Our Founders Message

We encourage all department heads to inform all personnel as well as city senior staff and other department employees when you join the “Council”.

F.I.R.E. 

Facilitate – Inspire – Recruitment – Employees

America’s population has become increasingly diverse and continues to do so. So too have the communities that we are sworn to serve without regard to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. In fact, the combination of ethnic groups and women alone yields an overwhelmingly diverse population.

Critical Questions:

  • Does your fire agency mirror the increasingly diverse community that you serve?
  • Does your agency have a diversity mandate or initiative?
  • Does your agency have a comprehensive & long-term diversity recruitment plan?
  • Does the recruitment of qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds seem like finding a needle in a haystack?

Even fire agencies that are fully committed to realizing diversity face severe roadblocks.

Diversity is Challenging:

On the road to diversity, most fire departments face the following difficulties:

  • Resource limitations due to the inescapable and perpetual budget crunch.
  • Highly talented and motivated recruitment personnel that, unfortunately, are short on community outreach and target marketing experience.
  • Few available candidates due to the difficulty of extending diversity recruitment efforts beyond your traditional geographic boundaries.
  • An ongoing focus upon your next application event gets in the way of developing a longer-term, sustainable plan that keeps your diversity recruitment pipeline filled with quality candidates.

If you can relate to some or all of these issues, you are not alone in being diversity challenged. Nor are you alone in having viable solutions readily available.

Enhance Your Diversity Efforts, Immediately:

Joining the Firefighter Diversity Recruitment Council is something that your department can do, right now, to effectively address the challenges outlined above.

Formed by Firefighter’s ABCs, the FDRC is a collaborative forum of fire organizations and their HR recruitment teams. With a nation-wide membership of both large and small organizations, the FDRC’s mission is to achieve levels of diversity that more closely reflect the racial and gender make-up of served communities. And, to do so in a cost effective manner by:

  • Sharing “Best Practices” in the recruitment of diverse candidates.
  • Programs that more effectively target quality candidates.
  • Preparation tools that increase application & testing success rates.
  • Extending and deepening your diversity pipeline through personalized recruitment announcements to candidates subscribing to the National Recruit Database.

The annual fee of $125 – Membership Benefits Include:

  • “How-To” Diversity recruitment tips.
  • Free postings to the National Recruit Database to broadcast your recruitment events to a nation-wide pool of candidates.
  • Entry level and lateral job postings to the NRD and Council members .

D.R.I.V.E. Program

We encourage all FDRC members to take full advantage of the D.R.I.V.E. Program.

Diversity Recruitment Injects Valued Employees

In an effort to assist the Firefighter Diversity Recruitment Council members in their “Diversity” outreach programs we offer at no additional cost the D.R.I.V.E. Program.

The D.R.I.V.E. Program provides a means for your department to seed your candidate pool with a diverse population of candidates through partnerships with members of your communities.

We encourage you to partner with organizations such as, high schools, colleges, churches, fire related organizations, personnel within your department, diverse community organizations and others to distribute your “Free” National Recruit Database information.

After logging on as a FDRC member you can enroll an unlimited number of “Free” NRD subscriptions.

Departments are encouraged to display their FDRC membership banner on their web site with a link to www.FirefightersABCs.com.

Join the FDRC to accelerate your diversity initiative and to begin filling your recruitment pipeline with quality candidates.