01-28-19 Health and Public Safety

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CITY OF SOUTH BEND I OFFICE OF THE CLERK implemented them in our department. One(1)of those things we found that every single successful department did was they had a committee of individuals within our own department that would help us go out and attract individuals in the community. In other words, it makes sense to have Latino fire fighters show up to a Cinco de Mayo event.Additionally,if I have an African American church that asks us to come and do some outreach, we send a couple of our African American fire fighters to take part in that event. Typically speaking,we have found that to work very well.We've increased the amount of community outreach we do. We created a position for an individual that works as a community outreach coordinator. Captain Gerard Ellis is on the news frequently but doesn't just do press releases. He actually goes out and has our public education officers and our recruitment committee go to job fairs and everything else. They go out and do those things. We attend local, regional and national recruitment events. Like I said, we attend job fairs but locally and regionally. We do outreach and try to get veterans. We had members of our recruitment committee go so far as to go down to Fort Campbell, Kentucky, because they had a huge job fair for veterans down there. We sent three (3) individuals to that but we ultimately had veterans from Fort Campbell come up and test in South Bend for our department. Chis Villaire in our HR Department was instrumental in helping us coordinate. He continued, Additionally, we've utilized social media to help spread our message. We have a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and I know some of you probably follow us. We have a lot of followers on Twitter. We collaborated with HR and piloted and implemented the electronic application and tracking system. One(1)of the most interesting things that was told to us by some potential millennial applicants is we used to use a twenty-two (22) page application for our department. So, there were multiple interns we had one (1) summer and we couldn't figure out why we weren't getting anybody to fill out the application. So, we put it in front of them and said we have really good paying jobs, good benefits, you work ten(10) days a month and you're a fire fighter. One (1) of them just looked at us and said `I would never fill out the application for your department because this tells me you guys are in the dark ages.' He flopped it down and that was that. So, that was a lesson learned. We went to an electronic application. As I had mentioned, the applicant tracking system has been fantastic for us. It also helps us collect data to help us focus on where we should be doing more of our recruiting events. We've also collaborated to create multi- agency job fairs to increase interest and attendance by potential applicants and candidates. He went on, The idea behind that was what we know to be true is when.Meijer builds a store, they build it across the street from Walmart. CVS builds across from Walgreens. McDonalds across the street from Burger King. It increases business. We could have a job fair with just our department and we may attract a smaller amount of people. But if we include multiple different public safety agencies and a larger job fair, it will have a broader appeal and would bring more people. We've done a couple of these job fairs. I would say we have empowered a couple other departments in adjoining counties to do them and we've attended them with them and they attended ours. They have been very successful. We intend to continue doing that. He continued, One (1) of the most important things we have done is adapting our workforce culture, internally, to make sure all our fire fighters recognize that every single one (1) of them is a recruiter. It doesn't matter if we, in fact, go out to a job fair where there are three hundred(300) applicants or it's one (1) recruiter making a single phone call to a specific candidate, every single person we reach out to is potentially one (1) of those phenomenal applicants. We take that very seriously. One(1)of the things we track is how applicants got encouraged to fill out an application. One(1) study done by the International Association of Fire Fighters showed that about eighty-five EXCELLENCE ACCOUNTABILITY INNOVATION INCLUSION EMPOWERMENT 455 County-City Building 227 W.Jefferson Bvld South Bend,Indiana 46601 p 574.235.9221 f574.235.9173 TTD574.235.5567 www.southbendin.gov 4