Five Police Recruiting Myths Exposed

We react to a viral set of “five things marketing companies don’t want you to know” and explain where it’s true, where it’s incomplete, and what police agencies actually need to fix hiring. We lay out the difference between exposure and applicants, why social media growth doesn’t equal recruiting success, and how a real pipeline gets departments fully staffed. 
• why “you don’t need help” ignores recruiter turnover and the learning curve of professional recruiting 
• the gap between impressions and real candidates who enter your hiring process 
• solving staffing while still maintaining a continuous pipeline through normal attrition 
• why the agency always leads on culture, message, and brand approvals 
• branding vs recruiting and why followers rarely translate into applicants 
• what an ad and social post audit reveals about conversion and call to action 
• the back-end essentials: lead capture, communication, and tracking what works 
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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

Why A Video Sparked Concern

Travis Yates 0:00

Welcome back to staffing the mission. Once again, we have Doug Larson, the COO of Safeguard Recruiting. We've got a fantastic show for you today. I'm so glad that you're watching or you're listening on any podcast platform out there. We're there. Doug Larson, how are you?

Doug Larsen 0:16

Excellent.

Travis Yates 0:18

Well, today's show, we have no guests. It's going to be me and you ripping a little bit, but I saw something the other day and I took a bunch of notes on it. I thought we would talk about it. Now we're not going to name names, but there's an individual that's out there on social media. I don't know how many people actually have seen him or knows about him, but he sells some training to police recruiters or police marketers. And he said some things that was a little unsettling. And I'm not saying he's targeting us, Doug. Sometimes when you're the big fish in the pond, you get a few people that say some negative things, but he couched his video like this. He says, Listen, there's five things that marketing companies don't want you to know. Now, at first I didn't think much of it because we have talked about marketing companies and the and the things to be careful of, right? Because we're not a marketing company, we're a recruiting company, the big difference. But what bothered me was he immediately after that said, most of these marketing companies are run by former law enforcement. Now, when he says that, we're the only ones out there that are former law enforcement. So I had to sort of my ears peeked up, and I went, What do you have to say here? And uh you did you have I happen to see this, Doug? See this video? I have not seen this video, so well, I would advise you to I'll just give you the summary here because I'm gonna get I'm gonna tell you what he said. Here's the five things that marketers don't want you to

Myth One You Do Not Need Help

Travis Yates 1:39

know. And number one, he says they don't want you to know that you don't need them. Now, we have clearly stated over and over that you can do this yourself, just like you can do a lot of things yourself. You can do police reports yourself, you can do policies yourself, you can do training yourself, but we don't do that in law enforcement. We know it's it's better to enhance our training, to enhance our policies, to enhance what we do with outside companies, and that's what we always say. You know, several years ago, Doug, you and I didn't know anything about recruiting. We had to learn it, though. It was a very high-level skill. It took us years to get to the level we are. What we always talk about is yes, a department can learn some of these techniques, but it's a high-level expertise. Will your recruiters even be in position long enough to be able to learn it? Because our experience is these recruiters kind of are cycled out quite a bit. Many of our clients, we've worked with multiple recruiters in the same contract. What's your thoughts on that?

Doug Larsen 2:39

Yeah, you're exactly right, Travis. Um sometimes these recruiting positions they were they cycle out regularly, and it might even be if somebody's there a couple years. Um, bottom line is the person probably doesn't have the skill set to specialize in every facet of the recruiting. And that's where we come in to add the additional pieces to solicit enough candidates or modernize and make effective and efficient the entire process. And so it's it goes back to what we've always said, right? Nobody got into law enforcement because they wanted to be a recruiter, and they take that position and they do the best they can there, but there's a lot to learn, and the technology is rapidly evolving, and you need to stay on top of it all the time. And that's why we come in and we're a perfect fit for departments because we fill a role that most departments just don't have that technical expertise for.

Travis Yates 3:37

Yeah, recruiting has changed in law enforcement. Uh, you know, uh during most of my career, we had recruiters, but they weren't really recruiting. The applicants just came and they walked them through the process. That was what we called recruiters. Well, that's changed now. You're not getting the number of applicants you used to get. And so all we do is we supplement. We don't we don't try to take over the job of a recruiter. We want the recruiters to do the job that they've always done. But the truth is, the vast majority of departments need more applicants. And if you need more applicants, you have one or two choices develop a high-level recruiter that knows the ins and outs of professional recruiting, or you hire an outside company that knows that. Now, most companies, you know, if he's talking about a lot of companies, he's right. A lot of companies try to hide that fact from you, but we never have. We've always said that there's nothing special here. We've done got a lot of experience. We have over 500 different campaigns, we know what success is. We even guarantee your success. We guarantee how many candidates you're going to get. No one else will ever do that. Uh, but it's not a secret, it's just the fact that it's a high-level skill. Can you really invest the amount you need to invest in to get an individual to be able to do that? And it's often way cheaper to hire an outside company, I can just speak for our company, than it is to pay for a full-time person. In fact, I think most of our contracts, Doug, we're way cheaper than a full-time employee at these agencies. So uh I think it's just a matter of the decision that agencies make. And so that was the first one.

Myth Two Exposure Is Not Applicants

Travis Yates 5:03

The second one is that companies sell exposure, not candidates or applicants. Now, he's right about traditional marketing companies, they're selling impressions and clicks, and we talked about that. That doesn't get you anything, but we guarantee candidates, we guarantee people you're gonna get to talk to. We're not selling exposure, we're selling actual candidates. That makes us vastly, vastly different. What's your thoughts on that?

Doug Larsen 5:28

Yeah, exposure is easy. You ain't gonna look at your Instagram page, click on your website. That that is not going to get you candid. It's not that's not gonna get you hires. It's not only are we going to reach out and get the right people interested in your department, but it's the whole process and capturing information and getting them in the pipeline, the communication with them. It's a big difference between some exposure and what we're doing.

Travis Yates 5:58

Yeah, he's technically right about that. Uh, but that's not what we do. And I think if you've watched these shows, we've explained that to you over and over again that we're not just selling you clicks or impressions, we're actually guaranteeing you a number of people that want to work for your agency. And uh, I just find that very interesting. But uh, here's number three they really don't want you to solve your recruiting problem,

Myth Three The Pipeline Partner Model

Travis Yates 6:22

they're selling you products that they want you to keep forever. Now, we have never said that. I can tell you right now, once again, regardless of whether he's talked about us or not, we're just gonna speak on this a little bit different way than he did. Uh, because we once again 500 plus different recruiting campaigns, we have a little knowledge on this stuff. Um, we do want to solve the recruiting problem. That's always our goal, right? But what we do tell our clients is once you solve it, you need a continuous pipeline, whatever that is, right? But obviously, our goal is to solve it. We make that promise to every client we have that if they implement our recruiting system, they're going to solve it. And we've solved it many, many times. And so, but I understand what he's trying to what he's trying to say here, Doug. Like, you know, we we sort of know some of the marketing companies out there, and if you're just driving impressions and clicks, you're never really going to solve it, right? If you're just doing professional video and that's it, you're never really going to solve it. And they're going to kind of continue that. So, what's your thoughts on that one?

Doug Larsen 7:19

Yeah, I mean, I mean, you need a full solution to solve it. Our goal, and we've been accused of it many times of being too close to public safety and too involved, and we give too much away. I mean, because we we do love the profession and we help them. Um, our goal, though, is to be a partner and we we try and make it as effective as possible. That's why we don't lock people into terms. Um, we expect we're going to get you fully staffed, and then you can pause your campaign with this, you can pause whatever your work is with us, and then come back when you need us again. And that might be through attrition, which is natural with the especially the larger departments. There's always people retiring, there's always people changing places. But we are truly trying to be a partner, and our goal is to get departments all the way staffed and to protect the public. And we do everything we can, improve, including we've provided a lot of free training to departments to help their new recruiters and make sure their processes are up to date.

Travis Yates 8:22

Now that's really uh the that's really what while we do this, right? Of course, it's a business, but we want to see these departments staffed up. We want to see communities that have a full level staffing for safety. That's what we always do. And I know not everybody talks like that or says that. And I think there's probably some truth to what he says, but clearly that's what that's what our goal is. Any of our clients will tell you that. And we often will go, call our clients, call them. We're not worried about what they're going to say about us because we're working towards that ultimate goal of full staffing.

Myth Four Agencies Own Their Brand

Travis Yates 8:50

Now, number four, I actually totally agree with this one. He says nobody knows your agency like you do. And he's exactly right. Uh, but we're not trying to know their agency better than them, right? And we we do exhaustive interviews with their staff before we produce any content for them, and we encourage their recruiters to keep doing what they're doing. So, yeah, I think he's more talking about if you're trying to replace your recruiters with an outside company, because clearly nobody can know that agency like that agency does.

Doug Larsen 9:19

Yeah, I would agree with that a hundred percent. The people working there understand the the department better than anybody else, and that's where we take our lead from. That's where we get all our approvals from. Is so everything's on point branding-wise, everything that goes out is on point with what the department wants and what their message is and what they're trying to push. So I I agree. You you're only going to be as good as the strength of your department and the brand you're pushing.

Travis Yates 9:48

And the last one, uh, I have I have some issues with this one. I'll explain.

Myth Five Social Followers Do Not Convert

Travis Yates 9:52

He says, No one can market better than you. Now, he couched that with social media posts and using your social media page and of your department and things like that. Now, I would say, yeah, nobody can post on your social media page better than you can because you know your department. But we have a ton of clients that sort of have a misunderstanding about their social media page and actual recruiting. They think that when they build their social media page audience, that they can really enhance recruiting. We just haven't found that to be true, have we?

Doug Larsen 10:22

Yeah, no, it's there's there's a real big difference in that too, right? Your following on the social media does not translate into applicants or interest in your department. And there's a whole cadence and a way to write messages, a way to write your communications, write your ads, and and present present those. And we've gone through and we've audited a number of departments, we've helped departments out with this by giving them information on what they're doing and how sure it's effective. But if they made these changes, it would be so much more effective and it would resonate with people, or it would be a better call to action. And so there's some truth to that, but there's also uh everything can be greatly enhanced. Um, it boils back to is that your specialty and that's what you understand? And do you understand the cadence of how these things should roll out and when they should roll out and what it should look like? And does it work on a mobile or or does it not? I mean, there's so many things in the messaging that man, I I guess I'm gonna have to disagree with that all the way. It's only a partial.

Travis Yates 11:31

Well, we just had a meeting with a uh uh with a potential client, they're not a client of ours, but we had a meeting with them and we did an audit of their effort, and they had a great effort. But we took the ads they we took their social media post that they were running, it's just their social media post. We run them through our software that gives you an analysis of that post and can it convert? And of course, the scores were horrid. We could tell that by visually looking at it, and of course, we told them about it because we're not trying to hide it. We said, listen, we think we can improve this because based your you know, effort doesn't always equal success. That's why they were reaching out to us, they were doing all this effort and they weren't seeing any more people, and so I think I would caution agencies that throwing effort at it isn't exactly what you need. You're right, it's about what type of photo, what type of language, what type of verbiage is on there, what are you trying to impress? And the other thing is you should, as an agency, try to increase your social media page and try to increase your audience, but that's branding and marketing, that's not necessarily recruiting. The people that are following you on social media, if they wanted to work for you, they probably would have already been working for you. If they're just following you for the latest news and updates and things going on in the community, so you should boost that page as much as you can. But when it comes to recruiting, Doug, we target people outside of those pages oftentimes and bring them into the fold. And that's how we're able to be so successful.

Doug Larsen 12:53

Yeah, we go out and we seek those passive job seekers who am it's a 24-hour day, seven-day a week dialed-in campaign that's customized for each individual agency. And the other piece of this, Travis, that yeah, you can do some of this on their own, and and where a lot of departments fall short is once I do have interest, what do I do with that person? Or how do I track my efforts? How do I know what's effective, what's ineffective? And if you don't have all that set up, then it's hard to get better. It's hard to be able to justify what you're doing, and we take care of all that for you. I mean, there's there's back end pieces that need to be taken care of if you're gonna be effective.

Auditing Ads Tracking Interest Closing

Travis Yates 13:34

And you know, and after I just went through those five, I don't think I'm so upset anymore. I think the problem I had with the video is it did it it didn't go deep enough, right? You can't just say you know your department better than everybody else, and it's gonna work. It's a lot deeper. So I'm glad we talked about each one of these because we were able to dive a little deeper into the root issue and the root cause and really say it's not as simple as that. It's not as simple as you can do it yourself. There's a lot of things that go into it. Yeah, technically, you could do it yourself, you could do the all these things because you know you and I do these things each and every day, but that didn't happen overnight, it's not going to happen in two or three years. It it takes, you know, you look at the private industry, Doug. I mean, there's professional recruiters for a reason. We call them headhunters, right? I mean, if a department needs a chief or a commander, they're going to professional recruiting companies to go source those individuals. The department's not doing that because it's outside of their knowledge base, and really the street level officers are in the same boat. Gone are the days to where everybody just floods in and applies. You've got to have a different approach. That's what we provide. We give this, we sort of put the steroids on top of it, we supplement what you're doing, and then it just works.

Doug Larsen 14:42

It does, yeah. Keep doing what you're doing. We're gonna get the extra people that helps you get fully staffed and gets better con better candidates to look at. And I I haven't seen this video that we talked about, and maybe I'll see it someday. I I do know a lot of folks follow us in the industry, and they seem to put out content that mirrors what we do a couple weeks after we do a show like this, or we we publish articles in our blogs, and I guess that's somewhat of a compliment that they're they're following us and echoing what we're saying. And as long as it's good for the industry, I mean I guess I'm good with it.

Travis Yates 15:20

Yeah, it's all about education, and so uh that's what we try to do here each and every week at Staff and Domission is just try to educate you as much as you can so you can make a good informed decision because the go all the way around between our clients and us is to fully staff you, and uh we've pretty much got that one figured out. I kind of laughed, Doug. We had someone inquire the other day, like we're down three people, we need help. And of course, we thought, yeah, that's a Wednesday, that's not a problem, right? I mean, I love those problems. You're only down three, we got you. So uh it's something we love to do, it's our passion. We love to talk to you about it. We just have a conversation. We're glad to look and see what you're doing, see how we can improve. We still have a few slots open if you want to optimize your website. You might as well get people coming in for nothing, get your website optimized and get those people rolling in. With that said, Doug, man, thanks for being on.

Doug Larsen 16:08

It's always a good time. Thanks, Travis.

Travis Yates 16:10

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