looking for?  Isn’t that what we have complained about? Not getting it?

Standing up at the end of the interview, I firmly shook his hand and thanked him and his family for their service to our county.  Our military are my heroes.  I was moved.  This one candidate has erased every comment about this generation or that generation.  The fact of the matter is that every generation has said those same things about the younger generation at one time.  We are still attracting the right people, be it older for a second career or younger for their very first career.  Setting the good example, not letting our people down, explaining the “why” of what we do and continuing to keep them educated and motivated to one day take our place is the real challenge.  The challenge is on us, not on them.