You posted the respiratory therapy req in March. It is still open. You have screened maybe five people. Two of them took a counteroffer from the hospital they already worked at. One wanted nights only. One never called back.

So you raise the rate. Then the clinic across town raises theirs. Nobody new joined the pool. You just paid more for the same small group of people.

There is a source most hospitals and skilled nursing facilities never open. The U.S. military runs its own respiratory therapy school. The same body accredits that school and your local community college program. Its graduates can earn an associate degree. Many of them hold a national credential before they ever leave active duty.

This guide covers what a military respiratory tech actually arrives with. It also covers what they do not arrive with, because getting that part wrong is a compliance problem. You will get two plays. One for candidates who can step into an RT seat now. One for medics who can fill a support seat today and earn the credential later. Want the wider view across a health system? Start with our guide on recruiting veterans into healthcare operations roles.

Why does a respiratory therapy req stay open for months?

The math is against you. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects respiratory therapist jobs to grow 12 percent from 2024 to 2034. That is much faster than the average job. About 8,800 openings are projected each year over that decade. Many of those openings come from people leaving the field or retiring.

Median pay was 80,450 dollars in May 2024. That is a real salary. It is also why a counteroffer works so well on your finalist.

Now look at how you fill the seat. You post. You wait. You call three therapists who already work within twenty miles of you. That is just trading techs with the hospital across town.

Raising the wage helps for one hire. It does not add a person to the pond. Adding a new source does.

Midsize employers feel this hardest. A large health system can run a residency program and grow its own therapists. A two hundred bed hospital or a nursing group cannot. You are hiring finished people from a pool that barely grows.

What is the military respiratory therapy school?

Respiratory therapy education is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Respiratory Care, known as CoARC. Its 2024 accreditation report counted 520 programs and program options under review. Two of them are sponsored by the federal government. One is run by the Army and Navy. One is run by the Air Force.

Both sit at Joint Base San Antonio, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Both are listed at the entry into practice level. Both award an AS degree. The academic partner is the Uniformed Services University College of Allied Health Sciences. It grants the Associate of Science in Health Sciences.

That is the same accreditor your local community college answers to. It is the same degree level your last three hires held. You can look both programs up yourself in the CoARC program directory.

This matters more than any resume tip in this article. A graduate of either school can clear your education bar. Most hiring teams did not know that door was open. Still ask each candidate for their degree, because not everyone finishes it.

Does a military respiratory tech arrive already credentialed?

Sometimes. Not always. Never assume it.

The national credential comes from the National Board for Respiratory Care, or NBRC. Candidates sit the Therapist Multiple Choice exam, called the TMC. A low cut score earns the CRT credential. A high cut score earns the CRT and opens the door to the Clinical Simulation Examination. Passing that second exam completes the RRT credential.

The NBRC education route asks for an associate degree at minimum. It has to come from a CoARC supported or accredited entry into practice program. Both military programs fit that description. So their graduates qualify to sit the exams on the same footing as a civilian graduate.

Many service members test while still in uniform. The Air Force makes the RRT a condition of the journeyman skill level. Nearly everyone at that level or above holds it. Some Army and Navy techs finish the exams before they separate. Others put it off because deployments and duty stations got in the way.

What about the state license?

Respiratory therapists are licensed in nearly every state. Alaska passed its own licensing law in 2026 and is still setting it up. Rules move. Confirm the current status with your state board before you write a date into an offer letter.

A national credential is portable. A state license is not. Your candidate may hold the RRT and still need to apply where you operate. That application takes time. Build it into your start date instead of being surprised by it.

Several states publish a military crosswalk or an endorsement path for applicants with service training. Ask the candidate what they have already filed. Many have looked into it long before you called.

Which military job codes should you search for?

Two groups matter, and mixing them up causes real problems. One group trained on the ventilator. One group did not.

Column A is your RT pipeline. Start with the Army 68V Respiratory Specialist career page. Then read the Air Force 4H0X1 Respiratory Care Practitioner page. Both explain the day to day work in civilian terms.

Column B is your support pipeline. A Navy Hospital Corpsman or an Air Force Aerospace Medical Technician is not a respiratory therapist. Do not post them as one. Our guide on hiring combat medics and corpsmen covers where they do fit.

What can you hire today while a credential is pending?

Say your candidate has the training but not the exam. Or the credential but not your state license yet. You still have moves. Put them somewhere useful while the paperwork clears.

