Stop Making Recruits Play Where’s Waldo With Your Application

We explain how fast, simple, and consistent communication turns interest into real police applicants. We share the data behind drop-offs, the power of a five-to-seven-field form, and why one-click flows and recruiter calls lift conversions from single digits to 40 percent.

• immediate outreach via text and email to reduce 90% drop-off
• recruiter phone calls to add trust and momentum
• five to seven fields on initial form to boost completion
• remove registration walls and extra clicks from apply flow
• seven to eight touch cadence to move candidates forward
• use ATS tools for mass text and email follow-ups
• shift long packets to later, in-person milestones
• embrace volume at the top to raise final quality
• keep processes current with tech and candidate expectations

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

Series Recap And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to the police recruiting show as usual. I have Doug Larson, the CEO of Safeguard Recruiting, with us. And if you're finding this video for the first time, this is a third video in a series of three of what you must do without hesitation if you want true success. If any one of these are left out, you're going to struggle. We see this today. The first video we did, so be sure to check it out if you haven't watched it is you have to understand the difference between marketing and recruiting. You have to select recruiting. That's step one. Video two, watch it if you haven't already seen it. Is once you understand what recruiting is and you select recruiting, you have to know the data, not of your hires, but how many people you need to get interested in your department and how many applications you need for your hires. Then you need to stick with recruiting elements to get those people. And the third and final video is once you've done that, you need to implement the correct processes to maximize that.

Why Immediate Communication Wins

SPEAKER_00 1:01

And that's what we're going to talk about today, Doug. Pretty exciting series we have here. I don't know why it's taken us this long to do it, but uh man, thanks for doing it. How's things been?

Doug Larsen 1:09

Yeah, it's going excellent. I'm excited about the series too. I like talking about this stuff and this part of it.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Well, the first process that I'll mention is you have to have a communication strategy. And uh because what we see and what the data shows us is uh if you don't communicate immediately with somebody that's interested in your job, you're gonna lose them. You're just gonna lose them. In fact, I've had some data here that we've gotten from our campaigns, Doug, and it says that 43% of the actually 45% of people that show interest will not go through the process if they feel there's poor communication. So you're gonna lose almost half of the people that are interested. And if you spend money on getting those people, that's a problem. You you lose almost half based on a lack of communication alone. And uh man, that is pretty insane. In fact, the other data point I have from our campaigns is if it takes multiple days for you to contact them, you get a 90% drop off from I'm interested to I'm applying, meaning you need to contact them immediately to get the application. And Doug, we we unfortunately have clients that don't do this, right? And we see that 10% right on the mark. If they're getting a thousand a month, only a hundred's applying, right? If they're getting 10,000 a month, only a thousand is applying. If they're getting a hundred a month, only 10 is applying. That's pretty drastic. And so it's really as simple as communicating on it in a very quick fashion. And we do, and you do a lot of that for them, Doug. Let's talk about what Safeguard does for that communication piece.

Doug Larsen 2:58

Yeah, Travis, communication

Safeguard’s Messaging Playbook

Doug Larsen 3:00

is key. You've heard us talking about this for years, right? That we've got to communicate effectively and often to if we don't, we're not showing interest in the candidate, they move on. And this is something that, as law enforcement, is transitioning into this new era from hey, we used to have enough people come knocking on our door that we could do it on our time frame, to that's not how the world works now. Everybody's got a phone in their hand, they expect immediate communication, immediate information, and that's what is important to them. Not only that shows you're interested in me, but you work at a level that I can trust as as I move forward through this. So communication is very key. And we could cite example after example of this of where it's a problem. And we still have some departments that right up front tell us, hey, somebody shows interest in us, we're gonna send them this 50-60 page packet. And if they don't fill that out, they we don't talk to them at all. Or I'll call them a couple times and it's take it or leave it. If if if I can't get a hold of you, I guess you weren't interested. But there's a number of different methods that we can communicate with people. The messaging's got to be right as we communicate with people, but it is so important, it will take your campaign, your hiring from that low level of conversion of three to five percent, which is kind of a national average, and rocket it up there in the 40 percent. And if we go back to the main problem that departments have, I don't have enough people to talk to. When we do get you people to talk to, how are you talking to them and when?

SPEAKER_00 4:42

That's the most important part. Yeah, the couple of things that you do, Doug, is you obviously you automatically send them immediate text, immediate emails. You you really love to send them pretty quickly to the recruiter because there's nothing that there's nothing that can beat that personal phone call, that personal touch to an actual recruiter. But then what you do, Doug, is after about a month, you'll pick up the communication. So if they haven't applied yet, you'll pick that communication up so the recruiters can focus on, hey, who's who's the recent, who's the hot leads, right? Who are the people that have just expressed interest? And those recruiters can dive into communicating and making phone calls to them and and to drive the applications up.

Keep Forms Short To Convert

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Now, don't get me wrong, as you said, they could do nothing, they're still going to get more applications than they would before, but man, you're wasting a lot of resources by not that with that communication piece. Are you not?

Doug Larsen 5:30

Yeah. And and if we're looking at this, it typically takes at least seven to eight pieces of communication with a candidate to get them solidly in the process and moving forward. And we at Safeguard recognize this up front. We've been advocating this forever, and we'll handle that first level. As soon as somebody shows interest, they immediately get a text from us saying, Hey, thank you for your interest in so-and-so department. And we will be reaching out to you from this email address, this phone number. Their name doesn't get held by us at all. When it comes in through the process, through the digital recruiting campaign, it immediately goes to the recruiter. So we're trying to bridge that gap until the recruiter can get involved and get the communication. And then a couple of days later, we'll do a follow-up email just to say, hey, we're we're still interested in you. We'll be reaching out, and it's effective until the recruiter can jump in and take over and do their part.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Well, and you make it easy. Uh, you know, I don't want to go into it too much. People can go back and watch because we've done videos on our applicant tracking system, and so you can watch that. But you give this for nothing with a digital campaign. You believe in so much the communication piece, you provide them with a cloud-based software where they could mass email, mass text, keep up with everybody because you found that if they can't keep up with all the candidates, they're not going to be successful in communication. And after communication, there's another one I want to talk about, Doug, and our data shows us this. The initial information you get from them should not be a 60, 70 page background check, but you've got to keep these submission fields between five and seven fields name, address, phone number, email, as short as possible because people do not complete that stuff. And if you put a registration process on top of that, you really lose a lot of people. And and and that's that's very important. We get a lot of departments that will say, we want to just send them to our big giant application right off the bat. That's not smart to do. You're gonna lose so many people, and they and they may say, well, then that's then that's fine. That's you're talking about a generation today, I don't whether you like it or not, they're not jumping through your hoops, they're just not. So if you want to truly staff up completely,

One Click Beats Seven Clicks

SPEAKER_00 7:40

you're gonna have to conform to that. And so, well, I'll just tell you what I what I recommend people all the time, Doug, is I would say get that initial piece of information that you need to schedule them for a test, whatever that is, right? Then when they show up for the test, whatever else you need from them, you got them there. You know, put a laptop in front of them, put a background packet in front of them, and have them fill it out. Because if you don't do that, you're gonna lose a lot of people, are you not?

Doug Larsen 8:06

You're exactly right, Travis. And this is part of the process when when we have departments come on with us, we not only do the digital campaigns, but we have an entire process that we lay out for the departments. We got some training that goes along with it. And if you leave out steps, any steps in this process, you lose candidates along the way. And big part is how do we get them initially involved, we get them qualified, we start communicating with them, and then the kind of information you're exactly right, that five to seven little short form of information. We need the information so we know who these people are, we can start that communication with them. And then as we start vetting them out even more in interest and time frames, that's when you should be introducing those lengthy applications and background packets and and things. But we we don't want to we need to be able to capture as much information so we can continue the process with people and communicate.

SPEAKER_00 9:06

Yeah, man, that's huge. That's huge. In fact, um we spoke to a potential client the other day, and I think we talked about on the show where he had it down to one touch point because touch points are big. We we just saw a client, we just spoke to a client a few days ago where there were like seven different clicks that somebody had to do before they applied. Forget it. You're never you're never gonna get who you need with that. You're just not. You you can say you can not like that all you want, you can stick to your guns and keep that website like that. It's just not gonna work for you, and we want to help you with that. And so, what Doug, what people don't understand is when we send you people to the to the app and tracking software, and they can see they get all these people every day. We're getting that with one click. We have a one-click process on social media to get their information, and we stick with that five to seven fields, and we're very successful in doing that. And so once we do that with one click, we don't want you to then go to seven or eight or nine clicks. We need you just kind of stick to that. It may not be one click, but it's got to be two or three clicks. We know the data that every click, every touch point you make them go through, you're losing a percentage. And if you make them register, and we see clients that use these human resource accounts where they have to register for an account and they have to apply. Forget about it. You may get some applicants, but you're not gonna get nearly as many applicants as you need to hire, will you?

Doug Larsen 10:28

Yeah, you're exactly right. Any anything you do to introduce some problems within the process, like extra clicks, you know, we got to play where's Waldo and find out how do I even get

Quality Requires Volume

Doug Larsen 10:40

to this job opening, or if it the the more information you want to grab up front, the candidate might not have time to do it right then, right? They're they're used to easier and quicker ways to apply. And that's one way the private industry has over the government side and the departments is on the government side, we usually have lengthier application processes, and these hiring processes for departments can be three to six months long. And the the more, the harder you make it on people, the more of them are gonna fall out of your process. Now, if we go back to the original problem, I don't have enough people to talk to, and I get people talking to me. I don't want anybody falling out because of I'm doing something wrong in my process to get them as a candidate and get them as a hire.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Yeah, and we've had a lot of people talk about, yeah, you're sending me all these candidates, but we want high quality hires. Well, that's why we send all those candidates, right? If you need to hire 50 very highly qualified people, why don't you why don't you want a thousand applications? That's what it takes, right? I mean, so it's really a numbers game. You know, we're not your thousand applications, there's gonna be a significant number that you don't want to hire. They may be minimally qualified, but they're just other people more qualified. But if you want the highest qualified people, you need the most people up front. And the only way to do that, Doug, is what is what you're doing with Safeguard. Because if you leave any of these pieces out, you're not gonna be able to do it. And listen, I I think one of the one of the things I'm wrestling with, I don't know about you, Doug, is I feel like sometimes that I'm talking down to people and I'm saying they're wrong. That's not what I that's not what I'm saying at all. We just know what works, and we're from law enforcement. We want to help law enforcement, we want to then to succeed, and we just know what works based on all these campaigns that you've been able to do and all this data that you have, Doug. I mean, some of this data is is just so crazy to me that um I mean 90% drop off if you go more than three days without talking to them. That's insane. So here's the answer call them on day one, right? I mean, so so it so we're not saying it to say people are wrong. We don't expect police officers to be high-level recruiting experts. That's not what we do. But we're just trying to provide the information to help them, whether they hire us or not. You can implement this stuff on your own if you like. I think we've sort of dialed this into where we can help you with not very much money at all, by the way. One of the important things about knowing the data and knowing what it takes is we know exactly what it costs. So we, if you've got to hire

Make Recruiting Processes Current

SPEAKER_00 13:10

10 people, we can tell you to the penny what that's going to cost you, hands down. No games here, no random traffic being sent to your website, no commercials nobody's gonna watch. We're not gonna talk about YouTube, this and that. We're just gonna talk about things that actually work. And um, and so it's I think very much what we do, and that's why we do this show, because Doug, we don't have to do the show. Nobody else does this. We're doing this because we want to educate at the end of the day. You don't have to hire safeguard recruiting, but we do want to see our community staffed up with officers because we're very fearful of that not happening. And the only way to do that is to actually lean in on what recruiting is and what it takes to actually make it happen.

Doug Larsen 13:46

Yeah, and and I'd so to your point, I don't we're not telling people they're they're wrong in their recruiting process. All we're asking and letting them know is they should make sure their recruiting process is current, current with the times, current with the technology, current with the employment rules, and current with how people get uh hired. And that's what we're trying to do for them, not only in outreach and making sure people are aware of the opening, but once they're in there, the entire process is current, so it maximizes effectiveness and it's a very efficient process for everybody involved, and that's that's all we're doing is we are we're getting departments so the recruiting efforts are actually current.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Well, I hope this series helped. I mean, we went through it pretty quick. Obviously, with our clients, we go into a lot of detail. We we do a lot of uh training with them. In fact, uh just as an offer, if anybody watched all three of these videos and you're really interested, we will send you our $200 class for free. We'll give you a special code and you can if you if you put up with us for these three episodes, we'll give you two hours of it where we go into a lot of detail about all this. Uh, just

Free Training Offer And Close

SPEAKER_00 15:00

contact us on our website, safeguardrecruiting.com, and say, hey, I watched all three videos. Make sure you say you love Doug's hair and you love what he had to say, and we'll just send you a code over to take that class. I mean, we spent thousands of dollars producing that. We're not here to try to take a bunch of money. We truly want to help. So we'll give that class to you for nothing, no strings attached. But you obviously would have had to make it to the end of this video of my rambling and and watch the other two. But uh tell us, tell us who you are, where we can send the code to, and kind of what you kind of took away from these three videos. Doug Larson, man, this has been fun. I probably get way too excited about this than I should, but I'm just excited because we know this works and we just want people to understand that so much. So uh, man, thanks for being on. Thanks for uh thanks for all the suggestions. It's it's great.

Doug Larsen 15:49

Yeah, this has been excellent. Thanks, Travis.

SPEAKER_00 15:51

If you've been watching, you've been listening, thank you for doing that. We will certainly see you next week.