The Blueprint for Successful Law Enforcement Recruitment with Tom Sye

Get ready to crack the code on law enforcement recruitment with our expert guest, Tom Sye, who brings two decades of police service and a mastery in marketing and recruiting to the table. Together, we dissect the symbiotic yet challenging relationship between police departments and marketing firms in the quest for qualified recruits. This episode is the guiding beacon for agencies navigating the tricky waters of attracting candidates who are not only competent but also have a calling to protect and serve our communities.

Plunge into the heart of what makes or breaks a recruitment campaign as we scrutinize the pitfalls of flashy marketing strategies that look spectacular but fall short on delivery. We lay out a no-nonsense, three-step recruitment formula that centers on forging genuine connections with potential applicants, showcasing why they belong with your organization. Anyone can create a polished video, but it takes real insight to convert interest into action. Discover the power of getting personal in recruiting, an approach that outshines the generic net cast by traditional marketing.

In our final act, we champion a recruitment revolution, stressing the importance of education and demanding accountability from marketing tactics. Tom and I discuss why it's not just about clicks but actual boots on the ground, ready to uphold law and order. We also share resources for agencies to reshape their recruitment strategies, including Tom's upcoming training sessions and the incredible work that SAFEGUARD Recruiting (www.safeguardrecruiting.com) is doing for agencies across the country.

You can reach Tom here and SAFEGUARD Recruiting here. 

Join Our Tribe of Courageous Leaders:

Get The Book
Get Weekly Articles by Travis Yates
Join Us At Our Website
Get Our 'Courageous Leadership' Training
Join The Courageous Police Leadership Alliance

Transcript

Tom Sye: 0:00

The gist of it is these companies, the marketing companies. They couldn't care less if you filled your vacancies.

Travis Yates: 0:05

They don't care. In fact, it helps them if you don't. They can then re-sign up Absolutely.

Tom Sye: 0:09

You come back and spend a big bucks again. So they really don't care. They tell you they're doing the sales pitch and this is going to work and all that, but they really don't care. That's not their product. Their product is not you, something that you're going to go holy cow. This video looks amazing. There's no way this isn't going to work. So you're overwhelmed by how great it looks. So when you put it out and it doesn't work, you're left with nothing to figure. But that must be something else.

Intro/Outro: 0:39

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.

Travis Yates: 0:48

Well, welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you're here and we have an exciting barn burner of a show for you today. On today's episode we have Tom Sye, who is a 20-year law enforcement veteran. He's known as the police cop marketer and he is all over the place talking about how agencies can market and then recruit, and we're excited to have him here. Tom, how are you doing, sir?

Tom Sye: 1:16

Doing well. Travis, Thanks so much for having me on. I'm excited to sit here and talk with you for a little bit.

Travis Yates: 1:21

Man, I love your content. You're like the only guy, anybody, guy, girl, anybody doing this stuff, because law enforcement seems to be so behind the curve on this stuff. And people ask me well, travis, why do you always talk about recruiting and marketing and all these issues? Well, because I'm a leadership guy. But that is leadership. I mean, if we don't staff our agencies to the fullest, that is going to hurt communities and hurt agencies. And you are leading this revolution. I would call it. We're trying to educate our agencies and something we've never had to be educated for. And I guess I would just start out by asking you you know, what got you interested in this? What's your background and how are you sitting here today, kind of the so-called expert in this area?

Tom Sye: 2:04

Yeah, so this is my 20th year in law enforcement. I hit 20 in August. Very excited for that to happen.

Travis Yates: 2:11

Congratulations, that's a good feeling. Thank you, yeah, thank you.

Tom Sye: 2:15

Everybody says things change once you hit 20. So I'm waiting for that mindset shift.

Travis Yates: 2:19

Yeah, yeah, I don't know if it changes, it's just in the back of your mind you could just like leave if you want to, but you don't have to do that.

Tom Sye: 2:26

So, yeah, I got that coming up. But I've worked in backgrounds and recruiting for the past 11 years at my agency and even prior to that I was in broadcast. Of course I wanted to be a cop. Just kind of go back a little bit here. I wanted to be a cop since I was knee high, my dad was a cop and I always looked up to him and wanted to be just like dad. But of course dad always said no, no, no, go do something else. You don't want to chase bad guys the rest of your life. So I did.

Tom Sye: 2:53

I had a whole separate career. I went to a broadcasting school and had a whole separate career in broadcasting and media relations and communications for radio stations and some minor league hockey teams, and that's how I really got into the marketing side of things and learned how to do different marketing campaigns and advertisements, and then again, 11 years ago, started doing backgrounds and recruiting here and it was something we jumped on at our agency. I've always been into social media since you know the MySpace days and you know Facebook really became big and Instagram came on the scene. It was something that we led the way in the Valley and just kind of kept going from there and really learned by doing and figured out what works for recruiting police officers, what didn't work for recruiting police officers, and haven't looked back since.

Travis Yates: 3:46

Well, kudos to your agency. I often talk about that. Our agencies have some of the craziest experts in the world. Here you are coming from a broadcasting background and a marketing background and it took them some time but they finally got you in a position in your agency where you're able to mold your expertise with law enforcement. I always talk about from a leadership standpoint. If you can figure out who you have and put them on the right bus man, they will love their job each and every day. And of course, you're smiling every time I see you. So I think you probably love your job. But you're so good at it because you love this and your agency has been able to sort of mesh that love with what you do and I bet you've had quite a bit of success. So you talked about you've sort of figured out what has worked and what hasn't worked.

Travis Yates: 4:30

Talk about some of your earlier struggles, because obviously I would say seven or eight years ago there was a shift in law enforcement with recruiting, and here's what I talk about. I was over recruiting unit about a decade ago. So I started seeing this shift early on, where we didn't really have to recruit. I mean we would dress up in a uniform and go to a job fair and wave at people. The applications just came in, right, we had more applications than we had openings. Well, what happened was and everybody wants to talk about the defund police movement and this and that but in addition to that, in 1994, they passed the COPS bill, which was before your time, but they put 100,000 cops on the street through a federal grant. Well, this is the time period about a decade ago, maybe seven, eight years ago.

Travis Yates: 5:11

Those folks are starting to retire and then on top of that we have these high profile events and of course, from a leadership standpoint, we don't respond very well to it. That also hurts things to it. That also hurts things. And then you have the retention issue, where people are leaving their profession earlier than they were going to leave. So that's putting a big strain on the front end, which is recruiting. So we started seeing that shift and I can remember going to job fairs and nobody even coming up to us and the applications were just kind of slowly going down, down, down and they didn't really catch on for some time.

Travis Yates: 5:42

That we needed to make a shift. I think everybody knows now we need to make a shift in how we do it. Now that lends to the problem, tom, where you sort of knew what worked and what didn't work through trial and error. A lot of agencies are just they really don't know where to start. So what would you tell an agency as far as the biggest mistakes they can make when they try to make this shift? And when I say shift, once again it's the job fairs aren't going to help you, the billboards aren't going to help you. People don't just apply. You have to have a different mindset, a different philosophy when it comes to recruiting. So you've made all the mistakes and now you've sort of figured this thing out what would be the things you would tell them to stay away from?

Tom Sye: 6:21

I guess I can sum it up and I'll get into some details about specifics here in just a second.

Travis Yates: 6:27

Yeah, we'll get into that.

Tom Sye: 6:35

Yeah, to go to the first part of this thing is the biggest thing that I see agencies struggling with in making mistakes in is kind of what you just alluded to is they're still trying to recruit like it's 2015. It's 2024. You have to start recruiting like it's 2024. I say it all the time and I'm going to say it a million more times Agencies are just stuck in the past. I'm going to go to a job fair and that's going to be enough. It's not. I'm going to put out a recruiting video That'll get all kinds of eyeballs on my product. It's not. There's so much more to it.

Travis Yates: 7:04

Let's put out a fancy website, right, I mean, you could name it. I've talked to agencies that put out billboards at bus stations and they've wrapped cars and fancy websites. None of it's going to work. And what's crazy to me, tom, is you know it, I know it. I've seen the research that says it doesn't work, but these agencies continue to do it. What do you think's going on there?

Tom Sye: 7:25

Yeah, I think it's just a lack of knowledge. You know we're cops, we're not marketers. We're not. We don't know what our advertising options are or what they do. And for me, I'm a firm believer is that you should never invest in something that you have no idea what it is. You should always be educated before you invest in anything, whether it's a marketing product, a vehicle, a new home, whatever it is. You should always know what you're getting yourself into.

Tom Sye: 7:52

And what happens is and I get them all the time at my agency we get emails and mailers and phone calls and people pitching the next, latest and greatest best thing this is going to change your recruiting. You're not even going to believe it type stuff and it looks great on paper. And then you go to a website and you know you see this fancy HD recruiting video with the slow motion drone footage and here's the SWAT team moving through the smoke and oh, look, now we're petting dogs and horses and now we're playing basketball with the kids. It's the same video over and over again we're petting dogs and horses and now we're playing basketball with the kids. It's the same video over and over again, but you see that as somebody in command or in charge of things, and you've never seen that before. So it looks amazing. And you're like there's no way this isn't going to work. And then you know the person selling that to you says, oh, this is the latest and greatest. And you put it out there and all your friends tell you how great the video looks. And hey, chief, this is surely going to work. And the next day there's no applications. And the day after that there's no applications. And the day after that there's no applications. That's one solution. That's one day.

Tom Sye: 8:57

Recruiting in 2024 is every day. You have to constantly be out there. That's where things have changed since 2016 to now, is where you're correct, where we used to just open up and get thousands of applications. Those days are gone and they're not coming back, and I don't think agencies quite realize that they're still living in the past. Again, the biggest thing that you can do is a very simple three-step formula. I talk about this all the time as well. To recruit like it's 2024, travis. You have to meet your applicants where they're at. You have to build a relationship with them and show them why people like them work for you. Recruiting 101, that's no different than 25 years ago at a job fair. That's where your applicants were at and you'd build that relationship at the table and you talk about all the different things. That's changed now and it's all online. Now is where this Gen Z and the younger generations are just flooded on social media.

