Panel Interview Questions Flashcards
Tell us about yourself, how did you end up here?
- Keep answer light and topical
- Hobbies and interests. Link these to the successful profile.
- Team sport, outdoors, active lifestyle.
- Take pride being in the best physical shape possible
- Found through work that you love team environments and love helping the community.
- Recently lost my business
- Family members that are firefighters
There is one spot left in the school, tell us why you deserve it?
This is a pretty hard question to answer.. To me everyone who has come this far has shown that they have the technical skills and right personality and fitness for the job. So it’s pretty hard to answer. I can always retouch on the fact that the key values of a fire fighter are inherent in my personality, that I practice the competencies daily or that I believe I have great people skills but I think it’s more important to talk about the satisfaction and purpose I feel from helping the community and the love I have for working in team environments being the driving factors for wanting to become a firefighter. I believe that due to these driving factors I will have an unwavered commitment to all aspects of the organisation from the start of my career through to retirement. Those driving factors give me the motivation and discipline to be best candidate possible.
I don’t want to sound like I am getting ahead of myself but being the highly motivated individual that I am, once I get to a senior firefighter rank I believe that I would look to further develop myself down a different pathway such as USAR, Hazmat, Instructor or even a senior role once appropriate.
To top all of this off, having a really close relationship my uncle that has been a firefighter for 30+ years I think that I have a great understanding of the role and what I am in for. I have been made aware of the traumatic experiences, the physical stresses and the long periods of downtime.
Proudest moment of your career and why?
The proudest moment of my career was the first event I ever did for the Kai Eardly fund. Unfortunately 5 years ago a good friend of mine lost his battle with depression. Shortly after this his mother set up a charity called the Kai Fella fund. Its a non for profit that raises money for mens mental health and suicide prevention, they pay for tomorrow men to go to local WA classrooms and chat to students in a intimate environment about mental health and supporting their friends.
Once I had my events business up and running I spoke to my partners about doing a non for profit event where would donate all money raised to the Kai Fella fund, they all agreed that it was a good idea and they were happy for me to commit my time to it.
I lead the event and worked closely with Kai Fella fund to make sure we included everything they wanted to and ended up running a really successful that raised $7,000+ I realised internally through that whole process that not one moment of it felt like ‘work’ I enjoyed every step of the way and have never been more proud of what myself and my team had achieved. The feeling of finally giving back to the community and off my own back was sensational. It lit a flame that led us to working with the charity a few more times over the course of my events business being alive and also lead to a flow on effect where I noticed some of my other friends doing things in their own fields to help raise funds for the charity in which I always stood into help with.
Why do you want to be a firefighter?
Thrive of working in a team environment and have a love for helping the community. Always strive to push myself and stay in the best shape as possible.
What has been the lowest point of your working career?
- Losing business to covid
- Learnt what
What can you tell us about DFES
DFES is West Australian organization that has the responsibility of managing and responding to a wide range of emergency situations and to work with the community to increase shared responsibility related to prevention and mitigation of hazardous risks.
The organization has 1600 staff members and over 26000 volunteers. These volunteers stretch over a range of different services such as state emergency services (SES), bushfire brigade and volunteer marine rescue.
DFES also specialises in a range of different areas, which have different pathways for senior firefighters to follow, these include urban search and rescue, air ops, hazmat, Rescue, fire investigation, instructor.
What does a firefighter do?
Respond to emergency situations as a team member and educate and safeguard the community.
Responding to emergency situations can consist of but not limited to fire response, hazmat and rescue (car accidents, industrial accidents, etc)
Educate and safeguarding the community can consist of but not limited to building inspections, education of year 3 students and fire awareness campaigns.
Firefighters work a 10/14 roster over an 8 day cycle, their usual day looks something like
DAY SHIFT
0800 - Muster (Station officer will assign a role, give brief on the day)
- Machine check
0830 - PT & morning tea
1000 - Specific checks and drills associated with checks
1200 - Lunch
1300 - Building inspections, community engagement, service hydrants
1600 - FDP (firefighter development program) theory or PT
NIGHT SHIFT 1800 - Muster Machine check 1830 - Firefighter development plan theory / drill Meals Potentially gym. 2200 - Stand down.
If your senior officer told you to do something illegal, what would you do?
What qualities do you feel a successful firefighter should have? How does this align with your personal principles, beliefs and values?
What do you think of female firefighters and how do you think you would go working with female firefighters?
What have you done in the last two years to prepare yourself for the role of a firefighter?
How would you deal with an angry citizen
How do you deal with two team mates arguing?
What would you do if you were misunderstood by a senior or team mate?
What would you do if your colleague was acting stressed at work?
