After the application window closes, Fire and Rescue NSW moves fast. For the 2026 cycle, applications shut at the end of Friday 20 March 2026 and Stage 2 — the online assessment battery and the one-way video interview — ran the following week, Monday 23 March through Thursday 26 March. Four days, all done from home, all proctored. Most candidates who get this far have spent months building their physical base for the PAT in Stage 3 and almost no time at all preparing for Stage 2. That’s the wrong way round. Stage 2 is where the field gets cut hard, and unlike the PAT it rewards preparation that you can do entirely in the few weeks between application and assessment.
This post is a plain-English walk through what FRNSW’s Stage 2 actually contains, what each component is testing, and how to prepare without falling into the obvious traps. Everything below comes from material FRNSW publishes openly on its recruitment pages and from the candidate communications sent at Stage 2. Dates and the exact composition of the battery can change between cycles, so when you receive your invitation, read the version you are sent.
The shape of Stage 2
Stage 2 has two parts. The first is a cognitive and behavioural battery delivered on Criteria Corp’s testing platform. The second is a one-way recorded video interview. Both are sat from home, on your own device, with your webcam, microphone and screen actively monitored throughout.
The 2026 cycle is also the first where FRNSW has dropped the previous in-person verification test. Proctoring on the online battery is now the integrity backstop end-to-end, which means the technical set-up at home matters more than it used to.
The cognitive and behavioural battery
The published battery has three components.
The Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT) is a general aptitude test that mixes numerical, verbal and spatial reasoning. It runs roughly fifty questions in fifteen minutes. The pace is brutal by design — only a small fraction of candidates finish — and the test is normed assuming you won’t. Trying to grind through every question in order is the most common failure mode. Skip what’s costing you time, keep moving, come back if you can.
The Emotify test is a game-based emotional intelligence assessment. It asks you to read emotion in faces, voices and short scenarios. There isn’t a “right answer” in the traditional sense, but consistency across the items matters. The instinct to overthink — “what would a firefighter answer here?” — usually drags scores down. Read the cue, react, move on.
The Criteria Mechanical Reasoning Assessment (CMRA) is a short test, roughly eighteen questions in ten minutes, covering pulleys, levers, gears, fluids, and basic statics. It is the most learnable component of the battery for candidates without a trades background. A textbook chapter on simple machines plus fifty practice questions is high leverage; you can move ten percentile points in two evenings.
FRNSW provides direct links to free Criteria Corp practice tests inside the candidate communications. Take them seriously. The practice tests use the same interface and the same time pressure as the live ones, so the rehearsal value is not just academic — it includes the muscle memory of clicking the right answer, locking it in, and moving on without second-guessing.
Proctoring: the set-up that catches people out
All Stage 2 assessments are proctored. Your webcam, microphone and screen are monitored throughout, by AI behavioural analysis, by a live human reviewer, or both.
What proctoring flags, per FRNSW’s published guidance: eye-movement patterns suggesting you’re reading from off-screen notes, other people walking through the room, switching browser tabs or applications, unauthorised devices visible (phones, second monitors, smartwatches), background voices, and leaving the camera’s field of view.
The practical set-up that survives this list:
- A clean desk in a closed, quiet room. Lock the door. Tell people in the house what you are doing.
- Phone off and out of the room. Not on silent. Off, and somewhere else.
- One monitor only. Disconnect any second screen at the cable, not just by turning it off.
- Government-issued photo ID ready to show on camera at the start.
- Stable wired internet if possible. If you must use Wi-Fi, sit as close to the router as you can.
- The day before, do a Criteria Corp practice test on the same machine you’ll use for the live one, with your webcam and microphone enabled. Half of the technical problems candidates report happen on the day because the practice runs were done casually, on a different device, without testing the camera.
Being flagged does not automatically fail you, but it triggers manual review and significantly delays your result. Multiple flags or clear evidence of cheating is an immediate disqualification.
The one-way video interview
Alongside the cognitive battery, candidates record a one-way video interview. The platform shows you a question on screen, gives you a short prep window — typically thirty to sixty seconds — and then records your answer, usually capped at sixty to one hundred and twenty seconds. Depending on the platform’s settings that cycle, you get one or two attempts per question.
The questions FRNSW asks at Stage 2 are not technical. They probe motivation, values alignment with the FRNSW values of safety, integrity, respect, service and accountability, and behavioural examples from your past. Recurring areas from past cycles include:
- Why FRNSW specifically — not “why firefighter” in general.
- A time you worked effectively under pressure.
- A time you handled conflict inside a team.
- A time you had to learn something difficult quickly.
- What community service means to you in practice, not in slogan.
- What you actually understand the day-to-day role to involve.
What “good” looks like on camera
The recordings are reviewed against a structured rubric. Strong answers share a few common features.
They use STAR structure cleanly: one sentence of context, one sentence of what you needed to do, the bulk of the answer on the specific actions you took (not what “we” did as a team), and a result that includes both the outcome and what you took from it.
They are specific. “I work well in teams” scores poorly. “On a four-week construction project I noticed our second-year apprentice was being talked over in toolbox meetings, so I started cueing him in by name on questions I knew he could answer, and within two weeks he was contributing without prompting” scores well, because there is a concrete situation, a concrete action, and a concrete result.
They reference FRNSW values without sounding like the values page. Anyone can list “safety, integrity, respect, service and accountability”. The candidates who land it are the ones who pick a value and demonstrate it with a story, instead of name-checking all five in the abstract.
They speak to the actual role. Reviewers can tell within twenty seconds whether you’ve researched FRNSW or whether you’ve Googled “firefighter values” the night before. Mentioning real operational responsibilities — HAZMAT, road accident rescue, urban search and rescue, community fire safety education — signals you’ve done the work.
Practical preparation
Build a STAR bank of four to six stories before you sit down to record. Each story should flex across multiple capability areas — a single tough work week can answer questions on resilience, communication, judgement, or service-orientation depending on which strand you pull on.
Practise on camera. Not in your head, not in front of a mirror. Record yourself answering a question, watch it back, and notice the filler words, the fidgeting, the eye-line drift off the camera lens. Most candidates underestimate how distracting their own ums and ahs are until they watch the recording.
Dress as you would for an in-person panel. The reviewer’s first impression is visual, and a t-shirt in a darkened bedroom is information whether you mean it to be or not.
Set the camera at eye level, not below it. Looking down into a laptop camera is unflattering and reads as low confidence, regardless of what you’re saying.
Where Stage 2 sits in the bigger picture
Stage 2 isn’t the hardest stage of the FRNSW process. The PAT is. But Stage 2 is where most candidates quietly fail, because it is the stage they have done the least work on. Eight weeks of dedicated PAT prep is standard; eight hours of dedicated cognitive and video prep is rare. Closing that gap is a high-leverage move, and unlike physical preparation, you can do most of it in the week before you sit.
If you’re applying to FRV in Victoria in parallel, the FRV Written Selection Test post covers the equivalent cognitive screen there — including the three-attempt lifetime rule that doesn’t apply at FRNSW. If you’re in the ACT, the ACT Fire & Rescue College pathway post covers how the equivalent stages run inside the ESA-wide process.
When you’re ready, the free 15-minute readiness check will give you an honest read on where you currently stand against the published Stage 2 components — cognitive, behavioural and video — and which area to prioritise first. From there, the AI coach turns that read into a personalised preparation plan.