Safeguard Recruiting: How Success Was Built

We look back on the early days of Safeguard Recruiting and why Doug Larsen believes police hiring problems are mostly process problems, not a lack of interested candidates. We unpack what departments get wrong with marketing-first thinking and what changes when agencies build a real recruiting system that tracks, follows up, and removes friction. 

• lessons from trucking recruiting and why high-turnover industries obsess over process 
• why impressions and website hits do not translate into police hires 
• early roadblocks from agencies, HR concerns, and resistance to changing tradition 
• making recruiting tools accessible to small departments with limited budgets 
• proof points from Larimer County, Milwaukee, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and others 
• how automation and Safeguard Connect reduce drop-off with texts, emails, and tracked communication 
• removing friction like long applications, forced registration, and long silence 

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

Five Years Of Safeguard Recruiting

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Doug Larson, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Doing excellent.

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Here we are on the verge of the five-year anniversary of Safeguard recruiting. Um pretty remarkable what you built here. Uh you retired from Utah DPS, career law enforcement officer, and you launched Safeguard. Um tell us about it. Tell us how it's been going.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

Yeah, it's been quite the journey since we we launched Safeguard and kind of an interesting beginning with that after retiring out of law enforcement. I still was doing a lot of training, traveling the country, doing some simulator work, but I got involved in recruiting on the trucking side, which taught me a lot because trucking is a lot different than law enforcement. We they have a turnover rate that's 100% or even higher at times. So they have retention problems, and recruiting is a big issue for them, but there was a lot to learn from that. And in doing that truck driving recruiting, I learned a lot about processes that work, and but I was still involved in law enforcement because of my background and traveling the country, talking to people, including you. We we ran into each other. It was at a baseball game one night out of when I was out of state and talking about needs of departments. Um the there's been this that they're having trouble recruiting. It's not the same as it used to be, where enough people would knock on the door and come in, you'd have a long list of candidates. But law enforcement was having the same trouble as trucking companies in recruiting enough people to work for them. So as traveling around the country, we started talking to a lot of departments that would ask, hey, will you take a look at what we're doing because we're not getting enough people

From Law Enforcement To Trucking Lessons

SPEAKER_01 1:45

and we need help? And when we started analyzing what these different departments were doing, um, Safeguard was really born out of that, out of a need or an ask by law enforcement that will you come in and we start helping our industry because we're having the same recruiting issues, and they were. And that's where Safeguard kind of started out of is a need and an ask from law enforcement and just having that background.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

So Yeah, I know when I can I remember the night you told me about this recruiting thing and trucking, and and I was frustrated because I was still on the job. I was a high-ranking commander at my agency, and I was watching my agency spend thousands of dollars in marketing, and they weren't getting anybody. And I remember asking the question to the staff at our recruiters, and I said, Well, how many people are we hiring based on this marketing campaign? And when they came back and they go, Well, we don't know, but we're our website's getting a lot of hits. And so when you told me this, I immediately thought, well, Doug, we have a marketing problem in law enforcement. We don't have a recruiting problem, but we're making the wrong decision. And so you launched this, but you launched this in the middle of a recruiting crisis post-2020 that everyone was talking about. Did you have any issues because so many agencies were using marketing and they and they weren't working? Did you run into any sort of roadblocks talking to those agencies?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Well, uh the marketing companies have created some issues because they've taken a lot of money from different departments and not produced. And from your agency that you worked for and a number of other large departments, they spent a lot of money. I mean, Philadelphia is one of our clients, and they spent over $3 million and they didn't get better using a marketing company. Now they had some great collateral that they could use, but it wasn't making their recruiting improve. In fact, I think they were getting worse. And so when you look at that and you look at marketing departments are bringing impressions, they're bringing maybe traffic to your website, but is it the right traffic? And how are you capturing that traffic? There's a big difference in there. So marketing companies have been a roadblock because they say they're helping with recruiting, but they're not helping with recruiting. Matter of fact, they're just uh taking a lot of funds and misusing it.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

And so when you started out, you spent probably the first years just educating. Uh, you know, you you traveled the country, you taught at seminars, you taught at conferences, you put your entire seminar online for free. It's still there for people to watch. And uh from a critical standpoint, I would say, man, you're giving a lot away. Uh, but is that why you did it? Because you needed to educate first because of what had happened in the marketing industry?