Then sponsor the rest. Pay the exam fee. Give paid study hours. Reimburse the state license application. A few hundred dollars and some scheduled time beats another six months of an open req.

That offer also buys loyalty. People remember who paid for their credential. A therapist you sponsored is harder for a competitor to poach. Skilled nursing operators run the same play. We cover it in our guide to hiring veterans for skilled nursing facilities.

One more thing about this group. Military respiratory techs are used to a duty roster. Nights, weekends and holidays are normal to them. Ask what shift they want instead of assuming they will fight you on it. Many will take the coverage nobody else wants. Home health and hospice agencies see the same pattern. We cover it in our guide on hiring veterans for home health and hospice care.

What will a military respiratory tech not arrive with?

Be honest with yourself here. The clinical base is strong. The civilian wrapper around it is not.

• Your EMR: the military health record MHS GENESIS runs on Cerner. Your own build will still be new to them. Plan for real training time.
• Payer documentation: military hospitals bill insurers, but clinical staff rarely touch that side. Charting for reimbursement is usually new.
• Outpatient volume: pulmonary function lab throughput and clinic scheduling may be light on their record.
• Home care and DME: home oxygen setup and equipment education are usually civilian only.
• Case mix depth: military hospitals see a younger population. Ask about neonatal and geriatric hours directly.

Ask about each one in the interview. Then write the answers into a training plan before the first shift. Your charge therapist will thank you.

None of these are dealbreakers. They are onboarding items. Put them in a written plan and the ramp gets short. Our 90-day onboarding plan for veteran hires lays out the structure.

How do you read a military respiratory resume?

Most of these resumes still read like a service record. That is a translation problem, not a skill problem.

It also affects your own system. Applicant tracking software ranks resumes against the posting. A resume full of military terms ranks low and sinks toward the bottom of the list. It does not get rejected. It just never surfaces to a human.

So change how you search. Query your own database for plain words. Try ventilator, airway, intubation, oxygen, ICU, patient transport, respiratory. Do not search only for the letters RRT. You will miss the person who has not tested yet.

Want a repeatable method for every clinical req? See our guide on how hospitals recruit veterans for clinical and ops roles.

What should you ask in the interview?

Skip the culture questions for a minute. Ask things that reveal bench skill and credential status. Five work well.

1. Walk me through the last patient you weaned off a vent. Listen for the steps, not the outcome.
2. Tell me about a patient who crashed on your shift. You want the first thirty seconds of their answer.
3. What is your NBRC status right now, and what is the date on it? This is a factual question. Take a factual answer.
4. Which state license do you hold or have you applied for? Ask for the application date too.
5. What equipment have you fixed yourself instead of calling for help? Military techs often troubleshoot the machine. That habit saves you money.

Add one honest closer. Ask which patient population they have spent the least time with. A good candidate will answer straight. That answer writes your training plan for you.

Score the answers the same way for every candidate. Our structured interview scorecard for veteran candidates gives you a template. If this is your first veteran interview, read how to interview a veteran candidate first.

Where do you find these candidates first?

Timing beats budget here. A respiratory tech who has been out for a year is usually working already. The window that matters is the last few months of service.

Best Military Resume runs a searchable pool of military candidates who allow employers to find them. You can filter by skills and job title and work from there.

SkillBridge is the other early door. It lets an approved service member work with a civilian company near the end of service. The military still pays them. You do not pay a wage during the program. To host, your business must have been established for at least three years. That gate sits in the DoD SkillBridge memorandum of understanding. Federal, state and local government offices are exempt from the three year rule. Start at skillbridge.mil and see our walkthrough on becoming a SkillBridge host company.

You can make an offer during the program. Employment normally starts after the separation date. You cannot pay them before that date. Plan the start date around that. We break the timing down in when a veteran candidate is available to start.

The Department of Labor also keeps employer resources for hiring veterans. Worth a bookmark for your TA team.

What should you do this week?

You do not need a veteran hiring program to do this. You need one open RT req and a different place to look.

Do those four things and the req starts moving. You are no longer bidding against the hospital across town for the same five people.

The managers who keep these hires do one extra thing. They explain the why behind a policy instead of just naming the policy. That habit is covered in our guide on training managers to retain veteran hires.

Want to see who is out there before you post again? Reach out about access to the BMR veteran talent pool. Want a pipeline instead of one filled seat? Partner with us and we will help you build it.