Job opening: Must be 21 with decent health, good eyesight and high school diploma. No criminal record. Must be willing to work a 24-hour shift followed by 48 hours off. Pay starts around $30,000.
The clincher: Must be willing to run through burning buildings and be agile with a sledgehammer.
A similar classified advertisement fills publications annually in the northwest and north suburbs and attracts thousands of would-be firefighter-paramedics who long for a chance to get on an eligibility list.
It sounds appealing enough. Many elementary school teachers with six years of college education start out with the same salary.
But in Hoffman Estates, where applicants are finishing the testing this week, significantly fewer people applied to be firefighters this year, said Fire Department Lt. John Mayer.
He estimated that 300 to 400 people pick up applications to be firefighters in a normal year. This year, 150 to 200 people took applications for jobs that might open. The department has 84 firefighters and has hired five of those workers this year.
Fire departments test candidates every year or every other year to keep a running list of qualified people to fill vacancies as they open. Applicants typically take a written exam followed by a physical test of firefighting skills. Candidates must complete a physical and eye exam with a doctor, take lie-detector tests and have an interview with a fire department panel.
But the drop in Hoffman Estates is not universal. A test for firefighters in 1997 attracted 2,061 people to an orientation session and 1,512 to a subsequent written examination, according to the Northwest Municipal Conference in Des Plaines, which administered the test.
That was the largest applicant lot the 9-suburb consortium ever saw, said Wheeling Fire Chief Keith MacIsaac.
He said departments must be careful to advertise in wide-reaching and ethnic publications alike, must be careful not to hold a test on a date that conflicts with another department’s test, and must try to keep applicant requirements similar to those in neighboring departments.
In Hoffman Estates, fire department officials suspect the downtrend is due to an uptrend in the local economy. Even though Motorola Inc. announced layoffs this year and the stock market appears to be in the throes of a correction, the unemployment rate nationally and locally is low.
Hoffman Estates Fire Marshal Hank Clemmensen theorized steady employment results in fewer applications. When people have good jobs and do not fear getting laid off, they do not spend the time and money to get on a solo fire department’s eligibility list, he said.
“It’s the economy,” Clemmensen said. “In any field, as unemployment goes down, your pool of qualified applicants goes down.”
Things are still good, however, for suburban fire departments because there are hundreds more applicants than there are available jobs in the fire service, said George Lechner, who retired as deputy chief at the Des Plaines Fire Department and took a job eight years ago as the administrative assistant to the Arlington Heights fire chief.
When he joined the ranks in Des Plaines in 1968, 17 men took the test for five available positions. Since then, the requirements have changed.
In Hoffman Estates, applicants do not need to be village residents, but must have finished high school and be ages 21 to 35.