SPEAKER_01 4:28

Yeah, there needs to be a mindset shift in in the way we're looking at recruiting and we're we're looking at bringing people in. And that's what it was. It's it's taking it to a next level, bringing in tools that they're not using now, processes they're not using now. So education was huge. And and our both our backgrounds are training. We've always been educators, we've been trainers, and we give them back to the industry. So it's just a natural set for me. Now, sure, people say we're giving away too much, but I don't believe that. I think it's the whole law enforcement community, the whole public safety community needs to change. They need to change their mindset and they need to come to a next level of how they're going to recruit or they're gonna fall behind and they're gonna have these deficits. Yeah, so this isn't just a business for you.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

You see an entire shift that needs to occur for law enforcement recruiting. We're no longer in the 90s to where applicants just came. Applicants do still come, but it's not enough to fully staff agencies. You need, you're looking at trying to shift an entire industry that there's a different way of doing it, whether they use safeguard or not. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah. The mindset's got to change. We we can't sit back and wait for people to come to us. We can't put them in these long processes that we expect them to sit around and wait six to nine months for an answer from us and that they're gonna be there willing to work for us. There are a lot of people that want to be in law enforcement. It's uh there's just the way we're approaching them has to change uh and the processes once we do approach them and get them interested.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Now, the media focuses in on the larger agencies and the recruiting issues of larger agencies. Uh, but this this this has happened in agencies of all sizes. And one thing that I've been so impressed with from the very beginning is you made sure, and you this was always your mantra, that you want everyone to have access to the tools that Safeguard provides, access for everybody. And so you run campaigns and you run recruiting campaigns with very small budgets to very large budgets to the needs of the agency. Why was that so important that

Marketing Spend That Doesn’t Hire

SPEAKER_00 6:30

you gave access to every agency in America?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, I I don't want anybody to get left behind. When I first started out in law enforcement, it was with a small department. And if you look at the amount of departments in the United States, the majority of them are small departments and they don't have the resources, one manpower-wise to recruit properly, two, budget-wise. They can't, they don't have the same budget. So we don't want anybody getting left behind. And I want it to be available to all. That's why we have different tiers in our software. So you can access our software and you have the same tools available to you as the large departments. And the same with soliciting officers. I want that to be available to everybody. And we we make it happen. We help a lot of departments out, and we've helped some small ones out where we did a complimentary just to get them back on their feet and going.

SPEAKER_00 7:25

So when you were talking to these agencies early on, I'm obviously a brand new company. You have a philosophy that very few have. Um, you know, when you were running across a lot of the their background with marketing and dealing with marketing companies that wasn't working for them, did you encounter roadblocks when you first started talking to agencies about what you were trying to do?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Oh, oh yeah. It's uh anytime you come in and try and change a mindset, change a tradition, it's hard, right? It's a challenge because the easy road is the path that you're already on. But that doesn't mean it's going to work and it's not working. So yeah, we got a lot of pushback early on. Um, people that have tried marketing companies, but even the resistance from hey, you have a proven process you're bringing in. And so we we get pushback from, let's say, HR. HR does not want us to come in and and change their role or step on their feet at all. And we're not. We what we're doing is we're helping the departments get enough people to talk to, enough quality candidates that they can choose the right people. And so we we get pushback from those areas where it's just a change, right? It's something they have to adapt to and they have to get used to. Once they understand what Safeguard's doing and how we're helping, they come on board and they embrace it. Um, recruiters have also had to change too, because we're gonna ask them to approach candidates differently, communicate with them differently, and track that communication. So there's some changes there, but our process is proven. And if you do it properly, it will eliminate leaks of candidates and it will help you be more successful.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Well, proven is correct. Uh, you've run hundreds of campaigns and and you know that if they do what we ask and suggest, it just works from the largest agency you can think of to the smallest agencies, it works across the board. Uh but at one time it was just proven in your head. You just knew from the trucking industry, I think this can work in law enforcement. I think I see the problem here. At what point early on in safeguard recruiting did you go, I know we have it, I know we have a solution, which is huge. You have a solution to a huge problem.

