Chief Leader – February 07, 2017
by BOB HENNELLY
This week, as part of a multi-media FDNY recruiting campaign, banners that depict the growing diversity of the department, with larger-than-life photos of active firefighters, will be hung outside every firehouse. The filing window for the Firefighter test will be from April 5-25.
Intent on Diversifying
The recruitment drive comes three years after the city settled a longstanding discrimination suit brought by the Vulcan Society, the department’s African-American fraternal organization, for $100 million. The agency also committed to a comprehensive overhaul of its hiring process.
The FDNY is also using radio ads, social media, and direct outreach in all five boroughs, including the canvassing of high schools and colleges. At a Fire Academy graduation last year, Commissioner Daniel Nigro highlighted the department’s efforts at diversification. “I also see many new faces in our department. Forty-one percent of our probies are people of color, and with five new women in this outstanding class, we continue to inrease the number of female firefighters, with more women serving in our ranks than ever before.” A decade ago, 90 percent of the firefighting force consisted of male whites.
“Our unprecedented $10-million recruitment campaign has already attracted more than 87,000 prospective candidates—including many women and people of color—two groups underrepresented in our ranks,” Commissioner Nigro said Feb. 6.
One of the four faces on the recruiting banner is Lieut. Andrew Brown, from Ladder 176 in Brownsville, Brooklyn. In a phone interview, he said the pitch he finds most effective at getting a young person’s attention covers both the salary and FDNY lifestyle all in a simple question: “How would you like to make over $90,000 a year working about 14, 15 days out of the month?” He said that automatically piques a potential recruit’s interest and that is “without telling them what I do or what this job entails.”
Mr. Brown was in the FDNY academy’s first class after 9/11. “I knew since I was 6 this is what I wanted to do,” he said. “I saw a Firefighter save someone out of a building and I told my mother that’s what I wanted to do, and she was hoping that I would change my mind at some point but I never did.”
His family moved from the West Indies when he was in the third grade and he grew up in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. When he told his family that he planned to sign up for the FDNY, they were apprehensive. “My family was cautiously nervous, especially since 9/11 happened,” he said.
‘Don’t Put Life on Hold’
The Lieutenant said he advises prospective recruits to be patient, because the hiring process can take years. “I encourage them to pursue other avenues while at the same time they go through the process of pursuing what can be a life-changing career,” he said. “It took me just under four years, and to a lot of guys in my firehouse, that was fast.”
Firefighter and Women’s Outreach Coordinator Jackie-Michelle Martinez is one of two women on the recruiting banner. For her, it was the chance encounter with a poster that depicted three female Firefighters when she was working as a product manager for a clothing retailer. In a phone interview, she said she thought the women were models. “I thought they were posing for a campaign, not real firefighters,” she said.
Ms. Martinez lived in Queens and moved to Nassau County. She said that the rotating nature of the job’s hours, and the ability to have days free, were major selling points for potential recruits. For her, it meant being able to help her family out after the death of her mother.
“It helped me a lot, especially when my mom passed two weeks after my niece was born. My mother would have helped my sister in that whole first-time-mom challenge,” she said. “I watched my firehouse do so many amazing things helping me through that process, as well as giving me the flexibility to help my sister as a brand-new mom. If I had worked a 9-to-5, I would not have been there. My firehouse was really my extended family.”
Slowly Gaining Numbers
When asked if the small number of women currently on the job discouraged her, she said she was confident more would be joining her soon. “We are a small percentage, with 58 strong women now, and hopefully in this academy class there are eight women,” she said. “We will get to 66 women and hopefully with this new campaign, we will be over 150 women…When I first came on, I was 29.”
Ms. Martinez says she knows first-hand what a difference a chance encounter with the right poster can make. “What this banner shows everybody in that community is that there are women on this job,” she said. “So when that little girl who is just walking to school by the local firehouse will see this poster” her parents can point and say “Yes, there are female firefighters.”
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