Hall is an absolutely outstanding company. If you're also looking at Care, I'm gonna assume you live somewhere near their service area in SE LA Co or Orange Co, not too much further from Kern than from where I live in the San Gabriel Valley. I was seriously considering commuting to Bakersfield for an EMT spot at Hall a year and a half or so ago. Moving to the area was simply not an option for me. It was a 2 hour drive one way from my house to their main station. (Even Santa Clarita is little more than an hour's drive) They told me in my interview that brand new EMTs there make ~10-11/hour and work out of the main Bakersfield station, 12 hour shifts posted around town, 3 days in a row one week, 4 days in a row the next (I forget the exact days but something similar to SunMT then SunMTW or ThFSat then WThFSat).
Basically it boiled down to there was no way I could afford to commute 4 hours every single day, where I'd basically I'd only have time for my shift, commute, and sleep, and that's assuming no traffic and getting off on time.
If you want to make a career, then you'd pretty much either simply leave LA/OC behind and move to Bakersfield, or if you must stay down here, have a semi-permanent place you can stay during your half of the week up in Bakersfield (I.e. you and some co-workers on the opposite side of the week split an apartment so you live there during your Sun-W, then they live there during there Th-Sat and so on).
Remember the Grapevine between LA and Kern sometimes gets shut down due to snow and traffic collisions and whatnot, and if you can't get through the pass, well, there's not a whole lot of other routes that don't involve adding another couple hours on top of the 2 hour commute. Another consideration is gas isn't exactly cheap, and if it climbs above $3/gal again, it'd be tough to afford that commute even once a week.
I'm definitely NOT saying this to discourage you from applying at Hall. It's the kind of place that prides itself on being an organization where people want to spend 10, 15, 20 year careers there. And it's the kind of place where guys WANT to spend a good long career there. Instead, I say trying to live down here in LA/OC and commuting to work in Kern a Bad Idea. My opinion is that you should move to Bakersfield if you're serious about working for Hall.
There are other members on this forum who live work either for Hall or one of the other Kern Co services and can probably correct me if my info is out of date or just plane wrong lol. Do a search for Hall and you'll find plenty more great info on them.
