Will this picture help recruit new volunteers?

A new research survey is seeking the views of fire service volunteers to assess volunteer recruitment messages against how accurately they represent the volunteering experience.

The responses will be used to create a new recruitment messaging toolkit, currently being developed through the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s Enabling sustainable emergency volunteering project at Curtin University. The toolkit is designed to help volunteer leaders and recruitment officers in the fire services select recruitment messages (e.g. volunteer quotes, stories, photos) to include in their recruitment campaigns (e.g. brochures, advertisements, posters). This will help the messages and campaigns to:

• attract and appeal to potential volunteers
• accurately in represent the volunteering experience
• set the right expectations based on what the individual brigade and group can offer.

To help build this toolkit, current fire volunteers are needed to partake in a survey to help assess the attractiveness and accuracy of the volunteering experience that is depicted in a series of photographs of volunteers in action. We want volunteers to have a say in what photos best represent them as volunteers.

Participants will be asked to review the 40 photos of volunteers performing operational and non-operational activities that are intended to be used in the Toolkit and rate each photo on two factors: attractiveness (i.e. how attractive would this photo be to potential recruits?) and accuracy (i.e. how accurately does this photo represent your volunteering experience?). The survey will take approximately 10 to 15 minutes to complete.

By participating in this survey, the research team will be better positioned to design the recruitment messaging toolkit to best suit and represent fire services' volunteers, and the experience agencies could offer potential recruits. 

The survey is currently open and will be available for volunteers to participate until 14 May. 

Read more about the project and access the survey here.