Future Firefighters - Start Doing This TODAY!

over the last several months i've had many of you reach out to me saying that you're younger maybe you're in high school or early college and you are thinking about getting into the into firefighting and ems this is something that you really want to do and you want to know where to start what are some actual tangible things you could be doing right now to improve your chances going forward so in this video i want to address that talk about some things that you can be doing today and things that you can look at doing in the future to help your chances of getting started in the fire service so in this video i have seven things and i'm sure there's more and if you're a senior firefighter and you watch this video leave your uh your insight i mean this is this is becoming a bigger and bigger community and there's a lot of senior firefighters from from some very large departments around that have some really good insights so if you are and you have some recommendations for younger firefighters looking to get into the fire service leave your recommendations in the comments below but the first thing that i would tell you if you're younger is stay out of trouble and that sounds so simple but really that's a lot more difficult than you would think if you're hanging out with people that are doing things that aren't going to help you in your future get away from those people stop hanging out with the druggie kids stop hanging out with the the the guys or girls that are going to the bars and starting fights with people uh stop driving like an idiot if you have a whole bunch of citations or speeding tickets fire departments are going to be less apt to hire you because you're going to eventually be responsible to drive million dollar machinery they're not probably that interested in hiring somebody that can barely manage their own vehicle similarly if you're the person that goes out and gets drunk and acts like an idiot or you have a whole bunch of drug citations fire departments will do background checks on you so stay out of trouble start spending time with people that are doing things that you want to do and moving in the direction that you want to go that'd be my first recommendation my second recommendation that kind of that kind of tails off of that is be really careful on social media social media like anything else is kind of a double-edged sword there's a lot of positives to it but there are a ton of negatives to it and any full-time department that you apply to in the future will check out your social media i mean that's essentially a big part of the background check process um you might think that you're keeping it private or they'll never find these certain things but as soon as you put something stupid out in the public domain they will find it they will uncover it and it doesn't go away so my recommendation to you would be to get rid of your social media accounts but if that's something that you can't manage or don't want to do i would highly recommend you be very very very strict about what you do put on social media but also the situations you find yourself in because i you don't want to be in a situation where somebody tags you um and it starts popping up on social media so that you know there's a picture of you in a compromising position or something like that so be really careful about social media anything you do or post will get found out the third thing i would say is go to your local department whether it be a volunteer department whether it be a full diamond department and see if they have a ride-along program a lot of younger people that want to get into the fire service don't have an accurate idea of what it's like day to day at a fire department that's not necessarily your fault because hollywood and television doesn't do us any favors they make firefighting seem like something it's not explosions and drama at the station and crazy stuff going on and then you get to your local fire department and you realize it's not really that make sure that this is something that you want to dedicate years and put a lot of time and effort into getting into you don't want to put a whole lot of time and effort and spend money to go to fire academies and ems academies to only come out at the other end and say this isn't really for me so if you can a lot of departments will have a ride-along program you have to fill out some paperwork maybe sign some hipaa information saying that you're not going to talk about what you saw if you go on an ems call so yeah i would highly recommend that to make sure that you're getting into something this is what you actually want to do the next thing i would recommend is get involved with your local department find a volunteer department near you in your town maybe you live in a big city and there are no there are no volunteer departments around that's okay but a lot of you will have a volunteer or a part-time or a smaller local department go knock on the door talk to the chief talk to the officers there and if you're not 18 yet if you're in high school just say hey i'm not i'm i'm not old enough obviously to go in any fires i don't have any fire certifications but what can i do to contribute what can i do to help all organizations are looking for people that are hungry that want to that want to do well that want to advance and they might just tell you hey you have to come back in a few years there's nothing you can do right now and that's okay you can move on from that but a lot of smaller violent volunteer departments are looking for people to help not just necessarily with firefighting but with all sorts of other tasks running a fire department is a lot of work so the soonest and the earliest that you can get involved with being around other firefighters the better it will be for you similarly junior firefighter and explorer programs are something that's really good and there's some links and i'll put them down in the description below but the nvsc national volunteer firefighter council uh does a lot of stuff with junior firefighter programs there's some other explorer programs but essentially what it is is it teaches you about what to expect kind of runs you through some firefighter training before you turn 18 or i think some of them are up to 20. some of the programs will vary and they they might not have one in your area but it's certainly worth something you looking into or something worth you looking into to see if that's something in your area and something that you would be interested in doing the next thing i would say is get in a an ems certification as soon as you possibly can a lot of high schools will partner with local community colleges or vocational schools in the area where your junior or senior year you can kind of go get your ems certification or your firefighter certification or whatever as you're still in high school so that that way when you come out and you're 18 years old you can just kind of hit the ground running the reason i say uh ems certification is because more and more whether you like it or not fire and ems are integrating more and more across the country and so if you have that the soonest you have that and the more experience that you can get under your belt the better you will look as a candidate to other departments so i would highly recommend you do that maybe your high school doesn't offer that um but if it does that could be good something good for you to look into and then finally i would say get in shape and you might not think that that matters that much but having a good foundation for just fitness in general when you eventually get into a fire academy they're very difficult i have a whole bunch of videos on this channel about the fire academy and what you can expect and what it's like i also have videos on this channel about fitness and firefighting fitness and how to train properly and how you should go about doing it look those up on this channel but i would highly recommend that you get in shape for those of you that don't know about 50 of fire ground deaths are related to cardiac arrest and that's that's not good so the better shape you are the more certifications you have the more experience you you have now the better you will look in the future so as always i hope you guys found this useful and helpful if you did give this video a like give it a thumbs up consider subscribing to the channel and i will see you guys in the next video

Channel: Mike Pertz

Views: 16,481

Keywords: Firefighting, Firefighters, First Responders, how to become a firefighter, firefighter fitness, firefighter interview, firefighter testing, study, firefighter nutrition, young firefighter, future firefighter, junior firefighter, firefighter explorer

Id: Lh6Br5ckY_8

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021