Firefighter CV Examples & Writing Guide

This is a CV for a wholetime firefighter with 7 years in the fire and rescue service, the first two on call. The name is made up. Look at the top half: competent firefighter status, the driving qualification, casualty care, and the size and incident numbers of the station. That is the order a fire service panel reads in.

Fire and rescue services recruit wholetime firefighters in campaigns that may open for only a few days and draw thousands of applications. The usual stages: an online application with questions on the service's values and behaviours, online tests (many services use national firefighter selection tests for situational judgement, reading and maths, but the tests vary), physical tests, an interview, then references, a medical, a fitness check and a DBS check. Your CV, where a service asks for one, and your application answers are read at the sift and again at interview. Four things decide whether they work.

• The entry requirements in the advert. No fire qualification is needed to apply. Services usually ask for the right to work in the UK, a minimum age of 18 and a good level of fitness, and many add a full UK driving licence and GCSE English and maths at grade 4 (C) or equivalent. Requirements differ, so match the advert line by line.
• Fitness and physical tests. Services test practical tasks such as a ladder climb, casualty evacuation, equipment carry and an enclosed-space crawl, plus aerobic fitness, often by a bleep or treadmill test. Put the date you passed in your CV if you already have.
• A clean record. Driving licence points, background checks and the DBS check come later, but a "Full UK driving licence, clean" line in your header answers the first question.
• Proof you can work on a watch and turn up. On-call service, ambulance work, the armed forces, team sports, trades work with long outdoor days. Panels hire people they are willing to share a station with on day and night shifts.

“I read the certs first. Then I look for a volunteer department, an ambulance job or the military. If a candidate has run calls somewhere, I know the academy will not be the first time they see a bad scene. "Passionate about helping people" gets nothing from me.”

UK firefighters are trained by their own fire and rescue service after they are hired. New wholetime firefighters usually do an initial course of around three months at the service's training centre, then spend roughly two to three years developing to competent firefighter, in many services through the Level 3 Operational Firefighter apprenticeship. On-call firefighters follow a modular version. Write the exact name your service uses, the year and your status.

• Needed to apply: usually nothing fire-specific. Expect the right to work in the UK, a minimum age of 18, fitness, and often a full UK driving licence and GCSE English and maths or equivalent. Read the advert; services set their own requirements.
• Useful before applying: a first aid qualification such as First Aid at Work or First Response Emergency Care (FREC), on-call firefighting, ambulance service or armed forces experience. None of these is required, but each gives you evidence for the application questions.
• Gained after joining: breathing apparatus wearer, casualty care (immediate emergency care or trauma care), RTC rescue, hazardous materials and, later, emergency fire appliance driving with a category C licence funded by the service. Some services also run medical co-responding schemes with the ambulance service.
• Expected for promotion: incident command training and assessment with your service (crew manager and watch manager levels), and for fire safety roles a fire safety qualification such as a Level 4 Diploma in Fire Safety. Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE) qualifications are a plus.
• A plus for transfers and specialist posts: instructor qualifications, water, rope or urban search and rescue, fire investigation. A fire-related degree helps with later promotion but rarely decides a first hire.

Use a personal statement once you have attended incidents as a wholetime or on-call firefighter. Use a career objective as a new applicant or career changer, and name the service; panels notice when a CV was written for them. Line one carries your role, status and incident numbers.

Most firefighter CVs copy the job description: "attended emergency incidents, fought fires, gave first aid." The panel knows what a firefighter does. They want how much, on what appliance, and with what result.

Keep the skills section to 10 to 14 items a watch manager or instructor could test you on.

