Few professions demand the cognitive agility, emotional steadiness, and moment-to-moment situational awareness required of a 9-1-1 telecommunicator. Yet, the tools used to evaluate these abilities during hiring have barely changed in decades. As the 9-1-1 staffing crisis deepens, one truth is becoming unavoidable: retention and wellness begin long before training starts...at the moment we determine whether someone is suited for the work.

This article explores how modern pre-hire assessments, rooted in psychological science and modeled after high-stress professions like air traffic control, can help agencies hire resilient, capable telecommunicators and strengthen the long-term health of the workforce. It also examines how AI-driven simulations, performance-under-stress measurement, and competency benchmarking can give agencies better insight into their future staff...before investing months of training time.

I. The National Staffing Picture: Why Hiring Matters More Than Ever

Across the United States, public safety telecommunicators are leaving the profession faster than agencies can replace them. According to APCO International’s 2024 Staffing Crisis in Emergency Communications report, vacancy rates average 25% nationwide, and many centers are operating with 20–40% understaffed shifts...forcing mandatory overtime and stretching teams thin.
(APCO International, 2024)

NENA’s 2023 Telecommunicator Workforce Report echoes similar concerns: turnover rates range 17–24% annually, and a significant portion of new hires leave within their first 12–18 months, most commonly due to stress, burnout, or difficulty adapting to the pace and cognitive load of the job.
(NENA, 2023)

These numbers underscore a central challenge:
We cannot train our way out of the staffing crisis unless we hire people who are equipped to withstand the cognitive and emotional realities of the role.

Agencies pour months into training programs...yet many candidates fail during CTO/FTO training or depart shortly after release, meaning the retention crisis is deeply tied to the hiring crisis.

II. What 9-1-1 Has in Common With Other High-Stress Professions

A. Air Traffic Control (ATC)

ATC is one of the closest analogues to 9-1-1 work: rapid information intake, multitasking, stress load, and razor-thin margins for error. The FAA requires rigorous psychological and cognitive assessments, including simulations designed to measure:

• Multitasking capacity
  
  
• Stress tolerance
  
  
• Speed vs. accuracy degradation
  
  
• Decision-making under pressure
  
  

These aren’t optional add-ons...they’re foundational. The aviation industry has decades of proof that resilience and stress performance correlate strongly with safety and long-term retention.

B. EMTs & Paramedics

EMS hiring screens for clinical competence, situational awareness, emotional regulation, and crisis judgment. Many programs incorporate stress-inoculation principles to evaluate how trainees respond to chaos before they ever touch a patient.

C. Military & Aviation

Across high-risk professions, simulation-based testing is standard. Candidates are assessed not simply on what they know, but on how they deteriorate under pressure, because the pattern of degradation is often more predictive than the baseline skill level.

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The Common Thread

9-1-1 is every bit as high-stakes as these fields...but the hiring pipeline has historically relied on:

• Typing tests
  
  
• Interviews
  
  
• Basic written exams
  
  
• Background checks
  
  

These evaluate eligibility, not resilience or cognitive fit.

III. Hiring as the First Step of Retention

NENA and APCO both identify poor job fit as one of the top reasons telecommunicators leave the profession early.
(NENA 2023 Workforce Report; APCO Staffing Crisis 2024)

What contributes to poor fit?

• Misunderstanding the emotional toll
  
  
• Underestimating multitasking intensity
  
  
• Inability to process trauma exposure
  
  
• Difficulty managing escalating information streams
  
  
• Poor stress tolerance during high-stakes calls
  
  
• Cognitive overload during multitasking
  
  

These factors often become visible within the first weeks of CTO training...but should have been screened for before hiring.

A modern hiring framework treats the assessment as a predictive tool, not an exclusionary barrier. It identifies the candidates who can thrive, and equally important, those who will likely struggle and suffer.

This is not gatekeeping; it’s workforce wellness and retention strategy.

IV. The New Paradigm: Pre-Hire Stress-Adaptive AI Simulations

Modern technology has enabled a new category of pre-hire assessment: interactive, adaptive, real-time simulations modeled on real 9-1-1 calls. These replicate real-world conditions in ways written tests never can.

