officer testing

[FVFD441]

Should there be officer testing in volunteer fire/EMS Departments?

Who do you feel about this?

[PRPGfirerescuetech]

I used to ride at a squad that required all junior officer positions to be applied for within the organization. Lieutenant, Captain.

Open exams were held for the available positions.

Highest score of the exam got the position...senior officers needed to hold junior officers positions first.

Not bad for a volunteer house. Seemed to work well...

PRPG

[Dustdevil]

Ideally, yes. The positions should go to the most qualified person. But there are other factors to consider.

In a lot of volunteer departments, nobody knows anything! Therefore, who becomes a lieutenant or captain is really irrelevant, since all members are at about the same point of professional development.

And if you are talking about administrative officers (president, secretary, etc...) then obviously fire and EMS knowledge would not necessarily be your top priorities in choosing. You would be more interested in the most organized and devoted person for the job.

[Tdillon193]

I definitely think officer positions should be filled based on objective testing, in volunteer or career organizations. Unfortunately, that isn't the case at the volunteer fire dept. where I'm at. It's a vote of the membership, which makes it more of a popularity issue than who's qualified to fill the position. The officer corps. has been talking lately of designing a testing process for future officer candidates, so hopefully that will happen. I think that's the case in more volunteer organizations than not, where it's a vote of the membership rather than a testing process.