Josh Sauberman

Josh Sauberman

Josh Sauberman is the author of the Journey To Firefighter blog and teaches CPR classes in Contra Costa County. Originally from New York, he earned his B.S. degree at the University of Arizona and subsequently an A.S. degree in Fire Technology from Los Medanos College. Josh lives in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, and has worked as an EMT as well as a professional in the fire restoration industry . Josh is currently an Engineer with the Cordelia Fire Department where’s he’s worked since March 2010.

My Articles

Firefighter Resumes & Applying to Jobs

One of the nice things about applying to firefighting jobs is that you generally fill out a government prepared application focused on the facts, and that information shoots straight into a content management system (CMS) that handles all the formatting and checking of basic requirements. Every application looks the same to the HR person responsible for sorting and organizing the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of applications that firefighter openings pull in. This makes their jobs not only easier, faster and more … Read the rest

Brotherhood

One of the greatest things about the fire service is the friendship and “family” that develops out of the time spent with people, who in all other professions would simply be ‘co-workers’. I’ve been working one full 24 hour day, every week, for almost two and a half years at the Cordelia Fire Protection District. I love it, and I love the people I work with. It would be untrue to say that I consider the entire department “family” or … Read the rest

My First Oral Board

I recently had my first oral board interview, and here I am going to tell about the experience; what it was like, and what I learned.

At this point in my pursuit of a fire service career I’ve taken only a handful of tests and only recently had my first panel interview.  I had assumed going into the interview that the panel would be made up of a variety of firefighters and senior officers from the department, but it turned … Read the rest

To EMT Or Not To EMT?… That is the Question.

As FireCareer’s youngest and most inexperienced blogger in terms of firefighting/fire-career experience (excluding Dr. Jen Milus who works with firefighters, but is not one),  my value to readers is my ability to see things quite clearly from your point of view.   That is of course because I am living, or have just gone through exactly what you’re going through.  Unlike the other accomplished fire veterans who write here at FireCareers, I do not have decades of experience.  I’m a new … Read the rest

Firefighting – Is It Worth It?

Becoming a firefighter is anything but easy. Consider, these days nursing is becoming a hugely popular career route, especially here in the San Francisco Bay Area where salaries are the highest in the nation. Recent RN graduates around here can’t find jobs for months and for some, over a year. well boo-hoo! Try getting into firefighting where the average time to get hired runs 5 years!

There aren’t too many careers out there that are quite as hard to break … Read the rest