What happens after you apply for a travel therapy job?

After you apply for a travel therapy job, a recruiter contacts you, confirms the details, and asks to submit you to the facility, which may then interview you and make an offer. At each of those steps you can ask questions, and at each one you can say no.

By ProTherapy Staffing, published November 3, 2026.

What happens right after you apply?

A recruiter reads your application and contacts you, usually by phone or text. The first call confirms the basics: your discipline, the states where you hold a license or compact privilege, the settings you have worked in, and when you could start.

Use that call to check the job itself. Ask whether it is still open, what the facility and caseload are, what the schedule looks like and how the pay is split between a taxable wage and stipends. A recruiter who cannot answer yet should be able to say when they will know.

What does it mean to be submitted to a facility?

A submission is the agency sending your profile to a facility for a specific job: your resume, your licenses, your references and your skills checklist. The facility reviews it and decides whether to interview you.

Ask your recruiter to tell you each time you are submitted, and to which facility. If you work with more than one agency, that record keeps two agencies from sending the same profile to the same job, which can slow a facility's decision.

What happens in a facility interview?

The interview is often a phone or video call with a rehab manager or a lead therapist. Expect questions about the settings and patients you have worked with, the documentation systems you know and how quickly you can be productive; your skills checklist can set the agenda.

Ask your own questions too: the caseload, the productivity expectation, who you will work alongside, and what orientation looks like. Some questions are off limits for the facility. The EEOC says that “Employers are explicitly prohibited from making pre-offer inquiries about disability,” and that information about “race, sex, national origin, age, and religion are irrelevant” to hiring decisions.

If you want to know where an application of yours stands, ask a ProTherapy recruiter: Find my next contract.

What should a travel therapy offer include?

Ask for the offer in writing before you accept it. It should name the facility, the start and end dates, the hours the contract commits to, the taxable wage and each stipend, travel reimbursement if there is any, and the cancellation terms on both sides.

Travel therapy contracts walks through each clause, and pay packages explained shows how the wage and stipends fit together. Compare the written offer with what the recruiter said on the phone; if they differ, the written one is what you would be signing.

Which requests should make you stop?

A request for money. The FTC is direct about it: “Honest employers, including the federal government, will never ask you to pay to get a job. Anyone who does is a scammer.” It is just as clear about checks: “No honest potential employer will ever send you a check to deposit and then tell you to send on part of the money.”

Pressure is another sign. A real job can fill quickly, but a recruiter should still give you time to read the offer. If you are pushed to accept before you have the terms in writing, slow down and ask for them.

What happens after you accept an offer?

Accepting starts the paperwork. You sign the contract, and the agency opens your credentialing file: license verification, a background check, health records such as TB screening and immunizations, and the facility's own forms. The credentialing guide lists what is usually asked for.

If the job is in a state where you do not yet hold a license or compact privilege, that application has to finish before you can treat patients there; the licensure guide covers each route. Then come housing and travel. Your recruiter stays your contact through all of it, so keep each document they ask for moving as soon as it is requested.

What can you say no to along the way?

Everything before you sign. You can decline to be submitted to a job, decline an interview, and decline an offer, and saying why helps the recruiter bring you better matches next time.

ProTherapy Staffing, which publishes this site, puts its rule this way: “You choose which contracts to pursue; we never place you anywhere without your yes.” The same right applies with any agency: until you sign a contract, the decision to go is yours.

Frequently asked questions

Can an agency submit me to a travel therapy job without asking?

Ask your recruiter to confirm with you before each submission and to tell you which facility it went to. A record of your submissions also keeps two agencies from sending your profile to the same job.

Should I pay a fee to get a travel therapy job?

No. The FTC says honest employers will never ask you to pay to get a job, and that anyone who does is a scammer.

What can a facility not ask in a travel therapy interview?

The EEOC says employers are explicitly prohibited from making pre-offer inquiries about disability, and that information about race, sex, national origin, age and religion is irrelevant to hiring decisions.

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