Epress.am News from Armenia
Glendale fire officials plan to develop a recruitment strategy to diversify their ranks and make it easier for existing personnel to be promoted from within and stay with the agency, reports the Glendale News-Presse.
As part of the five-year strategic plan, officials will create a recruitment committee to identify the city’s demographics and develop methods for hiring applicants who reflect those ethnic categories.
“We understand the challenges that we face with recruitment,” Fire Chief Harold Scoggins said recently at a City Hall budget session meeting. “We know the community is paying attention to it.”
Member of Glendale City Council Rafi Manoukian raised concerns at the meeting about the department’s recruitment process, saying former Glendale Fire Chief Christopher Gray had assured him 10 years ago that recruitment efforts would generate more Armenian-American firefighters to reflect the local community.
“Ten years later, the result is zero,” Manoukian said. “Nothing is there.”
But Scoggins said the department has made progress, recruiting one woman and four Armenian-American firefighters within the last decade.
And about 40% of the hires were from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, including African, Armenian and Korean Americans, Scoggins said.
“I think the programs are yielding results,” he said. “But they are not just yielding results for Armenian Americans; they are yielding results from a number of different backgrounds.”
The recruitment strategy is one of eight goals identified in the department’s strategic plan.