Imagine your team is getting pushed – really stretched thin. 

You could say yes to more work for the team if only you had the hands to pull it off. 

You’d hire – but there’s a problem. 

Where do you find people? 

Working for competitors? 

Hiring away from competitors is a short-term fix for an industry-wide problem. We can’t keep robbing from other companies if we’re going to grow the industry. 

Surely you've seen it; we need to bring people into the industry. We are not bringing people in at the rate that the demand increases and people are retiring. The math isn't mathing. 
 
But there lies the bigger problem - where are the students? 

WHERE ARE THE STUDENTS? 
In our industry, we have very few fire protection programs. Few locations, few graduates. There are only so many high schoolers who know about the fire protection industry before choosing a program. 
 
Maybe we look to bring in a few interns each year. Maybe we look for a few new hires in the hope that they grow into meaningful leaders on the team. 

But, where do you find them? 

Go to a local college career fair? Make a strong pitch for a student to split from their degree and go into fire protection, and hire them on the spot? 

What are the true chances of that? One in a hundred? One in five hundred? 

At those rates, are you going to attend all nearby career fairs? 

No; small and midsize employers know we can’t be at 12 regional career fairs in the hope of bringing over, maybe, one college student. It's a lot of time to put out for the chance meeting with your unicorn student.

It’s a scale problem.

WHAT'S BEEN TRIED
What else do we try? Connect with local college professors? Guest lectures? Create a career social media account?
 
The problem is, these things have been tried. They can be great - but we're still very short on talent.
 
Huge companies have recruiting staff. Maybe they get in front of enough talent, maybe not.
 
But for everyone else, the problem is scale and connectivity.

We can’t be everywhere at once. And we can’t exhaust ourselves in the hope of maybe finding an interested student.

SCALE & CONNECTIVITY
We need, as an industry, to find students where they are. We need to advocate for the upside of this awesome industry. And, when that first spark is lit, we need to connect those students with our opportunities in a consistent way.
 
What does MeyerFire have to do with it?

We’re not hiring big dogs – but we are good at connecting people. Whether via forums, learning, or resources, we do online connectivity and scale in slightly new ways.

NEW: STUDENT CONNECTOR
The concept for our new Student Connector, which launches today, is to find students who have shown even a little interest in fire protection – wherever they are – and connect them with employers seeking that talent.

So what we’re introducing today is a simple way to bridge that gap.

It’s meeting a scale problem with scale.

Easy for students to signup, easy for organizations to share opportunities with the students.

​

Joe Meyer, PE | Fire Protection Engineer at MeyerFire
 
We’re a few weeks out from the P.E. Exam. I’ve been studying – not exactly as much as I would like, but I’ve been trying.

My scores aren’t exactly where I would want them to be. I don’t feel ready. Should I even take this exam?

THAT FEELING
If you’re taking the P.E. Exam (or have taken it), you know the feeling.

It feels like there’s a lot at stake.

Why? The exam is only once a year. It matters for my future career. For options, flexibility, pay, and recognition. Prep costs a lot. The exam itself isn’t free. I really don’t want to take it again.

As a college student, I didn’t know anything about fire protection.

I knew sprinkler systems existed. I knew fire alarms were loud. I knew how a fire drill worked. But as a career path? No idea that it was even an engineering discipline.

As it turns out, I wasn’t alone. Most college students don’t know about fire protection as a career.

Most don’t realize that it’s (1) in high demand, (2) well-paying, (3) technically challenging, and (4) is very meaningful work. Most people don’t plan to enter fire protection at all. Many fall into it and end up loving it.

SOMETHING DIFFERENT
I was studying architectural engineering at the time. Loved architecture. Loved construction. Was decent at math and science. Then one day in an intro-level class, I caught a guest lecture on fire protection engineering.

Seemed viable. Stable. Different. 

Perhaps most appealing was that it seemed like an industry where I could make an actual impact.

LANDING THAT FIRST INTERNSHIP
But, knowing about a field was one thing. Having that spark is great. But what’s that next step?

How do I actually land an internship or job? As a student, that’s not an obvious answer.

What companies actually do fire protection? Who hires interns? Are jobs even posted anywhere? Will calling 30 places actually go anywhere?

Many of the best opportunities don’t even show up online. As I know now, many smaller organizations – often the best places to learn – don’t have formal recruiting at all. So there ends up being this massive gap between being interested and landing that first opportunity.

HIRING COMPANIES EXIST
As I know now, companies are hiring. They’re looking for talent.

But - they can’t be at every career fair. They don’t always recruit consistently. Many don’t have the systems to find the students.

Both sides exist - they just don’t easily connect. There’s a massive disconnect.

Fire protection is a great field. Real demand. Real opportunity. Unfilled jobs. Long-term impact.

But the path to it isn’t obvious.

What seems like charting our own course is actually the most common path.

85% of fire protection designers and engineers in consulting firms didn’t have a fire protection degree going in. The industry is a melting pot of people from many different backgrounds.

THE STUDENT CONNECTOR
Being on the other side now, our fix is pretty simple. We’re calling it the Student Connector.

If you’re a student, and you’re even a little interested in fire protection, the industry wants to know!

Consultants, contractors and agencies often right in your neighborhood don’t know you exist.

How it works:
- You share a few details about yourself (school, degree, what you’re seeking)
- We make that visible to vetted fire protection organizations actively looking for talent
- Employers can see who’s interested – especially in their area
​

By Jocelyn Sarrantonio, PE | Technical Director at MeyerFire

If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have noticed that I’ve started taking my technical QA/QC job a little too seriously, pointing out errors in the AI slop that has now become the norm on the platform. You know the ones I’m talking about.

