Wildland firefighters starting a burn out high on a ridge at sunset — *Starting a burn out high on a ridge at sunset. Burn outs can be much more successful during cooler and times of the day*

Here’s my best advice for navigating the USAJobs resume builder, what you need to include in your resume, how to make your resume stand out, and other tips to get your first wildland fire job with no previous experience.

I’m a federal wildland firefighter supervisor who does hiring for my module and I’ve done reference checking for Region 4 FireHire. So I can be honest when I tell you I’ve looked at heaps of resumes and called tons of prospective new hires. It is a TON of work and I see people who would probably be great firefighters making common little mistakes that prevent them from being hired.

First off, to apply for federal wildland firefighter jobs you need to make a profile on USAJobs.gov

Then you need to build a resume with their resume builder in the Documents section. It shouldn’t be your final resume, but it will prompt you to include (mostly) everything you need to put into your resume including:

Your full name and contact info including email address, phone number and mailing address.
Your employment history starting with most recent employer first. Include: business name, dates of employment, your position title, location, phone number, hours worked per week and description of work preformed, skills you gained, and responsibilities you had in that position. Really sell yourself and point out any leadership, mentoring, and relevant experience like working outside, teamwork, physical labor, problem solving, etc.
Include education such as high school/ high school equivalent and any college classes or degrees.
If you’ve never even taken a single fire class that’s ok. We want people who will learn, have a great attitude, are in shape, and are excited about coming to work. We can teach you to fight fire, just show us in your resume why you’d be a great firefighter.
Include hobbies, skills, activities, and volunteer work that also highlight any relevant interests and make you stand out. Backpacking, running, team sports, skiing, rafting, cross fit, woodworking, farm work, ranching, welding, conservation, construction, camp counselor, CPR/ first aid training, restaurant work, underwater basket weaving etc etc all tell us hiring officials what you can bring to the crew and why you’d be a great fit.
You must include your supervisor/ reference’s name, title, and their full contact information including phone number and email. DO NOT write “Available upon request.” All that means to hiring officials is that you are too lazy to get their contact info, left on bad terms and/or were fired. If anyone wants to hire you they now need to call you and try and get contact info to speak to your supervisors.
Having gone through a few years of hiring I can tell you that we don’t hire anyone on our crew unless we can get two glowing, solid references on a potential employee. So make sure you have up to date contact info including a valid phone number and email address for all supervisors and personal references listed on your resume.
Tell them to expect phone calls and emails and make sure they will give you a great reference and they will be around and in service to do so. I’ve called so many references to find out it was their business number and they are done for the season or their email was wrong or spelled incorrectly.
Once you’ve built your resume in USAJobs, copy and paste it all into a Word document or Google Docs, reformat it so it’s clean, organized and easy to read, and then save it as a PDF to upload back into USAJobs as your final resume. It’s way easier to read as a PDF and isn’t clunky and weirdly formatted how a USAJobs resume shows up on our end in hiring. Sometimes the resumes show up on our end missing the references section through no fault of anything you did.
Lastly, TRIPLE CHECK and verify all info provided! We want to hire you! Make it easy on us by proofreading your resume, selling your unique skillset and great attitude, making it easy to read, and providing good contact info for you and your references.

A FEW MORE TIPS:

USAJobs has an in-depth Help Section (including what To Include and Not To Include in resumes. If the links aren’t direct, click on FAQs and then look under the Documents section ) on their website if anything is confusing.
I don’t read cover letters. That’s a personal preference, but they are usually boring and never tell me anything a good resume doesn’t already.
Be concise and put your most important/ relevant experience and skills first.
We skim a lot of resumes and if you’re not selling yourself in the first half of the page, it’s not a great resume.

Visual Guides

Examples below are two fake resumes: one I made in the USAJobs resume builder and the other one I took that info and then reformatted it in a Google Doc and then saved as a PDF.

I created these from the resumes of people we have hired with obvious identifying details changed.

These are both good resumes, I’m showing how a good resume can become a great resume by reformatting it. You can see how a little formatting makes a huge difference in readability and you can add more details where you want, such as in the Affiliations section.