Starting a career.

[bibby19]

I was thinking about going to Fire Science school in Laconia,NH, but i know Firefighting is a very competitive career. How difficult is it to find a decent job once you have completed all of your prerequisites?

[doughesson]

It all depends on if the departments that you apply to are hiring.It boils down to"Don't quit your day job yet"as you might wait for years while the earlier applicants are hired or passed over,or you might get called in within a week or two.
Have you considered going volunteer to gain experience until you do get on a paid department,if that's your goal?

[bibby19]

I actually am on a volunteer dept. I am also considering doing firefighter I pretty soon. I think it will help me out in the long run.

[Swinny13]

Hi Bibby19,

The fire service can be very difficult to get in to, depending on where you live, but if you get hired it can be a very rewarding and downright fun profession to be in. It's hard work to get hired, but almost everyone I know who has ever put 100% in to getting hired and has never given up, has eventually got hired somewhere (it took a couple of them almost 10 years, but they still got on).

Out here on the west coast, where I live, one of the best ways to get hired in the fire service is to become a paramedic first. In my state, many fire departments have been hiring only paramedics the last few years. In addition, you'll face much less competition in entry level paramedic tests. I only ever took one entry level "all comers" test, there were 20 positions available and 2,000 people applied. When I got out of paramedic school, I suddenly found myself competing against 30 people for 10 positions, and 10 people for 2 positions. I was hired within 2 months of graduating paramedic school. This approach comes with a couple caveats, however. First, most states require you to be, at minimum, a basic EMT for at least 1 year before applying for paramedic school. You may also be required to have affiliation with a volunteer fire department or a private ambulance service. Entry into paramedic school can be competitive as well, my program had 25 spots available and over 150 people apply.

The last caveat is my own, before you try such an approach, make sure being a paramedic is something you want to do. Since most people in my area realize being a paramedic is a sure way into the fire service, we get a bunch of numbskulls that don't really want to be paramedics, they just want jobs. As a result, as soon as they get hired they start complaining about being on the ambulance. If they work in a department that doesn't allow crosstraining, or perhaps requires their medics to work for a long period of time before they can cross over to firefighting, they could be miserable for years on the ambulance. Moving over to the "fire side" in my department is more of a seniority shot. Medics can work the ambulance for a good 5-8 years before they get much of a chance to do firefighting. Something to think about.

If you're not interested in being a medic, get and stay in great shape, study your *** off, and start taking tests. You'll get better with each one. In the meantime, get with a volunteer department for some invaluable training. Good luck!

[Swinny13]

Bippy19,

I forgot you asked about how hard it was to find a job once you had your fire science degree. Again, it depends on your area, I can only speak to what departments do in our area. Sometimes the fire science degree can help, sometimes it really doesn't. My own department has run entry level tests in the past where having a fire science degree was a requirement. The problem was that we had only a handful of applicants for each test so the city decided to get rid of that requirement. Having the degree could still help you out in such situations because you're going to have a lot better skills than many of your competitors. One fire science program in our area boasts that they get about 80% of their graduates hired within 5 years. It's probably an accurate estimate, I know nearly a fourth of the firefighters in our department came out of the program.