TAKING CONTROL

A New Recruitment Campaign for ERCC Staff is in Progress

Following a successful and imaginative recruitment campaign for Fire ghter/ Paramedics at the end of 2022, Dublin Fire Brigade began another campaign to recruit new members to the East Region Communications Centre (ERCC) at the start of this year, with applications closing at the start of March.

e search for emergency services controllers tasked with handling re, rescue and emergency calls for Leinster, Cavan and Monaghan was once more heavily promoted on all social media platforms, with radio adverts, bus stop posters and billboards also prominent.

Message

As with the recruitment campaign for FF/Ps, the messaging was particularly eye-catching as DFB sought to underline to people that they may have the skills needed for such a career.

“It was very much in line with the message from the previous campaign,” Assistant Chief Fire O cer Greg O’Dwyer says. “Where we had used the slogan of ‘We need your strengths’ for the rst one, the ‘Made for the Brigade’ slogan showed the message that we are making people aware of what the job entails, and that they may have the skills and aptitude for it, that they may be ‘made for the Brigade’.

“But it was also important in this campaign to highlight a di erent aspect of working with Dublin Fire Brigade, and to highlight it as a possible entry point into DFB by becoming an Emergency Service Control Room member.”

Skills

e job speci cations looked for people with a good knowledge of the services provided by DFB and re services in Ireland, who have excellent communication and interpersonal skills, excellent organisational skills, hold a pro ciency in IT and have an ability to work as part of a team, but it was also important to be capable of taking instruction, following procedure and collating information.

“We need people who can process a lot of information rapidly, who can keep a clear head and stay calm, because obviously people who are calling might be having the worst hour of their lives,” A/C/F/O O’Dwyer says.

“You need to be able to calm people down, retain and record information accurately, and decide on the appropriate resources needed. We need people who can operate under pressure, who have a good eye for picking out the important details from a phonecall, and who can act accordingly. Also, because everything in the Control Room is procedure-driven, we need people who can follow these procedures and instructions well.”

In total, just under 1,000 people applied for the advertised positions, and as the campaign has only recently nished, the demographics of the applicants is not yet known, but A/C/F/O O’Dwyer is con dent that it attracted a diverse range of people.

“With the FF/P recruitment campaign, 20% of applicants were female, so we have witnessed a vast improvement in terms of diversity, and we would hope that this campaign goes along the same lines. We are following the same protocols to get that diversity into DFB,” he says.

Competition

Competition for places will be high as Dublin City Council’s HR department take candidates through the next steps that include an online aptitude test, followed by a supervised aptitude test, interview and medical examination. Following that, successful candidates will join a panel awaiting induction training, then on-the-job mentoring and ongoing training.

“We are looking for a smaller pool of candidates than we would have for FF/P recruitment,” A/C/F/O O’Dwyer says. “We need 40 or 50 new ERCC sta , and the most we can take on in a training class at any one time is ten, so ideally we would be looking to have our rst class started by the summer.

“Up to now, the vast majority of ERCC sta have gone on to become FF/Ps,” he tells me, “so there is an opportunity for them, if they complete four years of satisfactory service in the Control Room environment. ey can then go on to do the re ghter physical and medical exams, and if they pass those, can train to become re ghters.

“Either way, it is a very good position and we look forward to seeing the successful candidates join the DFB team.”