What Emergency Managers Wish They Knew Earlier
Part 3: Tips for New and Aspiring Emergency Managers
In the last of my three (3) LinkedIn posts on this topic, I asked my network of emergency managers what they wished they knew earlier in their careers.
Their responses helped paint a picture of what was needed for an emergency manager to have a successful start in their career and overcome common obstacles. Their feedback and my own experience are the direct inspiration for the following advice to new and aspiring emergency managers.
You can see the original post and exact responses here.
This is what I asked my network:
What do you know now, through on the job experience, that you wished you had been told, trained, or mentored on before?
Anything that would have made you better sooner, or helped you avoid costly mistakes/lessons
After collecting and reviewing all the responses there were six (6) categories that all of them seemed to fall within and each of those categories has lessons to be shared. Each section in this article will cover one of the following categories and should be viewed as a collective effort by participating emergency managers to contribute their lessons and observations in the spirit of preparing others and helping them address or foresee challenges earlier in their careers.
Job Titles & Duties
Business Skills
Interpersonal Skills
Professional Networking & Mentorship
Community Foundations
Leadership
Job Titles & Duties
One should understand the complete mess of job searching when it comes to the job titles and duties for those roles. Most likely every person who has searched for a job in emergency management or worked as an emergency manager will attest that there is no universal agreement on how job titles and their descriptions match up.
Public Sector
In the public sector, we find that most agencies have the same job titles for each level of authority but different duties. For instance, a job title from a government agency such as a Program Analyst/Coordinator/Manager has more to do with the pay grade of the role than the actual duties. The job description should tell you more about the actual duties of the role and if it is supposed to be in Mitigation, Preparedness, Response, or Recovery. An example is that the people in a given pay grade are officially titled “Program Coordinator” their working titles and duties will vary from CERT Coordinator, Exercise Specialist, Response Planner, Program Assistant, and so on.
Another important aspect of public sector work is that there is a vast difference in the work being done at the local, tribal, state, and federal levels. This highlights the need to talk to actual practitioners in the field at each of these levels to better understand what those roles do and the different challenges they experience.
Private Sector
The private sector experiences a different kind of disparity in that the job titles and pay grades show no uniformity yet can have the same job descriptions. A specialist can have the same pay and duties as a director-level and yet both will be considered entry-level. On the flip side, they can both expect 10 years of experience, or any combination of these examples.
I have found most often in my experience during interviews that the job description does not match up to the actual expectations of the role being hired for. They could be wholly over or understating the expectations needed to perform the job.
In my own experience, I have seen many job announcements that were clearly written by people with no concept of emergency management nor the training and certifications needed. This can be due to a number of reasons such as the hiring managers having no experience for the position being placed under them, and Human Resources copying and pasting other job announcements that seemed nice. The biggest factors should be laid at our own feet because of a lack of agreement on what constitutes the right education, and awareness of other education opportunities besides IS-100, 200, 700, & 800, or ICS 300 & 400.
For a more in-depth look at training opportunities and recommendations please take a look at this infographic I created, “FEMA Training Roadmap”, and read the accompanying article on LinkedIn, “FEMA Training Roadmap - Emergency Management Resource Guide”.
The lesson here is to do quality research on the jobs being applied for and talk to people on the teams or in the organizations. Your questions should be targeted not to impress others but to get a clear understanding of what is needed in the role and how you can be successful in it.
Business Skills
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Interpersonal Skills
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Professional Networking & Mentorship
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Community Foundations
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Leadership
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While writing this third and last article in the series of “Tips for New and Aspiring Emergency Managers” I decided the above sections each could use their own article to go more in-depth to those topics beyond what was provided by from the LinkedIn feedback. Because of this, you can expect more articles to be coming out so if you want to be notified of them in the future then hit the subscribe button below to be notified directly with new articles by myself and the rest of the contributors at the Emergency Management Network!