SPEAKER_01 9:40

Yeah, when we we started going out with with some some of our clients and and seeing some big successes with them. And you can look at uh department, let's take Larimer County out in Colorado, they do a phenomenal job. They they have a system, they listen to all our consulting and and they've tuned their system to where they communicate really well, and they they hire. They they they hire really well. We've we've seen them get as many as 20 hires in a week, and they they have accepted the process and the change, and they're they're a model department. We source candidates from them, we hand them off, and those guys take it from there, and they do really well.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

Yeah, Seth Graham's been on this show, and I I don't think I'm gonna give up any secrets here, but their agency is spending less than $10,000 a year, and he's quadrupled, quadrupled his hires. And it's because he's just said yes to what we suggested. And we have other clients that they can't say yes, but he just said, whatever you think is best, I'll do. So he was open to that. How important is that for people in a recruiting role to be open-minded

The Mindset Shift Agencies Resist

SPEAKER_00 10:55

that if they're having a problem, they're not getting enough applicants that it's not that it's their fault, but maybe it's just doing things that the way we've always done them. It needs to be a little bit of a change.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Yeah, having an open mind like Seth, he embraces technology, embraces tech uh communication, um, that's very it's huge. It it goes a long way, and it's proven in his results. Um, I wish we could clone him and send him out to a bunch of different departments. But then you'll get other departments that can only do parts of the process. They may be held up by HR. Different things will will make it so they can't use it all. But as long as they embrace what they can, they're still going to be successful. And we will help them minimize those problem areas that might be costing them some candidates. Or so it's uh we'll do what we can to work within the system. We we understand government, we've been on both sides of it. So we we understand there, there's rules, there's different hierarchies and different ladders, and you can't, you know, push some in different areas because maybe you don't control it. So we we just give best practices and work around that.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

One of the best stories I've heard you told was uh you had a client early early on that was getting about 20 applicants a month, and after they hired you, they he got over 200, and he got so upset he literally fired you. He got he was too successful because he didn't have the time to do it. And is that why you're so big on the technology behind Safeguard Connect? Because they can easily manage what's coming in, and it and that way more applicants and more candidates doesn't make your job harder. It doesn't get any harder, it gets more efficient.

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, you're exactly right. So we we've learned a lot over the years, and we cannot overwhelm a department and what they can handle. One, we don't want to spend their money unnecessarily on candidates they can't process. Two, is we need to automate this whole system, and we've done that really well. So we have an automated nurturing program. Um, we we automate a lot of the process for the recruiters because their job is to kind of step in and be a mentor and keep people going in the process, but we want to keep candidates engaged and and rolling through the process and keep them informed. So we have automated much of what we do, and and the reason behind that is efficiency. When you get like Philadelphia is getting over a thousand candidates a month, and they only have a couple recruiters, they cannot contact everybody on their own. So they need us to automate the system, and we do, and those messages flow to the candidates, keep them engaged, keep them moving along to each step. And it it's very helpful because it without automation, without the technology involved, it would be very easy to overwhelm these departments. And a lot of departments don't have a high number of recruiters.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

I think it's important to note because I I know that you've talked to some recruiters that think that you're somehow trying to replace what they do. And it's not the truth at all. The truth is you want recruiters to do what they do best, which is to make personal contacts with people. Keep doing, keep going to job fairs, keep going out in their community, keep doing exactly what recruiters traditionally have done, but you put a layer on top of that that gives them more people to talk to and a much more efficient way to do it.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

Yeah, we we want recruiters to see us as their best friend, their partner, their ally. We come in and we pick those pieces up that a department doesn't have maybe the specialties in. The recruiters don't, because they they rotate out a lot. So we we want to come in and we want to be that piece that you don't have in the department and work with this will get you promoted. You you know, you'll be so successful in your recruiting department that it does well for your career. But yeah, recruiters, they don't need to be scared of us because we're gonna help them with the processes, we're gonna help them get enough quality candidates to talk to. And we're the we're their ally. And we're gonna make it real easy. If they do want to continue to go out to career fairs, we'll get them the QR codes, we'll give them the way to capture information through technology. Don't have to do it on paper, you don't have to do

Proof It Works With Real Departments

SPEAKER_01 15:05

the clumsy follow-ups. We'll we'll get it all into our system and and automate it for them. But that has been a little bit of a pushback. Sometimes recruiters think, uh, I don't want an extra set of hands in here because, you know, that changes the way I work, but we're we're just here to help.

