If you want a successful career in the fire service, you need to be prepared to do more than just go to a few seminars and training events. Billy D. Hayes, the chief program officer for the National Center for Fire and Life Safety gives us some tips on how to build a career –and a future – in the fire service.
Among his top suggestions: Find a mentor, and that doesn’t even have to be someone in this field, he said. Also: learn! Learn who the advocacy groups are, learn latest tools and techniques. Then apply that learning.
Here’s a column he wrote on the subject.
And here’s an article on How to Succeed After Probation.
Fire Engineering article: Strategic Planning for Training and Professional Development
Trivia Question:
What New Hampshire community required all downtown structures to be built of brick after a fire destroyed all its downtown wooden buildings in 1813?
Answer:
All buildings in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire had to be made of brick after that fire destroyed the town center.