In tough economic times like these, jobs in policing, fire fighting and emergency medical services become all the more attractive for job hungry grads seeking a regular paycheque. But don’t let the lure of benefits, pensions and an early retirement fool you. While plenty of jobs in policing, fire services and emergency medical services are still out there, it takes a special kind of person to fill them.
 
“In times like these we get a lot of résumés,” says Calgary’s Deputy Fire Chief Ken Uzeloc. The city’s fire services department is aiming to employ 200 more fire fighters this year, he says, but during the last four months at least 700 individuals attended recruiting information sessions. And out of 455 applications recently received by the department, only 97 were hired. According to Uzeloc, only one out of every five applicants gets hired.
 
“We don’t just want to fill the positions,” he says. “We want to find the right people.”
 
Physical fitness, a desire to serve the community and to varying degrees, according to the province, training and certification, are all qualities of successful applicants, says Uzeloc – the very same qualities required of police and emergency services recruits. And the very same qualities that make filling the considerable number of jobs available in these areas so difficult, says Geoff Gruson, executive director of Canada’s Police Sector Council, which aims to enable Canadian policing organizations to find solutions to human resource planning and management challenges.
 
“Most policing services across the country are recruiting,” admits Gruson. “And that’s due in part to demographics. 50 percent of our officers are in the 35 to 47 age range, which means that if they retire, with full pension, at 20 to 25 years of service, we will potentially see significant numbers retire in the next little while. Also an issue for us is that young people seem to have become noticeably less interested in policing as a career. Since we started tracking interest in 2004, levels are down three per cent among young people 18 to 28 years old.”
 
That said, Gruson anticipates the recent economic downturn will increase the attractiveness of policing, given the job security attached to it. That doesn’t mean every one who applies gets in. “One in ten of the people who apply get in,” says Gruson. “That’s because of our screening process. Just because you apply doesn’t mean you should be handed a gun and a taser and told to go out and maintain order.”
 
Not everyone who applies for a job in emergency medical services fits the mold either, even though the need for such personnel continues to remain steady.
 
Paramedicine is a growth industry, says Peel, Ontario Region Director of Paramedic Services Peter Dundas. “In this area, decreasing staff is very unlikely,” Dundas says, adding the need for increasing emergency services was recognized in Ontario largely as a result of the Mike Harris government downloading responsibility for such services to the province in the late 90s. The result was an influx of new young professionals.
 
“Over 50 per cent of our work force has been here for less than five years,” Dundas says. Even so, the Peel region is set to hire more part time EMS workers this year. The region currently has 350 workers and is looking to hire another 50 part time workers by the end of the year.
 
Still, the number of positions in Peel alone isn’t enough to accommodate the 700 or so area college graduates who’ll be trying for those positions, says Dundas.
 
The good news is, there’s plenty of work elsewhere in Canada. Out west, for example, where former paramedic Chelsey Reid and her husband, a fire chief, run Emergency Services Academy, a private school for fire fighters and EMS workers.
 
“Clearly there’s a need for paramedics and fire fighters,” says Reid. “We enroll about 310 students per year from all over Canada.” And it’s not just municipalities that need firefighters and paramedics. Increasingly, private industry is being obliged by workers’ insurance programs to provide on site fire fighting and emergency medical services for the protection of staff.
 
“There are significantly more grads than jobs available in the Atlantic region,” says Saint John NB Fire Chief Robert Simonds. “So many of our grads move west, many to work for industrial fire brigades rather than municipalities.”
 
Remote operations in the oil and forestry industries are those which need emergency service workers and firefighters the most, explains Chief Simonds.
 
They also tend to pay better, adds Reid. “First level EMS workers can make from $200 to $400 per 24-hour shift if they’re working for the private sector,” he says.
 
Be that as it may, it remains to be seen whether, in times like these, a $400 per 24 hour paycheque is enough to tempt even the hungriest job seeker to risk his or her life on a daily basis.
 
“It takes a special kind of person to do this job,” says Fire Chief Bruce Burrell of the Calgary Fire Department. “They have to have the right psychological outlook, the right values, the right stamina and the right physical ability to do the job.” jp