The Calgary Fire Department is planning on expanding by another 130 to 150 recruits, continuing a trend since 2022 that has been unprecedented in the history of the service.

The hiring is set to achieve a number of goals for CFD, including ensuring sufficient coverage for expansion of the city, staffing ladder trucks with four instead of two firefighters, and backfilling retirements.

Kristin Boisjoli, Recruitment Coordinator for the Calgary Fire Department, said that would help the CFD reach the international standard for fire coverage.

“A number of things on top of each other have kind of produced the high hiring need over the last couple years,” she said.

She said that the department typically opens once a year to accept applications, and will often receive upwards of 2,000 applicants.

“There’s a 10-step process that applicants will go through that will take them from the application stage through to job offer. So it is in depth,” Boisjoli said.

“The reason why we have so many applicants is our minimum requirements are not really high, and we do that to try to make it open to as many people as possible. I think it allows for people to bring skill sets from all sorts of different backgrounds into this career.”

While other departments will require their recruits to have passed a fire college program, CFD instead does their own on-the-job training, she said.

What that lower entry requirement to apply results in for the CFD, is a more diverse set of firefighters with a wide range of skills, from professionals to even airline pilots.

“But even with that, we do have to narrow that down so it does become a fairly competitive process through those 10 steps to finally get that job offer,” said Boisjoli.

She said that the ideal candidate was someone who is passionate and dedicated to public service, and lives the fire department values of pride, professionalism, teamwork, and respect.

The recruitment efforts will also have more opportunity for women to consider firefighting as a career.

“Over my career, there’s been a huge increase in the number of female applicants and in the number of females that have been hired. When I came on, I didn’t know that females could be firefighters,” she said.

“Now that we have female firefighters, and we’ve had a lot of very successful female firefighters. I think females are actually seeing it as a viable career choice, and we’re getting more applicants, and successful applicants in the process.”

For more details, and information on how to apply, interested applicants are asked to visit calgary.ca/CFDYYC.

Applications are open until March 31.