Why DO people come to us for help?

We’ve been running this site for over eight years now and at the risk of drifting into loud voiced sales-speak, we have helped ‘literally hundreds of people’! So who are they, and why do they come? We were curious, so took a look at our customer list from nearly a decade to find out more…

What sort of people come to us?

The firefighter hopefuls
A lot of people who want to become firefighters stumble upon our site, often because they have had an application rejected (or worse, simply never heard anything back) and were caught off guard. After all, you just need to be fit and keen and the jobs pretty much yours, right? At that stage they might look into it a bit further, and with dismay gather than there is quite a bit more to it than you might first think. That’s where we come in.

The management hopefuls
The rest of our customers are already in the Fire & Rescue Service and are looking to progress their career. it might be a similar story in some respects to the firefighter hopefuls; they dive head first into the promotion process without a second look and find themselves in hotter water than they first anticipated, and looking for a lifeline!

The ambitious careerists
Finally, we have an unexpected group of folk who sneak in under the radar. Senior managers who are looking to make some serious career moves, either into the upper echelons of the FRS hierarchy, or even out of it into the world of commerce and industry. These folk often have an eye on their pension and a desire to see how far they can go before they head for pastures new.

So how do we help them?
It can really vary. Some people need little direct help and are satisfied with buying a workbook and ploughing through it themselves to better their chances of success. Others are looking for help which is a bit more hands-on, which might be reviewing application forms or written work, interview practice over the phone or even mock role-play run-throughs. The most personalised help we provide is through one to one coaching, for promotion, skills development, or even help with figuring out general life direction and career next steps. This often works really well because the individuals are usually very committed to making changes happen. So we’re all on the same page!

Why do they come to us?
It’s hard to tell exactly! Maybe because we’ve been writing about the fire service and it’s weird and wonderful assessment/ recruitment activity for such a long time; maybe because of our link with fireservice.co.uk which appears top of pretty much any online search with ‘fire’ in the title; or maybe because we’ve been to so many fire services over the years to help out with different projects that people feel like they know us/ can trust us with the important task of supporting their career aspirations. We’ll never know. But what’s interesting, after a few quiet years of budget cuts and frozen recruitment, suddenly there is plenty going on again. And we look forward to helping you on your career path as much as we can!