SPEAKER_00 15:21

You know, I think Milwaukee Police Department is is is a great example of that. Uh we obviously have been working with them for close to a year now, very, very successful campaign. They're very, very pleased. And we fulfilled a lot of the elements, you know. We did videos for them, we did websites for them, we're getting them candidates and applicants each month. But their their recruiters are always coming back and going, hey, can you can you make this video 15 seconds or 30 seconds? We're running a commercial, can you do this brochure for me? Can you do this flyer? That's not actually in what the contract says, but you have just said, yeah, we'll do it. I mean, it the customer service, I think, is what really sets you apart is when you are a partner with those recruiters, you'll do pretty much whatever they ask. And I've seen that and really not making any money on it, you know, at all.

SPEAKER_01 16:05

Yeah, it might be outside of our scope, but that's okay because the final mission is to get the officers hired and get them fully staffed. And Milwaukee's a great example of that because their whole team is so tuned and tied into what the recruiting process is, from the leadership down through the recruiters. And we love getting that feedback from them because the recruiters are talking to people, and the feedback helps us tune the process, tune their campaign, and make it more successful. So, yeah, if we've got to make some extra ads, we got to make some different videos or make some tweaks, that's great because they're listening, they're looking, and they're and they're really buying into what they're doing. And Milwaukee has been successful in its top-down leadership all the way through the recruiters, they're phenomenal.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

You often said the recruiting crisis is a myth, and it is because you run you run these campaigns. And just to be clear, when because people will ask this question, when you're bringing candidates to an agency, that's not from a list. Those are people that have seen the ad that you've out done outreach to in those areas that say, Yes, I want to work for them. And so they're very warm leads, they're very warm applicants. It's not just some general person. Uh, but you've had some people that have sort of accused you of that, I think, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Yeah, and and that's one thing you got to be careful with is you don't we run custom campaigns. Everybody that wants to work for you, they they they know they're putting in for your department, and but there's companies out there that'll just send send you a list of names. That's really easy to do. We have we have names too. We can send you names, those people aren't worth looking for a job, they're looking for a job from you. So it's uh yeah, it you gotta be careful with that type of what's available to you. We run custom campaigns and we capture information so you can follow up, and we even help with that follow-up by sending some texts, some emails, and it's uh highly successful.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

So it's not really a recruiting myth, it's more of a making the right decisions towards what your recruiting is. But are you still seeing a pattern of some things agencies are doing that if they would just stop doing what they're doing, things would improve?

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Yeah, so it's not really a I I don't even think it's a recruiting crisis. There's not a lack of people that want to get into law enforcement right now. We're finding plenty of people that want to get into law enforcement. The problem is departments not willing to shift and change and change their approach. So how do they go out and find candidates? Do they just want to put an ad on a job board? You might have a little bit of success there for a month or so, but then as your ad gets further back, it gets on page 11 or something. What we're doing with that ad on the job board is we're making the person come and find us. That's kind of the old school way of doing it, right? I'm gonna do all my actions are going to make you find me. And that's not the way Safeguard operates. We

Automation And Applicant Tracking That Scales

SPEAKER_01 19:05

take your ad and we 24 hours a day, seven days a week, go out and find the right candidates for you, and we filter those candidates. So if they don't meet your qualifications, you never see that name and you don't waste your time with them. So it's not a recruiting crisis, it's one, it's a process prior crisis, and that starts up front with how departments are trying to source candidates. And then once they source candidates, how are they communicating with those candidates? And that's that's where the big drop-off starts coming in. If if you look at some of these departments' processes and they they demand you give us a 60 plus page application right up front before we'll even talk to you, they they they want a bunch of information, but they're not clear to the candidate on what the process is and what the outcome is, it's frustrating for a candidate. So every time that candidate has to register and they have to get on a computer, they have to get a bunch of information, they have to wait around, they don't hear from you. If they don't hear from you, they feel like that you're not interested and they move on. Um so we got to remember in public safety and law enforcement, we're not just competing with other departments, we're competing with other industries. And we need to change our processes.

SPEAKER_00 20:24

Yeah, and I think that's why Safeguard Connect, your applicant tracking software, which really is a talent acquisition platform. I mean, it's it's really good, but just this the software alone is averaging doubling the folks that agencies can talk to because I think it because it removes that friction. Because every friction point, you're losing people. And it's just, I mean, you we've seen as high as 90% drop-off because agencies will make people register for an account before they take a job. And you know, it's just this new generation. They're just a lot of them are not going to do that. If everybody listening or watching, you don't like to register for things, right? You got to have some real trust to be able to register and provide all the information. And so what the software, what your platform is doing is is it's just it's just removing that friction, does it not?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

