Fire Chief

If you were looking for a fire chief position today, could you get your job? Could you get it, that is, if you had to meet the advertised qualifications and experience?

In 1995 and again in 2000, Ronny Coleman described how many ads for fire chiefs looked like the town or city or county was looking to hire Superman. Have you looked at such ads today? Not much has changed.

I’m currently in the job search process, a journey that’s been aided considerably the wealth of information available on the Internet. Along the way, I’ve been amazed at the wide variety of ads I’ve seen posted on sites such as the IAFC, FIRE CHIEF Job Zone, and municipal sites like the North Carolina League of Municipalities. (Trust me, you can go crazy trying to keep up with more than three or four sites!) Some have very sketchy requirements or desired qualifications listed. Others have those Superman skills: Ph.D. in interpersonal and organizational dynamics, 29 years of experience ranging from supervision of personnel to negotiating peace in the Middle East.

So what’s my point? I think that how you advertise for the fire chief position needs to be part of the organizational succession plan. You want the organization that you’ve helped lead pass into good hands after you’re gone, don’t you? Well that’s not likely to happen if the job ads for your successor are:

A) so simplistic and vague that good candidates don’t bother to apply and bad ones do, or


B) the posted ad is so lengthy and daunting in scope that only psychopaths apply.

Another perspective that I’d like to offer is that it seems like many communities advertise nationally and spend taxpayers’ money — and staff resources, which is also taxpayers’ money — only to find the best candidate was right under their noses. If an organization has a succession plan in place, it would know what the status is of the internal talent, right? Wouldn’t that be more fiscally responsible than conducting a nationwide search and interview process, only to promote from within?

A fire service organization needs a succession plan for many reasons, one of which is to ensure that has the internal leadership to continue meeting its mission. The organizations that do that best are the ones that ensure continuity of leadership beginning at the top. So whether you promote from within or hire from outside, part of your succession plan needs to include accurate and realistic and necessary job competencies for every position in the organization, including the fire chief. Any advertisement for vacant positions, regardless of whether those ads are internal to the organization or outside, should draw upon those competencies as the stated requirements for prospective candidates.

Are you going to be part of the process to hire your successor? You should be. If you’re not, I would suggest that you begin that dialogue with your boss today. The future of your organization depends on it.