Spokane sits in a quiet corner of Washington. Hiring managers on the west side of the state forget about it. The Seattle bases get all the attention. But Fairchild Air Force Base sits right outside Spokane. It sends skilled people into the local job market every year.

Say you run a midsize company in Spokane. Or anywhere in the Inland Northwest. This is a talent pool you can reach. Fairchild is an Air Mobility Command base. That means the people leaving it know aircraft, fuel, logistics, medical work, and training. They live here. Many want to stay here after they take off the uniform.

This guide breaks down who comes out of Fairchild. It covers what those people are good at. It also covers how to find them before a bigger company does. The goal is simple. Help you hire strong, stable people who already call Eastern Washington home.

Who comes out of Fairchild Air Force Base?

Fairchild is built around the 92nd Air Refueling Wing. It is the largest KC-135 Stratotanker unit in the Air Force. The base also hosts the Washington Air National Guard's 141st Air Refueling Wing. You can read the full breakdown on the Team Fairchild fact sheet.

An air refueling base needs more than pilots. It runs on a deep bench of skilled trades and support roles. Here is who the base actually produces.

One thing to keep in mind. Not every person leaving Fairchild is a mechanic. The base has people in finance, contracting, IT, security, and admin too. Read the work a person did. Do not read the unit they served in. The job title on a resume matters more than the patch.

Why does Fairchild talent fit a midsize Spokane employer?

Big national companies already run veteran hiring programs. They have staff who do nothing but source military talent. A midsize firm in Spokane usually does not. That feels like a gap. It is actually your edge.

You can move faster than a big company. You can offer a real role and a local life. You also offer a direct line to the person making the call. Some people leaving Fairchild want to stay in the Inland Northwest. For them, that beats a bigger name three states away.

The skills line up too. Air Mobility Command work is about uptime, safety, and keeping complex systems running. A midsize manufacturer needs the same thing. So does a healthcare system, a logistics firm, or a fleet operation.

Think about what a tanker base actually demands. Aircraft cannot fail in the air. So the people who maintain them work to a standard most civilian jobs never see. They document everything. They follow procedure. They catch small problems before they become big ones. Drop that habit into a Spokane shop floor or a clinic and it pays off fast.

The same goes for the soft side. A team lead at Fairchild managed people who came from all over the country. They handled stress, deadlines, and zero room for error. That kind of calm under pressure is hard to teach. It is easy to spot once you know to look.

How do you read a Fairchild veteran's resume?

Here is where most employers lose good people. The resume lands in front of you full of Air Force terms. You do not know what an AFSC is. You skim it. You move on. The person was a perfect fit and you never knew.

The fix is to translate, not to skip. A flight line maintenance role is a mechanic and team lead. A fuels specialist ran hazardous material handling. A SERE instructor built and ran training programs. The work is normal. The words are just military.

When you post a job, list the skills in both languages. Put the civilian term next to the military one. A person searching for work will find your post when they see the words they used in service. This one habit tends to surface candidates other Spokane employers miss.

Does the applicant tracking system hurt veteran candidates?

It can, but not the way people think. Your software does not delete veteran resumes. It ranks them. A resume packed with Air Force jargon and no civilian keywords sinks to the bottom of the list. It never surfaces to the top where you look.

So the problem is a match problem, not a reject problem. If your job post says "inventory management" and the veteran wrote "supply accountability," the system scores them low. They did the exact same work. The words just did not line up.

BMR exists to close that gap on the candidate side. Veterans use it to turn service language into civilian resumes that hiring software can read. That means the people who reach you arrive with resumes you can actually score and act on.

How do you reach Fairchild talent before separation?

The best time to meet a future hire is before they leave the base. People start planning their exit months out. Wait until they hit a job board and you are late. You are competing with everyone else in Spokane and beyond.

Two channels work well here. The base transition office helps service members prepare for civilian work. You can build a relationship there and let them know you are hiring local. The other channel is SkillBridge.

What about tax credits for hiring veterans?

You may have heard about the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, or WOTC. It used to give employers a credit for hiring certain veterans. Here is the honest status for 2026.

The credit expired at the end of 2025. It is not available for 2026 hires unless Congress renews it. Veterans you hired in 2025 may still qualify, so check those. But do not base a 2026 hiring plan on a credit that is not active right now. Congress has renewed it after past lapses, so it may come back. The current status lives on the IRS WOTC page.

The real reason to hire a Fairchild veteran is the talent in front of you. Base your decision on the skills in front of you. Treat any credit as a bonus, not the point.

How do you keep a Fairchild veteran once you hire them?

Getting the hire is half the job. Keeping them is the other half. A veteran who leaves in six months costs you more than the empty seat you started with. The good news is that retention here is mostly about the first 90 days.

People coming off a base are used to structure. They had a clear chain, a clear mission, and clear standards. A vague job with no onboarding feels like a step backward. Give them a real plan for the first three months and they tend to stay.

Pair the new hire with someone who knows the ropes. Set goals they can measure. Tell them what good looks like. Most of all, give them room to use the leadership they already have. A former NCO ran teams under pressure. Let them lead.

One more thing. Many people leaving Fairchild are still figuring out civilian work. Their first job out is a reset, not their final stop. If you invest in them early, you earn a loyal employee who grows with you. Treat the first role as a launchpad and the loyalty follows.

How do you build a real Fairchild hiring pipeline?

One good hire is luck. A pipeline is a plan. Want to keep hiring strong people out of Fairchild? Set up a few simple habits. Run them every quarter.

That last habit is where BMR fits. More than 65,000 resumes have been built on the platform. Over 1,000 new profiles get added every month. That pool runs deep in the exact fields Fairchild produces, like aviation maintenance, logistics, and medical support.

Want a steady way to hire from this group? You can reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. You can also learn how to partner with us on a longer hiring plan.

Where else should you look for the right roles?

Fairchild talent maps cleanly onto a few job families. If you hire in any of these areas, these guides go deeper on the role itself.

For maintenance and repair work, see how to hire veterans for aircraft MRO facilities. Warehouse, distribution, and fleet roles are a different match. Read the guide on how to hire veterans for logistics and supply chain roles.

If you operate in other parts of Washington, the west-side bases feed their own metros. See how to recruit veterans near Joint Base Lewis-McChord. There is also a guide on how to recruit veterans near Naval Base Kitsap. And one on how to recruit veterans near NAS Whidbey Island. For another Air Mobility-style base, the Dayton and Wright-Patterson AFB guide covers a similar talent mix.

Fairchild is a quiet advantage for any Spokane employer who knows how to read it. The people leaving the base are skilled, local, and ready to work. Hire them the right way and you build a real bench. Bigger companies three states away can never reach it. The talent is already here. Go get it.