Firefighter Resume Example

Firefighters are unsung heroes who risk their lives daily to ensure civilians aren’t harmed in fires and are saved from other medical emergencies. They lead dangerous lives and need to follow protocols to ensure the safety of their team and the local community.

If you’re applying to a fire department, especially as an entry-level firefighter, you’ll need to display your training, skills, and experience on your resume to give yourself the edge over similarly qualified candidates.

Below are five professional resume tips to help you get started writing your firefighter resume.

1. Add your relevant certifications and training

Firefighters require a lot of training to be good at their jobs. To compete with similarly-qualified candidates, you’ll want to display your training and certifications clearly on your resume.

Fire departments all have different expectations for applicants, with some emphasizing training, while others experience. The job’s requirements will also differ depending on how senior the position is and what state it’s located.

It’s essential that you thoroughly review the job posting before making a resume to know what qualifications you’ll need to emphasize. However, here are some general training and certifications necessary for most firefighting positions:

• EMT Certification
• Paramedic Certification
• First Aid Certification
• Driver Operator/Pumper, Tiller, & Aerial
• Firefighter I & II
• Fire Officer
• Fire Inspection
• Structural Collapse
• Hazmat

Listing certifications on your firefighter resume can be done in two ways:

First, if you have a lengthy list of training certifications, you should create a dedicated certifications section to highlight them.

If you don’t have a ton of certifications (maybe only one or two), you should place them in your firefighter resume’s skills section.

2. Choose the right resume introduction

Starting your resume with a great introduction is the perfect way to pique the interest of the fire department’s hiring manager. However, you’ll need to choose an introduction style that matches your experience level.

If you’re an experienced firefighter, writing a resume summary is the best choice because summaries are designed to highlight your career achievements and qualifications. It’s also the most common resume introduction used by job applicants today.

Here’s an example of a resume summary for an experienced firefighter:

On the other hand, entry-level firefighters will want to use a resume objective. The main difference between objectives and summaries is that resume objectives are meant to highlight how you’ll help the company (or, in this case, fire department) achieve its long-term goals.

When you’re a candidate with little to no experience in firefighting, it’s essential to show the fire chief that you’re a dedicated rookie who’s there to learn, take the job seriously, and help the department accomplish its mission on a daily basis.

Don’t worry though. Some departments actually prefer candidates with little to no experience because they’re able to train you from the ground up, without you having previous influence from other departments.

Here’s an example of a resume objective for an entry-level firefighter with no experience:

3. Include a detailed work experience section

If you want to impress the fire chief, you’ll need to include your professional work experience fighting fires.

Training and certifications are important, but so is experience on the ground. You should do this whether you are a paid firefighter, volunteer, or previously held a firefighter internship.

In your work experience bullet points, be sure you provide the fire chief with hard numbers when including career accomplishments. This helps provide a better picture of how you helped your previous fire department accomplish the mission, control fires, and save lives.

If you’re not sure how to describe your experience as a firefighter on your resume, here are a few topics to focus on:

• The number of firefighters you managed (how big your team was)
• Any training you either participated in or personally taught
• Experience performing living-saving medical procedures
• The equipment you helped inspect and performed maintenance on
• The number of fires you stopped or helped control
• The number of people you’ve helped save
• Any awards you were given for acts of bravery

Here’s an example of how to display your firefighting experience on your resume:

• Earned “Silver Grade” Award for an act of bravery during a local factory fire, where 150 workers were saved from any life-threatening injuries
• Inspected fire fighting equipment and hydrants, performing minor maintenance repairs that minimized malfunctions by 10%
• Successfully controlled wildfire with a team of 3 firefighters at a local park, through strategic planning and quick-thinking

The above three work experience bullet points provide the fire chief with clear insights into the candidate’s:

• Previous exceptional service (Silver Grade award)
• Familiarity with fire fighting equipment and ability to perform maintenance
• Ability to work within a team and strategic planning and thinking skills

If you’re an entry-level candidate, your experience might not be as broad, but that’s okay. Here’s an example of how to include work experience for an entry-level firefighter:

• Answered an average of 20 emergency calls daily, being careful to record personal information such as address and caller ID
• Supported firefighters by setting up equipment to ensure speedy and efficient team dispatch when responding to emergencies
• Immediately relayed important information to supervisors and fire team concerning emergency situations as they developed on site
• Handled routine tasks, including preventative maintenance on equipment and inventory checks

4. Highlight necessary firefighter skills

Your skills section is another important part of your resume.

It’s essential here to include the hard and soft skills needed to adequately respond to and control fires and perform life-saving medical techniques for victims on-site until they can be transferred to a hospital.

Firefighters will need to have excellent soft skills, such as communication, teamwork, organization, and problem-solving abilities to effectively relay information on site while also working as a team to calculate how to best safely evacuate a building and control the fire.

As far as hard skills are concerned, some basic skills firefighters should know are how to operate water pumps and hydrants, understand their equipment and how to perform maintenance on it, and have familiarity with carpentry and electrical appliances (when traversing through burning homes and buildings).

Here’s an example of how to list your firefighter skills on your resume: