Rethinking Police Recruiting

We challenge the sacred cow of rotating sworn recruiters and make the case for specialized, outsourced candidate generation that feeds a stronger hiring pipeline. We share real numbers, proven messaging, and why bonuses don’t move the needle, while outlining a partnership model that fills academies faster.

• why specialization beats rotational assignments for recruiting
• how to outsource the top of the funnel without losing control
• what ad strategy, targeting, and cadence keep candidates engaged
• where internal teams add the most value in mid-funnel steps
• forecasting volume, conversion, and time to hire
• the real cost of vacancy versus expert sourcing
• why sign-on bonuses rarely change applicant volume
• simple tech stack to automate updates and reduce drop-off
• steps to get started and what to expect from guarantees

Safeguard Recruiting is owned and operated by first responders, and it is a public safety recruiting firm with a proven recruiting system that staffs agencies across the country. 

Reach out today for a free consultation and learn about our guarantee that will increase the number of candidates for your agency. 

Transcript

The Sacred Cow: Recruiting Roles

Travis Yates 0:00

Welcome back to the show. Thank you for spending time with us here today. And I hope you've enjoyed some of our recent episodes. And we, of course, have been talking to other people and other organizations and other agencies, and they offer valuable, valuable experience. But today it's just myself and Doug Larson, the COO of Safeguard Recruiting. Doug, how are you doing today?

Doug Larsen 0:21

Doing well.

Travis Yates 0:22

Doug, we're going to talk about a sacred cow today that uh we've sort of held off on talking about, but I think we have experienced enough with our clients and we've heard it from enough agencies and frustrations. It's probably time to talk about it. Now, before I say this, let me back everybody up.

Why Specialization Beats Rotations

Travis Yates 0:39

There was a time when departments did all of their own policies, and then a little company called LexPo came along, and our good friend Gordon Graham decided we could do this much easier, much more efficient, and much cheaper. And that is a lot of departments are using them right now. And we've seen that in other areas, we've seen that in public information and media relations. We've seen that in data analysts, we've seen that in a lot of different areas. We've seen it really a civilianization within some agencies in different areas. Because at the end of the day, people go into law enforcement to do law enforcement. But what we do in these agencies, Doug, is we put them in these little boxes. But when it comes to recruiting, you're putting a police officer into a job that is highly specialized. And that could be a recipe for disaster. Now, the reason we've always been hesitant about talking about this is because we we we love the recruiters we work with, right? They a lot of them do a great job, but a lot of them get transferred out, get promoted out. We start working with new ones. I mean, I would say half our clients within our relationship over the course of the year, though, okay, I'm getting transferred. Here's the next recruiter. Okay, I'm getting promoted. And we love that for them. You know, that's all about career development, but we can't treat recruiting like it's just an assignment because in the private industry, Doug, it's a specialized expertise. You don't see folks like Nike or Apple, which is recruiters, they with their own recruiters, they hire that out to experts, or they hire the experts in, and that's the only job they do. And so, what we want to talk about briefly today is the power of being able to hire someone like Safeguard Recruiting to maybe not take all of that off of your shoulders, but to put the expertise on top of the sworn recruiter. Kind of give us your thoughts on that, Doug.

Doug Larsen 2:24

Yeah, you're exactly right,

Outsourcing The Top Of Funnel

Doug Larsen 2:26

Travis. So departments do a good job of recruiting and always have. There's always a number of people knocking on your door that want to get into law enforcement. And but what we've seen over the last decade or two is the numbers kind of been dwindling because the way you apply for jobs, the way you look for them is different. And it can be hard for departments to keep up with the trends, keep up with what you need to do to keep people engaged or having them find your opening quickly. And so that's that's where we come in. We're seeing a lot more departments comfortable with outsourcing pieces of the recruiting cycle. It may be a little bit like, hey, do do the candid generation, the sourcing for us, and make sure we have enough of those because we have so many people coming through the door, it's not enough. So we need somebody to come in on the top and give us more applicants. And we do that, and we do that very well. And it's more and more pieces of that are getting handed off by departments because it's more efficient and it's more effective to have a company that specializes in this instead of trying to find somebody internal in your department that not only wants to do recruiting, but has a specialty to keep up with the latest tech, the trends. Where do I place my ads? How do I long do I leave them there? How do I build them? What's going to resonate with people? How am I gonna get my ads through so they even get approved so they get placed? And there's so many little pieces there that it really is more efficient to outsource a lot of that to a company like Safeguard that specializes in it and can produce for you.

