Apprenticeship as a Professional Firefighter

To be considered as a potential firefighter, you need to exhibit certain competencies and aptitudes:

• Completed training in a technical or scientific profession or in IT
• Soft skills such as ability to work in a team, flexibility and resilience under stress; no claustrophobia or fear of heights
• Physical fitness, assessed in fitness tests (strength, endurance and coordination)

The fire department’s mission is to provide assistance in a wide variety of events and take preventative measures. The most common tasks associated with the fire department are emergency rescue, extinguishing fires, salvaging and protecting. But in a large chemical plant like here in Ludwigshafen, many other exciting challenges await.

After completing your training, you will be deployed in 24-hour shifts in a fire station. On duty, you will fulfill various roles in our firefighting unit, such as in the attack squad in the first wave, or as the operator of a special vehicle.

You will also be assigned to a workshop, where you will provide valuable services for the fire department and the plants at the Ludwigshafen site, such as in the respiratory protection workshop, the equipment room, the pump workshop or the vehicle workshop. You might also be asked to train employees in the production plants on how to use specialized personal protective equipment.

As part of our program of continuous and advanced training, your shift plan will include around 300 hours of training time per year. Each shift has a weekly sports session led by a professional coach in the site’s own gym.

When on-call but not deployed, you can use our fitness and weights rooms whenever you like, cook in the shared kitchen, chat with colleagues in the day room, or relax and watch television.

The five steps of our selection process:

1. Recruitment test at the fire department (fitness test comparable to the “Kölner Test für die Laufbahngruppe 2” (standard test for firefighters), written test, testing of relevant skills / practical test, interviews). The recruitment test days take place only in August.
2. Occupational health examination and uniform fitting on site
3. Interview with the local HR unit, e.g., in the form of a video interview
4. Final meetings on site
5. Acceptance and contract

The fire department bears the costs of training and examinations.

Apprenticeships usually start on March 1 each year.