A. Realistic, Branching Scenarios

Candidates take live, branching-call simulations in sequences of increasing stress and trauma:

• Simple parking complaint
• Injuries
• Assaults
• Caller in deep distress
• Highest stress-level calls
  
  

As calls escalate, stress increases. Candidates aren’t expected to know how to take the calls but are given on screen instructions of how to interact with the AI, simulating real emotion.

B. Measuring Degradation Under Stress

This is what high-stress domains like ATC have done for years:
How does performance degrade when stress levels rise?

Metrics can include:

• Processing speed
  
  
• Prioritization accuracy
  
  
• Data-entry accuracy
  
  
• Memory recall
  
  
• Emotional regulation signals
  
  
• Multitasking load tolerance
  
  

In other words, you’re not just assessing the candidate; you’re assessing the candidate under pressure.

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V. Benchmarking: Agency-Level and National Comparisons

Once performance is captured, the next step is benchmarking...comparing a candidate’s competencies to:

• Your agency’s telecommunicators, of all tenures
  
  
• National performance averages
  
  

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Although the 9-1-1 industry doesn’t yet have universal national benchmarks for telecommunicator hiring, there have been repeated calls for more standardized workforce development pathways and stronger pre-hire screening models.

Benchmarking allows agencies to:

• Identify likely resilient telecommunicators
  
  
• Spot lower competency areas before hiring and prepare training for those that move forward
  
  
• Build consistent hiring standards
  
  

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VI. Connecting Hiring to Training: The Full-Career Competency Model

The most forward-thinking approach sees hiring not as a filter but as the first input in a lifelong training pipeline.

A. Turning Pre-Hire Results Into a Training Roadmap

The competencies measured in simulations become the trainee’s early training plan:

• Areas needing reinforcement become Day 1 training priorities
  
  
• High competencies become early wins that build confidence
  
  
• Stress-response patterns inform coaching strategies
  
  
• Weaknesses can be addressed before they become crises
  
  

The result is a more personalized onboarding experience that protects the trainee and reduces CTO burnout.

B. Longitudinal Analysis: Understanding Why People Leave

By collecting performance data at:

• Pre-hire
  
  
• Early training
  
  
• Post-release
  
  
• Mid-career
  
  
• Late-career
  
  

Agencies can build a full-career competency curve, revealing patterns like:

• Roles or call types that trigger performance drop-offs
  
  
• Signs of cognitive fatigue or emotional overload
  
  
• Whether early stress indicators predict later burnout
  
  
• Skills that weaken over time and need reinforcement
  
  

This moves us from reactive wellness programs to predictive wellness strategies.

C. Better Hiring → Better Retention → Better Wellness

Every dollar spent on retention reduces:

• Mandatory overtime
  
  
• Training costs
  
  
• Lost productivity
  
  
• Staff burnout and turnover
  
  
• On-the-job injuries and mental health impacts
  
  

Hiring with precision protects the human beings doing this work...and strengthens the entire 9-1-1 system.

VII. Why This Matters Now

The 9-1-1 workforce crisis will not be solved through recruitment alone. Agencies must expand their pipelines, yes...but they must also ensure that the people entering the profession have the resilience, cognitive skills, and adaptability to thrive.

AI now makes it possible to do what ATC, aviation, and the military have done for decades:

• Predict stress tolerance
  
  
• Evaluate performance under pressure
  
  
• Benchmark competencies
  
  
• Identify teachability
  
  
• Personalize training
  
  
• Improve retention
  
  
• Strengthen wellness
  
  

The result is a healthier workforce, more stable staffing cycles, and a career path that supports the people who answer the worst moments of someone’s life.

VIII. Conclusion: The Future Telecommunicator Workforce Begins at Hiring

The future of 9-1-1 staffing will be defined not by how quickly agencies can fill seats, but by how they select the people who will thrive in them. Pre-hire assessments built on psychological science, real-world simulations, and objective benchmarking give agencies a clearer view of candidate potential and long-term resilience.

As high-stress professions have demonstrated for decades, selection predicts success. And in 9-1-1, where the stakes are immeasurably high, using science-driven hiring strategies is not a luxury...it’s a necessity.

If we want telecommunicators to remain healthy, confident, and committed to this work for years, then retention must begin at Day Zero.

Discover how CommsCoach HIRE helps agencies hire for resilience and readiness at: LEARN MORE

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