About the fire service and our staff

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"Thank you for your interest in joining us as a whole time firefighter.

Choosing a firefighting career is choosing to make a real difference. Our purpose in Oxfordshire is simple. We're here to protect our communities, reduce harm, and save lives.

As a fire and rescue service, we are built around our people, their wellbeing, their development, and their success.
When our people thrive, our communities thrive, and that's what drives us every day. 

The difference we make goes far beyond responding to emergencies. We are here for people on their hardest days
and in their everyday lives. Whether that's a fire in someone's home, a road traffic collision, or a quiet visit to support a vulnerable resident. 

Our teams are out in the community every day, reducing harm, offering advice, and supporting people when they need us most and helping to make Oxfordshire safer. 

The positive impact we have and the difference we make is real. The challenges facing our communities are changing,
and we are committed to evolving through innovation and finding new ways of working so we can be ready for the future. 

Whether it's responding to emergencies, supporting community safety, or working with our partners, we want to create a safer and stronger communities for everyone in Oxfordshire. 

If you are driven, compassionate, and ready for career with real purpose Oxfordshire, fire and rescue service is where you belong, where you'll grow, and where you'll help shape the future of a service that makes a difference. 

Thank you for considering joining our team, and I really hope to welcome you into Oxfordshire fire, and rescue service very soon."

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"Oxfordshire Fire Rescue Service, an amazing place to work. It's an amazing community. You've got, you know, very kind of built up city kind of areas. You've got the historic areas, it's very rural, and you meet some absolutely amazing people.

I've joined 18 years ago, fire and Rescue Service. Before that I was, working in the community, working in community social work, and quite involved in projects working with young people.

So one of the things that really struck me moving across to fire, Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service four years ago, is the kind of, apart from the kind of different skills and the different kind of backgrounds that people come from, it is how hard actually people work.

And that's a, a genuine thing, you know, at different levels. People actually want to make a difference. They really do care about what they're doing.

Learning new skills in the fire and rescue service is an absolute kind of everyday thing. It sounds like a bit of a cliche when people say it's every day is a school day, but you'll be learning about new technology, new changes in fire and safety legislation, new things happening in your community wellbeing.

It just absolutely varies across the board. Joining the fire rescue service. You can expect the unexpected every single day.

It can be anything as simple as you turn up somewhere where a smoke alarm has gone off and you're not quite sure what's happening, and you are going to investigate that. It can be anything from wide scales, flooding across the service, you know, across the communities or across a, you know, a whole county to hazardous material incidents to people in distress, uh, to road traffic collisions.

And it could be absolutely anything.

And when people really don't know who to call, it's usually us that they call and we put together, work together as a team.

Problem solving is one of our kind of big skills, and every one of you will bring something to the table. We are looking for candidates and firefighters who can, uh, think on their feet, who like working with people who are open-minded, uh, interested in what's going on around them.

It can be really hard work at times. So you need to be resilient.

You need, you know, you really need to, you know, grit your teeth and get on with things at times. Um, but at the same time, you are part of a team.

You need to be, you know, you'll be able to share the, the load of what you're doing, the work that you're doing, um, and you'll yeah, be be being able to enjoy yourself. So one of the great things about working in the team is that you are never alone in when you are got something complicated to solve.

Yes, you will be expected, and I expect you to work on your own initiative, but the team will support you. And everyone brings something completely different to the table.

One of the things we're particularly trying to push during this Campaign is for people who might never have thought that the fire and rescue service would've been a career for them to have a think about it.

You, you might not necessarily know another, the firefighter, but what I would strongly encourage you to do is find out more.

Come and meet one of our team. Have a look at our website. Have a look at our videos, because it, it is a one-off type of career.

It's an amazing career and, you know, really give it a think about and have a go."

 

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Close up of Ruth Price, a firefighter who is sitting next to an appliance.

“So I came from a different job where I was a primary school teacher for many years.

 I decided I wanted to change and it actually came from, had like a social event where one of my friends had a bit of an medical emergency and I found that all of my peers all sort of fell apart and couldn't cope with the situation, whereas I stayed calm. So that got me looking into the emergency services.

I thought I had a skill there that I should utilize and that could be sort of an avenue into a different job. Looking into the fire service and went to apply and actually it suits me down to a t sort of with things we do.

So responding to the community, helping people at their time of needs, and also an opportunity to keep on top of your fitness and use that as a way to help the public as well.

So on a whole time station, um, the day is fairly, we stick to quite a routine, um, which I really enjoy and it's like being part of a big family.

So we do station routines, sort of keeping maintenance on equipment, and stuff around the station. We then do fitness together always as a group as well.

We then do drills, so keeping on top of our competency and then we go out to the local community and do visits like a safe and well visit if it's smoke alarms or we go to schools and do talks around safety and fire safety.

We also go and find risks in our local area. In the middle of Oxford we've got quite a few risks in the colleges and big industrial buildings. So we'll go and sort of do assessments on those.

So the thing you can certainly keep on top of in the meantime is your fitness as that's a key part of the role.

You can then think about sort of hard skills and soft skills. So hard skills being the practical side of the job, doing the drills, using the equipment, keeping on top of your competencies. But then the soft side of the job is all that empathy and interacting with the public and working as part of a team.

So perhaps thinking about which of those you already have and which areas you can work on in order to be effective at the job.

Days are very busy with drills and practical training on station. Obviously responding to incidents and night times tend to be a little bit more theory based with learning.

We all sit together and have a big meal as a watch of 15. Have a bit of downtime together if it's not too busy out in the city.

We do two day shifts, two nights, and then we get a four off.

So you get that sort of four days of working, four days off pattern, which sometimes is great 'cause it'll lands on the weekends when other people are not at work as well.

And sometimes it lands in the middle of the week. And to be honest, that means you get those four days to yourself. Um, which is not a bad thing.

I've used that as an opportunity to have a go at some different challenges that I've wanted to do.

So we've got the blend and triathlon coming up this year. We have firefi competitions that around the country as well that sort of keep my hand in retraining.

Um, in my thirties in a different job entirely again, has reminded me that I'm able to, to learn a new, learn a new, um, yeah, learn a new job and carry on learning as an adult.

Yes, a real sense of worth as well.

I mean, it is best job of the world and to be able to be that person to respond to someone on their worst day is an absolute privilege."