I can’t scroll by without trying to spot the errors.

Why bother? Why do I care so much?

​At first, it was just about accuracy. Someone on the internet was wrong! About something I know about! 

Now it’s become kind of a sick sport. I’m not on a crusade against AI. I certainly use it as a tool in my work life; AI is the best proofreader around! What bothers me is when AI slop is presented as helpful material, yet it’s riddled with errors.

What is that teaching anyone?
 
UNOBVIOUS ERROR
It should not come as news to anyone that AI struggles with accuracy.  I’m not proud to say I’ve gotten frustrated with a computer that gets commodity classification or nuanced (copyrighted) code interpretations wrong. Remember the “Will Smith eating spaghetti” videos that used to circulate as proof that AI wasn’t quite there yet? They were easy to laugh at because the mistakes were so obvious.

Now the errors aren’t so noticeable.

The hands have five fingers, the spaghetti looks real, and I find myself wondering if Will Smith recorded a video to troll us. The mistakes are getting much harder to spot. 

AI is not the villain; it’s just a tool that people use to present their ideas. People said the same things about Photoshop, the internet, and computers. I wasn’t around, but maybe they said the same thing about the typewriter! Tools are there to help the person wielding them.

But here is the point: we are our work. Our output reflects us.

When the materials are targeted to be basic or fundamental, the audience may only have a vague background of the content; they can’t simultaneously learn and error check.

So how do they know what’s accurate within an AI diagram, and what’s incorrect?

And when errors are pointed out, it really grates on me when the response is, “Ignore those details! Just take the main point.”  When people are learning something new, how are they supposed to know what’s correct and what’s AI hallucinations? The wrong conclusions may stick, and they’re just trying to learn!
 
CALLING IT OUT
This is not new, even though AI is.

I’m sure we have all sat through a presentation where it was clear the speaker wasn’t prepared, or a webinar where someone slipped up and said the wrong thing. If you’re sitting in that room, either in real life or virtually, how do you handle that?

Theoretically, the speaker would be receptive to constructive criticism in the right environment. Scrutiny makes content better. To me, it’s the same thing as commenting on AI slop, but is that really the best strategy?

Is that helping anyone?
 
WE ARE WHAT WE 𝚂̶𝙿̶𝙴̶𝚆̶  POST
Just like in engineering, when we affix an engineering seal to a drawing, set of calculations, or a report, it doesn’t mean we personally drew every line, or wrote every word, but it does mean we’re responsible for the output. And we are required to stand behind it once it’s out in the world.

There are formal processes for formal documents, like responding to permit comments and RFI’s. But informally, or when there are no processes, we still have to stand behind our work. Whether it’s stamped or posted, we own what we put into the world. It reflects us.

I won’t equate an infographic with an engineering report, but if you post it, share it, or stamp it, it’s yours. You can’t blame ChatGPT any more than you’d blame a drafter or an intern. And it’s also respectful of your audience’s time. If it’s truly not worth your time to put together, why should we expect someone else’s time to read it? If you’re willing to put your name on it, you’re responsible for it. Whether you typed it or prompted it.
 
DEALING WITH IMPERFECTION
Now, I’m not perfect. We’re not perfect. None of us is. Mistakes are an assumed part of the process, that’s why there are built-in checks and layers to construction. Because this stuff is that important. We’re dealing with life safety, and often of an unaware public.

And I assure you, we at MeyerFire certainly make mistakes too. Turns out it’s really hard to produce mistake-free content, no matter how many eyes are put on it. And we truly (truly truly) appreciate the superfans who challenge us when something isn’t correct, so we can fix it for the next learner.

At the time of this writing, we have six outstanding PE practice questions and two videos that need correction on our site.

As engineers, we won’t hit perfection, but responding to mistakes says a lot about how we operate. Just ask my 11-year-old daughter, who gave me the death stare when she was rehearsing her upcoming presentation, and I pointed out that Italy actually uses Euros instead of dollars. Or my husband, who is probably sick of me reviewing his materials. Or me! Who has definitely flubbed a few lines in recordings for my courses.

TAKING THE HIT
So often in the consulting culture, we’ll say we don’t have time for QA/QC or time to train the new hires, we’re barely keeping up with our workload. Quality work takes time, and we all know there’s a noticeable difference in our work when we’re prepared versus when we’re unprepared. But scrutiny makes content better. Ultimately, I’d rather take a friendly edit from my peers, my family, or my boss than a comment from a stranger. But I have to be ready for both if I’m truly owning my output.

​I would often tell my team that when you’re reviewing a submittal, you can tell a lot by how the information is presented. The same goes for a set of drawings. If you see mistakes on the small stuff or very obvious errors, you start peeling back the layers and find mistakes everywhere. On the other hand, if you can tell someone took pride and care with how the information is presented, that likely follows through with the care and attention taken with the technical aspects, not just the visuals.  
 
HOW TO ADDRESS IT?

So, what is the correct way to call out errors?

We know how to do it with permit submittals or submittal reviews, but how would you address an error in an in-person training? What about a webinar? And bad AI on LinkedIn? Is it a public correction or a private message? Or, silence.

Does it even matter? When we work in life safety, I think it does. I’ll stand on that hill.

We are our work output. And it’s important to stand behind our work, whatever it is. Especially in construction and life safety, the details matter, and affixing our engineering stamp to work means a high level of professional accountability.

If you’re willing to put your name on it, it’s your responsibility. AI doesn’t change any of that, it’s just made it easier to forget.