How To Become A Firefighter

Hello I'm Sherridan Hughes. I'm a career consultant with career analysts. I'm going to talk to you today about how to get into various careers.

I'm going to tell you about how to become a firefighter. Firefighters not only fight fires they often fast tracks accidents or emergencies. Only 1 out of 5 call outs is actually to fire.

The other call outs may be to cats in trees or kids with their heads stuck in railing. So firefighters don't need to have formal qualifications but they have to pass quite stringent medicals and fitness tests and also various selection tests and they need to have good eyesight and hearing unaided. Firefighting also calls for really good people skills.

You will be dealing with people perhaps trapped in accidents or rather, you know, most frightened. You need to keep your head when everyone else is losing their's and you need to be calm and empathetic and you need to soothe people who perhaps are in a lot of pain or very frightened. You need to be able to obviously climb to heights without vertigo and you need to be able to be prepared to take risks for the safe of others.

Firefighters often come in from other forces like the army. They need to be over 18 and they need to have a full driving license. Firefighters often go to public meetings and to schools to try to encourage us for our safety, the use of fire alarms and to prevent kids from, you know, playing with fire and getting themselves into situations, hazardous situations.

Firefighters have to work shifts and they can spend quite a lot of time just hanging around the station between calls. Competition for places is fierce with about a hundred and fifty applications for each post and there is in fact a low turnover of staff. For entry, training is on the job for an intensive 80 days when you join, which will involve obviously to climbing ladders, dealing with hoses, putting out fires and sort of practical elements of being a firefighter.

So that is how to become a firefighter.