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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK <br /> out of the fifty-seven (57) individuals we've hired since then, which amounts to fourteen percent <br /> (14%). That gets us close to that seventeen percent (17%) threshold. <br /> He continued, I will tell you, I still feel like seventeen percent (17%) is low. I did present to the <br /> Council that I went up to Madison, Wisconsin and Lansing, Michigan and discussed things with <br /> their departments. They both had tremendous success in diversifying their departments,both with <br /> minority and female firefighters. We are trying to use the models that those two (2) departments <br /> have instituted in order to attract more women and minority fire fighters to our department. <br /> Another demographic we look towards hiring are veterans. Fire Service has a tremendous number <br /> of veterans. The military service correlates very well to the Fire Service. Sixteen percent(16%)of <br /> our department hired between 1991 and 2011 were veterans. However, between 2011 and 2018 <br /> we've focused on veterans. Out of those fifty-seven we've hired, we've hired eighteen percent <br /> (18%)veterans. <br /> He went on, Our current hiring list currently only has sixty-two (62) individuals on it. There are a <br /> lot of reasons for this. One(1) is the rebound of the economy. There are fewer individuals that are <br /> applying.Although I will say we are using the applicant tracking system that HR instituted a couple <br /> years back and we still have a tremendous amount of people touching our application. In fact,over <br /> the last two (2) application processes, we had in excess of 1,000 people touching our application. <br /> All of the individuals that took our written test, there were about two hundred (200). Then <br /> ultimately through the physical agility test and the interviews,people were either weeded out,they <br /> didn't pass, or they didn't show up. Those individuals washed out of the process. So currently,the <br /> hiring list only has sixty-two (62) individuals. We didn't anticipate making huge hires this year or <br /> next year,so we are not terribly worried about the total number of individuals,but I wanted to look <br /> at the breakdowns of this current hiring list. <br /> He continued,We do not have any women on this list which is something I'm upset about. We did <br /> have a young lady that got through our whole process, but Mishawaka Fire got to her before we <br /> did to offer her a job and she took the job. As far as minority applicants go, out of that sixty-two <br /> (62), ten percent (10%) or six (6) individuals are African American. Seven (7) are Hispanic and <br /> we have one (1) Asian American on the list. Out of the total, twenty-three percent (23%) of this <br /> list is minority. We feel we did ok as far as minority applicants go. We did better than we have in <br /> the past percentage-wise. However, again, as far as female applicants go,we didn't have the same <br /> success. As far as veterans go, one (1) of the issues we have in counting our veterans with the <br /> applicant tracking system is we give bonus points, per State law, to individuals who served in a <br /> combat zone but not necessarily every single veteran has. So, we do know the number of <br /> individuals on the list that qualify for the combat zone duty, but we don't have the total numbers <br /> as far as total veterans. However, we did start a recruit academy at the beginning of this month and <br /> we had two (2) individuals who did not serve in the combat zone and one (1) that did serve in a <br /> combat zone. So, of the individuals we know that served in the military, we know five to eight <br /> percent(5% - 8%) of them served in a combat zone. <br /> He went on, I just want to talk about, really quickly, the different things we've done and have <br /> focused on in order for us to be able to target diverse areas with our outreach. First (1St) of all,we <br /> had to figure out why in the world it was that we were not attracting diverse applicants within our <br /> department. So, in 2012, we did a lot of research. We did research through other studies that have <br /> been done by different organizations. We went to other departments who have had success in <br /> diversity recruitment. We took some of those known ways to help diversify the department and we <br /> EXCELLENCE j ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT <br /> 455 County-City Building 227W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f 574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov <br /> 3 <br />