The Fire Captain interview is one of the most stressful events of a firefighter’s career. Our book covers over 80 fire captain interview questions from actual interviews across the country. These questions range from simple background and education questions to complex and dynamic scenarios. Our customers typically report that the vast majority of the questions (if not all of them) asked in their interview are covered in this book. It allows candidates to formulate answers to these difficult questions before the interview. They can then refine and perfect their answers. By the time the interview comes our candidates have excellent answers that can be presented in a calm and confident manner.
Nervousness is a huge contributor to poor performance in an interview. By having the questions in advance, candidates can prepare their answers and gain confidence. It is a huge step to eliminating nervousness. This is by far the most effective and efficient way to prepare for a successful fire captain interview. Below is a sample from our book. We have over 80 fire officer interview questions. We explain how to formulate your answers, what the panel is looking for, and how to articulate your answers.
Please tell the panel about your biggest strengths and weaknesses.
Key Points: Talking about your strengths is easy. Making your strengths stand out to the interview panel is harder. Everyone is a “hard-worker” and “good with people”. If you want to stand out to the panel, choose some more powerful descriptors of yourself. Don’t be afraid to talk about a weakness, but do it in a way that won’t harm yourself. You cannot walk into a Captain interview and tell the panel that supervising is a weakness. It’s also a bad idea to say that your weakness is, “that I work too hard”. The panel will respect the fact that you recognized a weakness, and worked to remedy it. First select a weakness that the panel can identify with, and one that isn’t detrimental to your chances. Next talk about how you have worked to “shore up” this weakness.
Example Answer: I have always been told by my Captains that one of my biggest strengths is my drive. I feel I am a very driven individual. I have the drive to constantly better myself, go above and beyond, and continually learn new things. I believe this trait has led me to be the firefighter that I am today. I feel that in order to be the best firefighter possible, you have to really evaluate your weaknesses. I felt that one of my weaknesses was experience at large scale incidents. My goal was to shore up this weakness, but because these incidents are rare, experience at them is hard to come by. In order to improve myself in this area I have attended classes on fire-ground leadership, seminars on incident reviews, and I have attended regional lectures on strategy and tactics. I will continue to seek out training opportunities like these because they are so helpful. We should all continually evaluate ourselves and our strengths and weaknesses. We are never too old to learn new skills and sharpen old ones.
