Armed with a set of new recruiting techniques and clearly defined goals, the Urbana Fire Department set out this summer to perform the biannual task of filling its firefighter eligibility registry.

What Division Chief Tony Foster called a search for the “non-traditional candidate,” aimed at increasing the racial and gender diversity on the force, came to an end in early July.

Two weeks after the last firefighter test was administered to recruits, the department’s recruitment team is starting to see the fruits of their labors.

A series of open houses, as well as more-modernized efforts on MySpace and Facebook, drew an impressive response from the surrounding community.

A total of 426 people filled out applications, compared to “about 60” when Foster took the test himself in 1993.

“It worked the best for people in person,” Foster said, referring to the effectiveness of the department’s seven open houses. “The one bit of information that someone was able to tuck into their pocket and go back to their own PC at home or go to the library or whatever they did, and utilize that, that made them remember they talked to one of our firefighters.”

Such forms of “personal contact” and the Internet were the two most successful techniques in landing applicants.

As far as the department’s concerted efforts to attract the “non-traditional” candidate, a strong majority of applicants were white (77.9 percent), followed by blacks (16 percent) and Hispanics (3.1 percent).

There were 361 more male applicants than female.

Once the test scores are finalized, the top-30 candidates will return for interviews, giving the department a little more insight into just how successful the process was.

“We ‘put the butts in the seat,’ but now we have to hope that they passed and that everything worked,” Foster said.

Just how the recruiting team managed to fill those seats sparked the interest of other departments.

“I did have some calls from some suburbs of Chicago,” Foster said. “I talked several times with Evanston Fire Department, sent them our information on what we’re doing with Facebook and MySpace and so on, and then shared with them how things work.”

Now the process moves into what Foster called the “retention” stage, with “recruitment” already finished and “retirement” a long ways off.

“The cream of the crop will rise to the top of that test,” Foster said. “There’s no doubt about that at all. The group that we’re looking for will be in the top-30.”