“It really is true that no two days are the same when you work in the Fire Service. we never know what kind of emergency we will be attending until the bells ring at the station."
Matt Brand, 45, is a Crew Commander currently working within the National Operational Guidance Implementation Team. Matt started his career with Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service in 2017 and spent four years working at Rugby Station. Matt previously worked in the hospitality and catering industry and was considering a change in career. A friend suggested he consider applying for a Firefighter role, and after some deliberation he took the plunge and applied.
His application was successful at the initial stage and he began the recruitment process in April 2017, joining a cohort of prospective Fire Fighters passing through the different testing stages. There was a camaraderie among the applicants, and he would hear from others sharing their experiences of the different stages.
Matt found the interview stage of the recruitment process to be a little daunting, as he had previously run his own company and, as a result, he hadn’t participated in an interview for over 10 years. However, he did find that having had a career before joining WFRS, he had a lot of life and work experience to draw upon that helped him through this stage.
His hard work during the recruitment process paid off as he successfully completed all the stages and was enrolled onto the new recruits’ course in September 2017. He still works alongside many of the people he went through the recruitment process with as they share their career journey.
Since joining WFRS, Matt has continued to develop his skills, and has become qualified as a Boat Operator as well as Large Animal Rescue Level 2, and also completed his blue light driver training. More recently, he has completed his Level 1 Incident Commanders qualification and started on his Assessors course.
Matt was successful at the promotion board process in 2021 and became a Crew Commander in February 2022, changing to a role in which he is involved in developing Operational Guidance for the Service and assisting the Training department with course delivery and assessments. Matt says he enjoys the variety of his role, as it allows him to not only work on developing guidance for Firefighters, but he is also able to be operational and crew the appliances as well.
Matt thinks that anyone interested in applying for WFRS should have the confidence to do so as it takes all types of people to run the Service and they are not looking for a specific type of person. He thinks that sometimes the first barrier to a person
applying is in their mind, as he demonstrates, you are never too old or long in the tooth to learn new skills.