• Fireground: breathing apparatus wearing and entry control, search and rescue, forcible entry, ventilation (including positive pressure ventilation), 13.5 m and 10.5 m ladders, hose running and branch work, BA emergency procedures, thermal imaging camera.
• Casualty care: immediate emergency care, trauma care, defibrillation, oxygen therapy, safe casualty handling, ATMIST handover to ambulance crews.
• Rescue and hazmat: RTC extrication (hydraulic rescue equipment, stabilisation), hazardous materials first response and decontamination, rope rescue, confined space, water and flood rescue where trained.
• Appliance and command: pump operation and water supplies, aerial appliances, appliance and equipment checks, hydrant inspection, incident command support and JESIP, radio messages, site-specific risk information visits.
• Soft skills panels screen for: staying calm and following orders under pressure, physical fitness, living as a watch on day and night shifts, community safety work (Safe and Well visits, school talks), plain talk with patients and families.

Leave out "brave", "hardworking" and "passion for helping people". Every applicant writes them. Show them with a bullet instead: the 300 smoke alarms, the 6 trainee firefighters, the 240 responses without a collision.

"No experience" rarely means nothing. Services count on-call service, ambulance shifts, the armed forces, Fire Cadets (as a cadet or a volunteer instructor), community first responder work and hard physical jobs. What changes is the order: tests and qualifications first, then any fire or emergency experience, then other jobs.

1. 1Header and a two-line career objective that names the service and your strongest evidence.
2. 2Tests and qualifications: selection or physical tests passed, first aid (First Aid at Work, FREC), driving licence category, any on-call training. This goes above experience on an entry-level CV.
3. 3Fire and emergency experience: on-call service (incidents attended, drill hours, BA or driving), ambulance or A&E support work, Fire Cadets, community first responder volunteering.
4. 4Other work that proves reliability and physical ability: construction, warehouse, landscaping, lifeguarding, the armed forces. Give the shift pattern and the physical demands.
5. 5Education and fitness: GCSEs (with English and maths), any BTEC or uniformed services course, team sports, and one measurable fitness line (your bleep test level) if the advert names a fitness standard.

Two versions of this job need their own approach. The structure stays; the qualifications and numbers change.

• On-call (retained) firefighter CV: on-call firefighters live or work within a few minutes of the station and respond by pager alongside a main job, and much of rural Britain relies on them. List the role like a job: station, pumps, incidents a year, your own incidents, drill hours and the hours of cover you give each week. Wholetime panels respect that time when you show incident numbers, not just membership.
• Wildfire experience: the UK has no separate wildland fire service. Moorland, heathland and forest fires are fought by fire and rescue services, some with wildfire specialist teams, alongside landowners, gamekeepers, rangers and forestry staff. If you have wildfire training through a service or a land management job, list the course, the season and the fires attended.
• Wildfire skills crews look for: fire behaviour and weather awareness, beaters and leaf blowers, long hose lays, water from open sources, working with landowners, LACES (lookouts, awareness, communications, escape routes, safety zones), long shifts on difficult ground.

Fire and rescue services recruit through their own online application systems, and assessors score your answers against the service's values and behaviours (many refer to the national Core Code of Ethics for fire and rescue services). Any CV you attach is read on screen and printed for the interview panel. Keep it plain.

• Length: one page for new applicants; up to two pages for experienced firefighters applying to transfer or for promotion.
• Order: header with driving licence categories, tests and qualifications, personal statement or career objective, experience, education and training, skills. No photo, no date of birth, no National Insurance number; the service collects those on its own forms.
• Single column, standard font, no tables for the qualifications list; parsers often drop table cells. Save as PDF unless the system asks for Word: Marcus-Delgado-Firefighter-CV.pdf.
• Fill the service's application form in full; "see attached CV" gets you screened out. Answer behaviour questions with real examples using STAR (situation, task, action, result).
• Keywords to mirror from the advert: the exact role name (wholetime firefighter, on-call firefighter, trainee firefighter), breathing apparatus, RTC, casualty care, Safe and Well, community safety, teamwork, and the duty system they name (2-2-4, on-call cover hours).
• In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service run their own recruitment; the same CV rules apply. US fire departments expect a one-page resume built around US certifications.

Run the finished file through the cvplex ATS checker with the advert pasted in. It flags a qualification the advert names that you left out and a driving licence line with no category.