How to Become a Fire Officer
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a fire officer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $26.26 an hour? That's $54,618 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 8% and produce 1,300 job opportunities across the U.S.
What Does a Fire Officer Do
There are certain skills that many fire officers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed communication skills, detail oriented and physical strength.
How To Become a Fire Officer
If you're interested in becoming a fire officer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 73.3% of fire officers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 7.6% of fire officers have master's degrees. Even though most fire officers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a fire officer. When we researched the most common majors for a fire officer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on fire officer resumes include master's degree degrees or high school diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a fire officer. In fact, many fire officer jobs require experience in a role such as platoon leader. Meanwhile, many fire officers also have previous career experience in roles such as emergency medical technician or security officer.
Fire Officer Career Paths
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of captain you might progress to a role such as security officer eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title operations officer.
Average Salary for a Fire Officer
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Fire Officers
1. University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Lincoln, NE • Private
2. California State University - Bakersfield
Bakersfield, CA • Private
3. Bowling Green State University
Bowling Green, OH • Private
4. SUNY at Binghamton
Vestal, NY • Private
5. Holy Family University
Philadelphia, PA • Private
6. San Diego State University
San Diego, CA • Private
7. SUNY Farmingdale
Farmingdale, NY • Private
8. Siena Heights University
Adrian, MI • Private
9. University of Akron
Akron, OH • Private
10. California State University - Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA • Private
Top Skills For a Fire Officer
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 12.6% of fire officers listed incident command system on their resume, but soft skills such as communication skills and detail oriented are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Fire Officer Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Fire Officer templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Fire Officer resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Fire Officer Demographics
Fire Officer Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among fire officers, 5.7% of them are women, while 94.3% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among fire officers is White, which makes up 83.5% of all fire officers.
- The most common foreign language among fire officers is Spanish at 35.5%.
Online Courses For Fire Officer That You May Like
Become an expert in Fire Safety, Fire Hazards Control, Fire Evacuation Plans, and Fire Risk Assessment...
Become an expert in understanding "Fire Safety" and "Prevention Planning" for your workplaces and organizations...
Fire has been a fickle companion to human societies and has acted as friend and foe throughout history arousing feelings of warmth and comfort and dread in equal measure. Fire Safety Engineering (FSE) is a broad multi-disciplinary field and often must deal with competing demands such as balancing sustainability concerns against safety. This course is designed to provide a gentle and fun introduction to the fundamentals of this complex field. The nature of fire and the scientific principles...
Best States For a Fire Officer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a fire officer. The best states for people in this position are California, Delaware, Maryland, and West Virginia. Fire officers make the most in California with an average salary of $90,992. Whereas in Delaware and Maryland, they would average $82,634 and $81,998, respectively. While fire officers would only make an average of $74,645 in West Virginia, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Nevada
$73,490
Avg. Salary
2. Maryland
$81,998
Avg. Salary
3. Rhode Island
$68,873
Avg. Salary
How Do Fire Officer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Fire Officer Employers
Most Common Employers For Fire Officer
| Rank  | Company  | Average Salary  | Hourly Rate  | Job Openings  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alyeska Pipeline Service | $107,364 | $51.62 | 2 |
| 2 | Ethicon | $94,445 | $45.41 | 2 |
| 3 | General Motors | $91,042 | $43.77 | 2 |
| 4 | Penn National Insurance | $90,777 | $43.64 | 4 |
| 5 | Jefferson | $81,142 | $39.01 | 1 |
| 6 | Bravo | $81,005 | $38.94 | 2 |
| 7 | Ohio National Financial Services | $80,150 | $38.53 | 2 |
| 8 | US Air Conditioning Distributors | $79,758 | $38.35 | 6 |
| 9 | Patriot | $79,381 | $38.16 | 2 |
| 10 | Akal Global | $77,730 | $37.37 | 3 |