Oh, it's definitely removing that friction. And our software can do really anything you need it to in the process. It can take full applications, it could take partial applications, can communicate with the candidates, and it's smooth, it's easy. We can keep them on their phone where they're comfortable and it's right in their hand, and they don't have to go find another device. They don't need to register for it, and they get their information in there, and it allows the recruiters too to communicate back and forth with them. It's all tracked. So if you and I were working with Canada and I'm off one day, you can see what my communications are. You can pick up where I left off and you can keep the candidate involved and answer questions. We we got to remember that getting into law enforcement and getting into the law enforcement hiring process is scary for somebody on the outside. They don't understand it. And these dead periods. No information or asking for a lot of information from us, it can scare people off. The other thing that happens too is you get candidates if if you're not communicating with them and answering their questions, will self-eliminate. They think they've got something in their background that they can't go on in the process when it's not really true. Or they might have a life event that says, hey, I can't move forward in the process now, but if we use Safeguard Connect to keep in contact with them, they might come back three months, six months, nine months down the road, and then they're back in the process once their life events change.

SPEAKER_00 22:37

Yeah, that's a great story out of Philadelphia. You've been with them a couple years, uh, you know, major department that was really struggling. In fact, that marketing campaign that they had spent millions of dollars on their Captain Walker said they actually got worse. And so they hired you and you started implementing these processes. And kind of a cool story is the throughout the time, they had about 5,000 people that hadn't applied yet. You had acquired those candidate names for them through the ads, but not everybody applies. And so you went back late last year, right before Christmas, and you hit all those 5,000 people with Connect, which is one click, one touch, send the email, and their application spiked. Because I think making an application is a big decision for people, especially for law enforcement. And so they're not always ready at the time that the name comes in. And so what your software is able to able these agencies to do is they can go back and hit them. There's another great example from Seth out of Larimer County where he just sent everybody uh on July 4th, he just hit the entire list and said, hey, happy July 4th. And he got applicants from that. So that's what the software is able to do. There's no human being that can keep up with that in Excel spreadsheet or an email. And so literally, this software for some agencies, depending on the sizes, is as little as a couple thousand dollars a year. And they're and they they they're they're exponentially increasing their applicants.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

You're exactly right. If you do nothing else, you should get into Safeguard Connect because it's going to streamline your process, make it efficient, but keep you in contact with these candidates. And there's a number of those types of examples. Uh Crestwood, he did the same thing, a happy holidays. He got three applications out of it and just over the Christmas break. And it worked well for him. Cleveland was able to generate a lot of interest off their old list by using the automated messaging. And so Safeguard Connect is something that I think every department should have. It's a tool they cannot shy away from because they need it, the efficiency that goes with it. We we have too many departments out there that are still tracking on whiteboards and Excel spreadsheets and individually trying to communicate through the recruiter's email. And you cannot keep up, you can't keep track, and you can't get consistent messaging. That's another thing we help with too is the copyright on the messaging. Those messages have to be dialed in and write to get activity and get people to move forward.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

Yeah, you go into such fine details on that. You know, you look at the messages you get from things you buy, stores you buy from, and the way those messages are written are written for a reason. And you go into those such fine details because you're trying to pick up every applicant you can at every stage. You know, I just think it's important that to for you to reflect. I mean, we started this podcast with sort of the verge of the five years doing this, started with nothing, uh, started the company, uh, no awareness whatsoever. Most of the profession, almost all the profession, was going the wrong direction, like my agency using marketing. And you've mentioned a ton of your clients now, Milwaukee and Philadelphia and Cleveland and all these departments you've made inroads in and helped them staff up. I mean, this is I just want to just reflect and let you know that this is more than just a recruiting company. You're making community safer.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Yeah, and that's part of the goal, right? We we came from a law enforcement background, so we understand both sides of the equation. We understand the purchasing, we

What Success Means For Community Safety

SPEAKER_01 25:55

understand the the troubles in government, and we also understand what it's like to get hired from the outside. And it's been quite the journey. It's been it's been interesting to watch how Safeguard from the original idea continually to evolve because it's got to constantly get better and keep up with the latest technology. And the we have to do that for the departments to keep growing, but uh it's been a fun journey and uh I love to see what Safeguard's turned into.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Doug, this has been great. Congratulations on the five year anniversary. And we're gonna come back and we're gonna do this again next week, and we'll be hearing about you about more on what you have in the future.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

Thank you, Travis. It's always good to talk to you.