Fire-rescue and police force solutions

The challenge

The City of Miami is responsible for the wellbeing and safety of Miami’s residents and businesses.
In 1997, the city was in the process of revamping its public safety promotion processes and seeking to begin a partnership with an established testing consultancy firm capable of delivering fair and valid promotion assessments and with the experience to navigate and meet the city’s local, state and federal obligations.

The city needed examination support for two specific departments:

• The City of Miami Department of Fire-Rescue
• The City of Miami Police Department

Solution

The City of Miami began a productive professional relationship with Talogy Services in early 1998. Likely central in this decision was Talogy’s extensive experience working with federal agencies along with Talogy’s long history of innovative testing processes with police and fire agencies.

Since the start of the partnership, Talogy has been involved in nearly 40 promotional examination processes for a wide variety of roles within Miami City’s fire-rescue and police services, from promotions for the roles of Police Sergeant, Lieutenant, and Captain, to roles like Fire Lieutenant, Captain, and Chief Fire Officer. The promotional examination processes have often involved large applicant pools, with up to 400 potential candidates for each process.

Police promotion examinations

All police promotion examination processes to date were comprised of two broad components: Simulation exercises for all positions, plus a second written exam component which varied by rank:

• A scenario-based multiple-choice situational judgement test (e.g. Sergeant)
• An essay-style in-basket assessment (e.g. Lieutenant and Captain)

All processes included a candidate preparation guide and an orientation programme administered by Talogy, as well as candidate assessment feedback after the exam. Talogy has also been responsible for all assessor acquisitions for all exams involving simulations.

Fire-rescue promotion examinations

Over the years and across the ranks, the examinations for fire-rescue promotions have included technical knowledge tests, scenario-based work sample tests, written in-baskets, in-basket interviews and a variety of simulation exercises.

All processes have also included a candidate preparation guide and an orientation programme administered by Talogy. Talogy has also been responsible for all assessor acquisitions for all exams involving simulations.

Outcomes

Working with Talogy has resulted in several positive outcomes for the City of Miami. Not only have the nearly 40 promotion processes resulted in strong, successful job holders in a wide variety of ranks, but there has been nearly no litigation and no successful challenge to the Talogy administered testing processes administered to date.

The reliable results provided by the Talogy team for over 20 years have also meant that the city was able to negotiate multi-year, multi-exam contracts, saving the government significant time, effort, and cost.