RESQ Your Career

A Framework for Planning and Evaluating Success

Nobody asks me for career advice. Lucky for everyone here, “giving unsolicited advice” is one of my key strengths and core competencies - whether you listen or not, that’s up to you.

I’m someone who likes to be prepared, though, so I think ahead and “game out” what-ifs, etc. - it’s a fun mental exercise and keeps me on this side of the verge of insanity [which side of that I’m speaking from, that’s also up to you!]. The other day, I dedicated some time to the “what if” of someone asking me about their career and planning it, or how someone in supervision/management could quickly encapsulate and evaluate someone else’s.

Thus was born the simple mnemonic: RESQ.

Reputation
Experience
Skills
Qualifications

Seems pretty self-explanatory right? Maybe, or maybe you’re going “wait, aren’t skills and qualifications the same thing?” Eh - not exactly. Not in this paradigm anyway.

How you use this tool depends on where you’re at in your career? If you’re at the top as a supervisor/manager and looking at resumes, you’d probably work top-down. In the middle or at the bottom, the “applicant” role instead of “hiring official”, you’re definitely starting at the ground floor (that’s Q by the way) and working your way up.

Let’s assume for the moment that you’re a bright-eyed bushy-tailed college student looking for that first or next seasonal fire job. Yes, this model is applicable to any career avenue, but it’s me here, so you know I’m going to look at things from the Wild perspective.

So we start with Q - Qualifications. These are the pieces of paper you collect throughout your life: diploma, degrees, Basic Fire School certs, your IQCS Master Record stuff. “You sat through X classes with a 70% or better score, and passed your final exam/field day/capstone/task book/etc.” That’s all it means, nothing more, nothing less. “Ground floor, get in the door” type stuff, pretty straightforward.

Skills - this is where things get a little more interesting. These can be things that “build on” to Quals, or just other factors of knowledge and ability that aren’t really captured by a piece of paper. These could be things like, “Master of master configurations in IROC” [Dispatch stuff], “Community Wildfire Protection Planning Powerhouse” [Prevention/Mitigation stuff], or even “me hit grond [or sweeng saw] gud!” [Hotshot stuff]. Skills are the “tangible intangibles” that put you one step ahead of the pack and help a potential employer decide you would fill a niche nicely on their crew.

Experience - most people here are probably thinking the standard Fed resume stuff:

McDonalds’, Inc | Lead Hamburglar | 10/2020-12/2022, full-time 40+ hours a week

Cue the “naw dawg” meme here:

Sure, for legal purposes, yes that’s what Fed (or State, local gov, or any other hiring officials) would consider “work experience”, but it’s just time. We all assume that the longer someone’s been doing something, the better they are at it. As a rule of thumb, that’s pretty “meh” and not particularly a great indicator of performance or ability - especially in fire and emergency services.
Andy Griffith might have “30 years experience” as the Sheriff of Mayberry, but he ain’t on the same level of LE experience, ability, or tactics as Sgt. Hondo, and we all know it.

“Ok wise dude, then what’s your definition?” Not just the amount of “time” you’ve been in a job, or using your “Qualifications and Skills”, but the number of things you’ve done with them, and the quality of the “reps”.

Take me for example. Your idea of my experience:

Supervisory Fire Prevention/Mitigation/Education Specialist | Malheur NF - Blue Mtn RD | 2/2016-2/2020

Ok and? Sure it meets the OPM standard for “demonstration of qualifying federal specialized work experience”, but, besides that, so what?

My version:

In 4 years on the Malheur, I led the re-formation of a dead and defunct Fire Prevention/Mit/Ed program, rebuilt the Grant-Harney Fire Prevention Co-Op, eventually bringing the extremely-hostile-to-Feds Grant County Sheriff’s Office into that mix as a cooperator, which culminated in a successful live-action Interagency Wildland Fire and Evacuation Exercise in a FireWise Community; built 4 FireWise Communities in areas with deeply-strained Federal-private relations, expanded fire learning programs from K-3 to K-12 and adult learners, with a focus on local Fire Ecology past 4th grade; and reduced public pushback and visible backlash against local Prescribed Fire projects and “resource benefit” strategies for Wildland Fire Management. I did that, AND reduced human wildfire starts by 50%, for 4 years, in a place where the public would just as soon shoot me in the face for wearing the FS shield.

That’s a whole different ball of experience vs the guy who had the same title and “experience”, but in an area that’s already wildfire-prepared, “loves Smokey”, and has great interagency partnerships and relationships already in-place. He might be “fully successful” on the Skatesville National Forest, but drop him in John Day, Oregon, and he’ll be hitting the door screaming the next time FireHire rolls around.

It’s like they say: if you want to learn suppression, get on a Shot crew for a few seasons. BONUS free career advice though: I’ll tell you right now, if you really want to “learn fire”, though, get on a Wildland Fire Mod, even for a season or two. Fire Mod Life, best life, and you’ll learn more about the fire environment and “how fire works” in one solid season with a WFM than you will in years of crew or engine time.

Reputation - this is the culmination of the previous three, like the pointy tip of Maslow’s pyramid. Thing is, it’s also the most personal, and can sometimes make or break you despite what the other three factors say about you.

Sure, now I’m “Mr Cool Fire Guy” [no, not really, not at all - I make light of myself as much if not more than I do others] who rubs elbows with Forest and State FMOs on up the food chain - but it wasn’t always this way.

In fact, in the beginning, it was quite the opposite.

See, I came to the FS as a direct hire into the Wildland Fire Apprenticeship Program… from being a “sleeper” (station-staffing) volunteer in a combination County FD. While I was in “ok” shape for a structure guy, I came to the FS in TERRIBLE shape for being a wildland firefighter.

That almost killed my career before it began. I immediately got an incredibly bad rep: “slow and fat”. If you know anything about wildland firefighting, you know that being “fat” is a cardinal sin. You can be lots of things in the wildland fire service: broke, dumb, or old for example… but you better never be FAT or LAZY. At least until you get to Division Chief [D/ZFMO for you non-R5 types] or Shot Sup, then you can be “all of the above” and still move up - sunk cost fallacy and all that.

Point being, it took a lot of work that first year to shed pounds and get in shape. By the time Advanced Academy rolled around about a year after my abysmal first days at Pinehurst Station, I was smack in the middle of the pack on 3 mile runs, cranked out 45 push-ups in a minute, and got 5 strict pull-ups during our first PT test - along with “most improved” in my class (Academy 46 in the old numbering convention) at the end of it all.

But! While the Academy staff and my classmates were impressed by the massive changes they saw, shedding that first negative impression back home on the Sequoia… that took years.

Building a truly positive rep took years more - and leaving the Sequoia.

“Ok so I can’t control what others think about me, so how do I build a good reputation?”

That formula’s pretty easy in theory, a little harder in practice, but perfectly doable:

• Seek out and volunteer for challenging assignments and learning opportunities (“quality ‘experience’”)

• Get in the DIRT - and stay there, even when it sucks

• Keep a long-term vision in mind and continue to work toward that goal - anyone in wildland fire knows how you get to the top of the mountain: one step at a time!

Note what’s missing from there that you might hear as “common wisdom”, things like: “always say yes”/”don’t ever say no”, “do whatever it takes”, or the unspoken hints at compromising your values or beliefs or “go with the flow” when the flow is heading toward the sewer drain. If you want to talk about the “hard part” of things, avoiding the temptation to become a “yes man/woman”, or compromising your beliefs and values, “going along to get along” when “along is wrong” - that’s the really truly hard part of this equation.

It can come with costs, and it can suck - but when you look in the mirror every morning, everybody else isn’t staring back at you - you are.