The Tech, Trends, And Ad Strategy

Travis Yates 4:05

Well, and if I'm being honest, and I was in an agency for 30 years and I saw us trying to figure it out. I was I was placed in a commander position over the recruiting unit for a number of years, and I had to try to figure it out. I had to look at the people that were recruiting, and I'll just to be honest, we never figured it out because the there's so many pieces, as you said, Doug. So, you know, how do you how do you source? How do you place ads out there? What type of technology do you need? Do we use email? Do we use software like Safeguard Connect? That law enforcement has a role in recruiting. Let me tell you what we were very good at, Doug. Once somebody applied, we were very good at explaining the job for them, explaining the testing process, getting them prepared for the physical fitness stuff, getting them on a ride along. We we could do that very well, but the problem was how do you even know how to put them net out there to get as many people as possible? Because if you want high-quality people, you've got to get a lot of people in the door. And once the job fairs dried up, and that was what we did for many years. And if you're still going to job fairs, you can go to them. You're not gonna get that many people. That's just the way it is, right? And so once those sort of dried up, we sort of figured out what are we gonna do. And so I know we talked about this before, but it's the 80-20 rule. I think most departments are gonna get 70 or 80 percent of the people that just show up, they just want to be a police officer, or they maybe they grew up in your community and they're just gonna show up and take your test. You don't have to do anything, but it's the other 20 or 25 percent that you have to have recruiting expertise. And you know, I'm not saying a police officer couldn't figure it out, Doug. You and I figured it out, but we went on a several year journey to figure it out to get to where we are today. It's really hard to expect a brand new sergeant in recruiting to just get this, right? And so you think about the cost of that, the cost, the employee cost, and all

Where Agencies Excel Internally

Travis Yates 6:01

just to go get the training or to get the technology. And I think that's why we're seeing more and more departments that come to us, Doug, and say, Hey, listen, take this piece over. We'll talk to them once they apply, right? We'll we'll we'll reach out and we'll we'll take it from there, but we need the applicants up front from you. Is that what you're hearing?

Doug Larsen 6:20

That's that's exactly what we're hearing. And they need to know, okay, I can I'm gonna have this many people coming through the door. They need to know they're gonna have that kind of volume, what they're gonna deal with, so they can prepare for it and they know what their conversion rates are to get actual hires. And the more people we get coming through the door that meet your qualifications, they're all filtered, then the better people you get to choose from. And so, and it's not just hey, getting people interested in your department. We keep them interested through the applications on the stage, because we have spent years with messaging, messaging cadence, how they're delivered, what the message says, what kind of information about your department is spread. So we we keep people interested because one thing we are not good at in law enforcement is communicating and communicating with the new applicant, the new interested applicant. Because if you're especially if you're a larger department and you're having hundreds of people come in, it's overwhelming for that recruiter. Well, we automate all this stuff.

Volume, Conversion, And Guarantees

Doug Larsen 7:26

We've got the roadmap laid out for you. And if you follow this highly successful, you convert a large number of the people into applicants, and we can get you whatever volume you can handle right up front. And we guarantee that. So you'll know you can plan for it, you can plan for the budget, and you can plan for the volume of people coming through all the way through hire, getting them in the academy, and get them out on the road.

Travis Yates 7:54

And Doug, I think a lot of people, you know, I listen, I was in the profession, I took vendor calls all the time, and there's almost this negative sense of, oh, who's this safeguard recruiting? Well, let me just remind you we've got over 100 years of law enforcement experience, our our our full-time team does, and we're almost all of our subcontractors are law enforcement or former law enforcement as well. And we we did the job inside the department. Now we do the recruiting outside the department. So, yeah, what I think people need to understand, Doug, is I think sometimes they get a negative sense about a vendor. I was in law enforcement at a management level. I used to get vendor calls all the time. We almost get jaded by that, right? Well, we're not just a vendor. I mean, we've got over 100 years of law enforcement experience in our full-time team. We did the job in the departments, we did the recruiting,

Cost Math And Budget Tradeoffs

Travis Yates 8:40

we managed recruiting. We have had 500 successful recruiting campaigns for departments after you and I both retired. It works, it's guaranteed, as you said. We know exactly what it takes, Doug.

