FRS leadership qualities

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service
Chief Fire Officer Recruitment

February 2025

In February 2025, Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service partnered with VCA to support the recruitment of their new Chief Fire Officer (CFO), ensuring a thorough and structured assessment process for senior leadership selection.

The service required a fair, evidence-based process to evaluate leadership capability at the highest level, providing the Fire Service with objective insight to make a confident appointment.

VCA delivered a comprehensive assessment programme for four CFO candidates, using structured exercises, including a CPG case study and role-play, to evaluate strategic leadership, decision-making, and organisational impact. A core component was the Executive Hire Profile (EHP), which provided an objective assessment of each candidate’s psychological make-up, strengths, potential derailers, and suitability for the role, team, and organisational culture. Candidates completed online aptitude and personality assessments, including the Leadership Judgement Indicator, Wave Professional Styles, and Hogan Development Survey, followed by validation interviews with a leadership psychologist. . Insights from the EHP, together with performance in the assessment exercises, informed recommendations and executive summaries to support the final interview and appointment process. Other internal exercises, including media and stakeholder-focused tasks, were conducted by the Fire and Rescue Service, alongside panel interviews supported by one of VCA’s external occupational psychologists who provided independent input, supported structured scoring and fair assessment, and helped ensure objective, consistent decision-making against the agreed selection criteria.

The process contributed to the appointment of Sabrina Cohen-Hatton as Hampshire FRS’s new Chief Fire Officer. Feedback from the service highlighted the value of the assessment reports in supporting a well-informed decision.

Service Feedback
Molly Rowland, Director of People and Organisational Development, Hampshire FRS, said:

“The Fire Authority members who made the appointment and conducted the final interviews were very impressed with the various reports you had produced and the insight that it provided them about the candidates… They felt very reassured that they knew the candidates as well as they possibly could and were more confident that they were making a good decision in respect of the future leader of HIWFRS.”

Candidate Feedback:

It was reasonable. It is clearly designed to challenge the candidate with processing a lot of information and quickly establishing a strategy.

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If you’d like to learn more about how VCA can help your organisation assess, develop, and retain talent, get in touch:

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