hvallance

Should we lower the 63% pass mark for Fire Service promotional assessments? Drawing on years of assessment data and more than 25 years of experience supporting leadership development, this article explains why the current threshold remains the right standard. It explores the evidence behind the benchmark, the importance of national consistency, and why investing in candidate development is a better solution than reducing expectations.

Strong communication is an important leadership skill, but is it enough to identify the best managers? This article explores why interviews and presentations often assess what candidates know rather than how they behave, and why job simulation exercises provide richer, more reliable evidence for leadership and promotion decisions.

Presentation and briefing exercises remain a popular part of Fire and Rescue Service selection processes, but what do they actually assess? This article explores what these exercises can and can't reliably evaluate, and why understanding the difference is essential when assessing leadership capability.

AI is transforming the way organisations approach content creation, but does that extend to designing promotion and selection exercises? While AI can quickly generate scenarios and assessment materials, effective exercise design requires far more than well-structured text. It demands an understanding of human behaviour, psychology and the subtle prompts that reveal leadership potential. This article explores where AI can support the process—and why human expertise is still critical for creating valid, reliable assessments.

When budgets get tight, Fire & Rescue Services often bring assessment design in-house. On the surface, it looks like a smart saving—especially with AI now able to generate realistic scenarios in seconds. But creating something that looks right isn’t the same as creating something that works. Well-designed assessments are carefully built to measure specific behaviours in a fair, consistent, and meaningful way. Without that precision, decisions become less reliable—opening the door to bias, grievances, and ultimately the wrong people in the wrong roles. What seems like a cost saving can quickly become a much bigger organisational risk.

Fire & Rescue Services using VCA’s Career Progression Gateway are already developing leaders in line with the NFCC’s 2026 Leadership Framework. From psychological safety and wellbeing to innovation, community impact and systems leadership, VCA’s assessments, feedback and workshops embed the behaviours the sector now expects.