Doug Larsen 8:51

Yeah, exactly. We've been on both sides of this equation. We've we've had to hire vendors, and now we are a vendor, but we're a little different. We're we're unique. We're law enforcement, we love law enforcement. And at times, people will question why are you giving so much to a department or why are you helping them out so much? And we're not even getting compensated for it. And that's because we like law enforcement. We'll point things out to departments that hey, you should do this differently. This will help you out in your process, or this is where you're losing candidates, and this is what we suggest. But we also want to work with them and we want to build their pipelines up. We want the the departments fully staffed. Don't be spending a lot of money on overtime. There are still a large number of people that want to be in law enforcement. We just got to go out and contact them in the proper ways and and show them that your opening's there.

Travis Yates 9:41

Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of people that want to get in law enforcement. This whole recruiting crisis is a myth, and we've described that a lot. It's just about processes and getting the right partner. But the other thing I think people get hinky about, Doug, is all this, what's this going to cost, right? Because listen, we were both there. Every time a vendor calls you, you're like, Oh, okay, what kind of money is this going to cost us? Well, listen, we we don't want to get into details about your agency, but we can just talk to you about a uh potential client we just spoke to. There are 50 officers down, and the reason we can quote this specifically is we've done hundreds of campaigns. We ask, how many hires do you need? Okay, based on that, the last time you did an application, how many applications did it take to get a hire? And once you get those numbers, because we know what it takes to get applications, and then it's just a matter of the percentage to hires. And so this department's down 50 officers, Doug. They were spending over $2 million

Bonuses Don’t Move The Needle

Travis Yates 10:32

a year uh for hirebacks to fill the shifts from being down. Well, our quote was $50,000 and they're done. Now, granted, I may not be the same for everybody, but this particular client and the situation they're in based on their recruiting in the past, we were fully confident that for $50,000, they're going to be fully staffed. Now, they sort of didn't believe that, but we know it. We know it because we've done it time and time again, have we not?

Doug Larsen 10:59

Yeah, we we have, and it's not an overwhelming expense. Matter of fact, we've gone to great lengths to make sure we have a package for departments of all sizes because we never want the little departments to be left behind. Matter of fact, they're probably the ones that need the most help because they have the least amount of resources. But it is not an overwhelming number to keep a candidate pipeline filled and going through to application. And really, if you look at some of the bonuses that departments are giving out, it can be that or less than just for one officer, and you're you're gaining a lot of traction in getting a lot of candidates for you.

Travis Yates 11:38

We put a lot of stock in bonuses, and I know we're all over the map in a show, but this is why we do this. But we put a lot of stock in bonuses. We've had clients that have had bonuses, we've had clients that have had no bonuses. Doug, you want to go ahead and tell them the difference we see?

Doug Larsen 11:52

Yeah, there's no difference.

Travis Yates 11:54

There is no difference. I hate to break it to you. I hate to break it to you. There is no difference. We we could take a client that's offering a fifty thousand dollar bonus and a client offering a job, and we would get them the same amount of applicants. Uh, and so yeah, I think we think that's

How To Get Started With Help

Travis Yates 12:11

a big deal. It's really not. Um, what we do works regardless of the bonus, regardless of the salary, regardless of the benefits. We know how to message your department, we know how to get the interest, we know how to get the applicants. And if you have any questions, Doug, they can reach out to you.

Doug Larsen 12:26

Yeah, jump on the website and send us a note and we'll get back to you and let's let's start helping you out.

Travis Yates 12:34

Safeguardrecruiting.com. Reach out to us, even if you just want to talk, we'll talk to you. We don't we're not gonna send you an invoice, we we'll talk to you, help you out any way which you can. But I think when you look into what we're doing, you're gonna find out it's really the answer that you need. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.