40 Applicants For Every Position As A Fireman?

I'm writing this in November 2002 in the UK, while the firemen are on strike for more pay. There's an intense debate over the merits of their claims and a frequently repeated assertion is that there are around 40 applicants for every position as a fireman; the argument goes that if so many people want to be a fireman, the pay for the job must already be at an adequate market rate.

I'm curious as to where this figure comes from, how accurate it is, and how relevant it is. The first vaguely credible place I encountered it in The Economist:

There are 40 applicants for every fire service job advertised, but the health service suffers from an acute shortage of doctors and nurses. Teachers, however grumpily, have accepted change on a scale that shames the firemen.

(Nov 21st 2002, subscription required)

Unfortunately they don't give a source for the figure (and nor has anyone else who's quoted it). Perhaps it appeared in a press release somewhere?

I looked at http://www.fireservice.co.uk/recbrigades.php which has a small amount of recruitment information for fire services around the country. I counted 6 listed as actively recruiting, 23 not actively recruiting, plus 15 where the status was unclear and 16 where no information at all was given. This doesn't suggest a national shortage, but also doesn't support or contradict any particular figure.

http://www.fireservice.co.uk/recruitmentgmc.php is more specific and states that there are around 100 applicants for every position advertized by the Greater Manchester fire service:

In excess of 10,000 application forms are regularly distributed, of which only 1% (100) are eventually offered employment as Fire fighters. Potential applicants should be aware the competition is high, however this should not discourage the submission of an application.

http://www.ni-assembly.gov.uk/public/reports/report2-01r.htm contains further hard numbers from Northern Ireland, giving 30 applicants for every position:

Mr J McClelland: We advertise every year for full-time personnel and receive from 4,000 to 6,000 enquiries for the different positions. Recently we have recruited about 50 full-time members of staff annually.

Mr D McClelland: So you get between 4,000 and 6,000 enquiries for 50 jobs. Narrowing 4,000 to 6,000 enquiries down to 50 successful applicants is an incredibly difficult job. Can you tell me how you shortlist the 6,000 enquiries to identify interview candidates for those 50 jobs?

Mr J McClelland: We advertise and send out recruitment packs. We normally get 1,500 or more completed applications and examine them to see that the applicants satisfy the basic criteria, after which we invite them to an assessment centre. The assessment is a set of what I call "tests", although purists might disagree with the term. The UK fire services agree that they represent an unbiased set of job-related tests including such things as a lift test for upper-body strength and a stamina test known by those in the world of athletics as the "bleep test", where you must run back and forward over a 20m stretch, with the time allowed constantly decreasing. As you exert more energy and tire you must complete the task more quickly. We have a limit of 9.6; that is our test standard. We conduct tests on running and manipulating hoses, ladder-climbing and, to test upper-body strength, ladder-extending. Having faced those tests, candidates sit a written paper, and a number are selected for interview on the basis of their scores.

Unfortunately the discussion doesn't relate the proportion of applicants who pass the tests, something that is rather relevant to interpreting the figure, be it 30, 40 or 100; if only a few of those many applicants per job is actually capable of being a fireman then the figure would be misleading whatever its true value.

http://www.nireland.com/lisburnfirestation/recruitment.htm also concerns Northern Ireland and says:

In excess of 8,000 application forms are regularly distributed, of which only 1% (100) are eventually offered employment as Fire fighters. Potential applicants should be aware the competition is high, however this should not discourage the submission of an application.

...but I think this must have been copied originally from the Manchester version, and only partially edited; it should probably be disregarded.

http://www.norfolkfireservice.gov.uk/recruitment/wholetime_process.html gives a little table containing some hard information, here given with the ratio calculated in the third column:

This gives a grand total of 1729 applications for 70 positions, or 24 applicants per position.

http://www.safety.odpm.gov.uk/fire/fepd/pdf/equalap.pdf is the results of a survey sent to 49 fire brigades and has all sorts of interesting information in it, but the bit that interests us starts around question 8.11:

The 40 applicants per place figure doesn't look particularly unfair compared to this numbers, perhaps even a little low. But it also doesn't tell us anything about how the majority were eliminated from the selection process. Question 8.13 tells us how many of those called to interview were then employed; the numbers suggest that most applicants are not even interviewed. Did they not pass the fitness tests, or were they just unlucky?

http://www.hwfire.org.uk/Careerpages/Wholetime1.htm suggests that (at least in one case...) the interview happens after the fitness tests (which seems sensible enough to me). Are the interviewees the few who pass the tests, or just a tiny subset of them? We still don't have enough information to tell.

Conclusions

The number of applicants per position may or may not be near 40, but it seems that in many areas it is indeed very high; I think it would be fair to say that firefighting is a popular job. But it is unclear how it is distributed across the country, and it is unclear exactly how relevant the figure is.

More Links

http://www.safety.odpm.gov.uk/fire/fepd/consult/fsprev/

Contact Information

Please mail me if you have any further information or any comments to make.

RJK | Contents