A Career in a Year

About the Program

Category: Personnel Management, Employment and Training (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

Wake County Fire tax district is made up of 17 contracted fire departments. The staffing demographics were 94% white males: higher than the national average of 80%. The workforce was not representative of the County’s 43% diverse citizenry. The lack of diversity presented several challenges for the agencies to include difficulty in recruitment and retention and limited cultural competence to better serve citizens. Lack of diversity and hiring challenges are historic to careers in fire services across the nation. One of the largest barriers to minority entrants was the nine-month unpaid academy. Wake learned that most minorities lack support and are unable to participate in an unpaid academy. Fire Chiefs attempts to diversify their hiring yielded little to no results. All stakeholders were unified in the goal to “Make it Better.” In collaboration with the Fire Services Director, Municipal Fire Chiefs, Wake Tech Community College (Wake Tech), Human Resources launched a successful Career in a Year campaign which included paying academy participants and focused diversity campaigns. The program yielded an unprecedented applicant response with a historic 45% diversity. In addition, the academy program redesign resulted in a historic 88% pass rate for EMT certification.