Recruit Like A College Coach

Want a recruiting edge that doesn’t depend on luck or a bigger ad budget? We walk through a simple, proven strategy: recruit like a college coach. Doug Larsen, COO of Safeguard Recruiting, joins us to show how steady, human outreach turns passive interest into committed law enforcement hires—and why that same approach boosts retention long after day one.

We break down the biggest dropout triggers in police hiring: uncertainty about steps, fear of disqualification, and slow responses that make candidates self-eliminate. Then we map a practical playbook to fix it. Start with speed—respond within minutes. Set expectations in plain English. Offer a single point of contact who checks in before every milestone. Use automation, chatbots, and centralized messaging to handle volume and FAQs, but close the loop with personal calls and face-to-face moments that build trust. When recruits feel informed and seen, they keep moving.

You’ll hear how Safeguard Connect streamlines communication so any team member can jump in without losing context, reducing delays and missed messages. We cover message cadence, scripts that calm common fears, and the checkpoints that reliably convert hesitant prospects. Doug also shares why his team backs their process with a money-back guarantee built on 400+ campaigns: when agencies plug into a consistent, candidate-first system, results follow. If your pipeline looks busy but offers aren’t sticking, this coach mindset is the missing piece.

Ready to staff up with clarity and confidence? Listen now, share this with your recruiting team, and leave a quick review so others can find the show. Got a question about your process or a roadblock you want us to tackle next week? Send it our way and subscribe for more practical recruiting playbooks.

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

Setting The Stage: The Golden Ticket

Travis Yates 0:00

Welcome back to the show. Once again, I have Doug Larson, COO of Safeguard Recruiting, where each week we give you the tips, tricks, and all the things in between to help you recruit and staff your agencies full. I highly recommend you checking them out at their website. Tons of resources, articles, videos, blogs, a great webinar just went up. It's good stuff, folks. So if you're interested in recruiting the next generation and staffing your agencies full, it's the place to be. Safeguardrecruiting.com.

Be The Football Coach Strategy

Travis Yates 0:29

Doug Larson, last week, we promised the audience that we had the golden ticket for them. And what we're going to talk about is because last week we talked about passive recruits. If you haven't listened to that one, go back and listen to it, go back and watch it. But the golden ticket for passive recruits is be the football coach. It's one of our favorite pastimes, Doug. It's college football, right? We talk about it every week on the weekend. And we're mostly complaining about our home teams. But talk to us about when you talk to your clients, how you relate to what a college coach does to recruit to law enforcement.

Guiding Candidates Through Uncertainty

Doug Larsen 1:06

Yeah, a lot of our clients can understand that. The college coach is coming in, they've got recruits they want to, and they start communicating with them, letting them know about their university, their team, where they fit in that role on the team, where how they're going to be used, and showing interest in these candidates. And as it progresses, it it'll change a little. They'll get to know the candidate a little more on a personal level to be able to check in with them, how they're doing on games, how things are going in their life. But this process can take a long time. It can take one month to a year. And you may not get that commitment in the first few months, but if you stick with it over time, you can. And the success comes from building these relationships, having a way for your candidates to ask questions, relieve some of their fears, relieve some of the tension from the process. We understand the process on how to get hired into law enforcement. From an outsider looking in, it's stressful. They don't understand the steps, they don't understand if they're going to qualify all right, if they're going to get eliminated. Take those fears away from them, under help them out, what that is expected, and give them a mentor. Because if you do this type of stuff and have someone they can communicate with, not only are you going to hire more people, you're going to retain more people.

Travis Yates 2:23

Yeah, and we obviously have Safeguard Connect with our clients. It's a proprietary

Tech Helps, Relationships Close

Travis Yates 2:29

software that we built for law enforcement recruiting. It's phenomenal. But one of the things that we were able to see when we built when we put those up for our clients is we see a lot of the messaging going back and forth. And I can tell you when I look at it, a lot of these candidates and applicants are self-disqualifying themselves. They'll be in there and they'll say, I'm this age, or I have this in my background, or I'm concerned about this. And when those questions aren't answered timely, they stop the process. And so you have to have a relationship. There's only so much the technology can do, Doug. And you guys do that. You automate it message, uh, you can put FAQs, you even have chat bots on people's websites to answer the basic questions for them. So you can make the job of a recruiter a lot easier because you're giving them a volume of candidates and applicants that they maybe not used to. But what you can't replace is relationship building. And I know you've talked to a lot of clients. You said, hey, you've got to pick up the phone, man. You got to call them as quick as you can. You got to meet them, find out about their family, get a face-to-face with them if you can, because you know exponentially that converts those passive candidates, those questionable candidates in to they're then fired up about the job. Are they not?

Doug Larsen 3:39

Oh, they certainly are. And that is so key. We we'll help. We don't want the recruiters to have to work harder. So we take over a lot of that role with some automated messaging, some great messaging, but it is so key to have that personal relationship if you can develop it and get that call in and have an avenue of hey, I had a question on this, or I'm filling out my application. What do I do here? We see all these messages always flying in, and there's some excellent candidates that start self-eliminating. You don't want that, but the the key here too is we want a high retention rate off somebody showing interest to us getting to be hired. And and a big role in this is how you communicate and how well you communicate and and how available you are. We will give you the tool. Safeguard Connect is a great avenue to make this communication easy, and it makes it so anybody in your team can jump in and pick up wherever the last person left off with the messaging and know exactly what the communications are, but it will help you with this, it'll streamline your process. We don't want you to work more, we just want you to work more efficiently.

Guarantees, Next Steps, Contact

Travis Yates 4:47

Hey, this was a short one, but man, it was important. You packed a lot in. So I know you're like, oh, it was only five, six minutes long. That's okay. We're coming back next week with another great topic to help you staff up full. Doug, where can they reach you at at Safeguard Recruiting?

Doug Larsen 5:03

Yeah, safeguardrecruiting.com. Um, if you want to reach out directly to me, just put Doug at safeguardrecruiting.com. We'd love to talk to you and just even talk about your processes and what's being successful with you, what's maybe not working, and give you some solutions.

Travis Yates 5:18

I don't know how well you advertise this, Doug, but maybe you don't even want me to say it, but I know you offer a money-back guarantee, which is insane, right? If they use your recruiting system that you have built over 400 plus campaigns and it doesn't send the candidates you've promised, you'll just give them their money back. I know you don't, I don't think that's advertised a whole lot, but that's how confident you are. And it really, it really begins and ends with the process your agency's using, and you help them along the line along the line with that process, don't you?

Doug Larsen 5:45

Exactly. They plug into the safeguard recruiting process, and we will guarantee those results because we know it's gonna work.

Travis Yates 5:51

Good stuff, Doug Larson, safeguard recruiting. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next week.