Travis Yates: 9:57

Yeah, yeah, and marketing and recruiting are distinctly different. Obviously, you're aware of that. I mean marketing typically is to sell a product. We know what the data says seven to 21 touch points to get a decision on buying a product or not buying a product.

Travis Yates: 10:10

And these marketing companies? I wouldn't get into this this early, but, man, I tell you what we are spending so much money with marketing companies and it couldn't be more different than what we actually need, because a lot of these marketing companies are pretty slick, because they're marketing companies, I mean the things they do look great and then what they did is many of them, some of the big players, they sort of branched off with a DBA, have a different section. They call themselves police recruiters right, but there's the same old marketing tactics and say, well, how come they don't recruit? Well, recruiting is harder, recruiting takes more time. There's not as much money in that for these companies. There's lots of money in these websites and videos and we're just buying right off into it. But give us the big difference in marketing and recruiting venture where marketing is more of a non-personal interaction.

Tom Sye: 10:54

So you're putting out an ad, you're running a bus billboard or a bench ad or something like that. That's marketing. It's here's my message, and I'm putting it out there. And whoever drives by this bus or this billboard or just happens to hop on my website and sees this video great, they may be interested in a job. They may not be interested in a job. You're just pretty much throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

Travis Yates: 11:33

It's a big wide net and you're just hoping right.

Intro/Outro: 11:36

And which that?

Travis Yates: 11:36

ends up making an expensive net because you're not targeted. It is.

Tom Sye: 11:41

And part of the cost thing, and I don't know. I don't have any research on this. This is just my thoughts on it, just seeing how things work. I would bet a lot of money that I was dead on and defund the police and no one wants to be a cop anymore and these companies came in and they saw an opportunity to make some money. Let's not throw any punches. That's what it's all about. I did a video this morning. I don't know if you saw it or not, but the gist of it is these companies, the marketing companies. They couldn't care less if you filled your vacancies.

Travis Yates: 12:23

They don't care. In fact, it helps them if you don't. They can then re-sign up Absolutely.

Tom Sye: 12:27

You come back and spend a big bucks again. So they really don't care. They tell you they're doing the sales pitch and this is going to work and all that, but they really don't care. That's not their product. Their product is not filling your vacancies. Their product is showing you something that you're going to go holy cow. This video looks amazing. There's no way this isn't going to work. So you're overwhelmed by how great it looks. So when you put it out and it doesn't work, you're left with nothing to figure. But that must be something else. It can't be the video that looks great. And again, it's because you don't understand what that video is doing.

Tom Sye: 13:01

You're going to put out a recruiting video. Let's just say you throw it up in your website, right? How many website visitors are you going to have in a day? I don't know. If you're lucky, 50. If you're lucky, you're going to throw it up on social media. Yeah, your friends like it, Everybody who works for your agency. They like it, they share it. You know, maybe you get, you know, a couple thousand views on it. Then what about tomorrow? What about the next day? What about the day after that? So this is where the recruiting part comes in, and what I like to call police marketing is kind of the combination of the two things is where you're just constantly hitting your audience and trying to build those relationships with content and showing why your agency is a special place to work. That's what recruiting is now.

Travis Yates: 13:47

Yeah, and I love you know people will say, oh, travis doesn't believe in marketing. No, I think marketing has a role in this, tom, just like you say. But without the targeted audience, without the people, without the recruits, using marketing for recruiting is just pointless. So the way I talk about it is you build this funnel. You need your recruits first, maybe your candidates and maybe then your applicants. Then use the marketing to get them excited, walk them through the process, get them to the test, get them to the physical fitness. So use the marketing for that, but marketing alone is. I mean, if a department spends $300,000 on a marketing campaign, are they going to get a few applications? Oh, probably, but it could be done for so much cheaper and so much more efficient with a true recruiting campaign. And so I love that mixture. You know you call it police marketing, I call it a recruiting marketing interface to where recruiting comes first and marketing, and then you blend this together. You could actually recruit without marketing, but you can never recruit with just marketing, right?

Travis Yates: 14:45

But the best of both worlds is to use the recruiting and then the marketing. So, yeah, you've nailed it, man, and you've seen the success at your agency. You're not just talking this stuff. You've actually seen this successful, have you not? Yeah?

Tom Sye: 14:58

So we've hired. So here's I always let people in on a little secret here. It's almost embarrassing with the way everybody else is spending money and doing different things and going to job fairs and they have all these things. So here's what I can tell you about us is that we've hired in the past couple of years, between both civilian and sworn. We've hired almost 200 people. Right, we're a four person staff. That's a lot of people for a midsize agency. The reason that we have so much is because we have a great city council who keeps adding positions to us, so we keep trying to fill those things. I have not been to a job. I've been to take it back. I've been to two job fairs in the past two years. Two I have a basic garden variety website, whatever the city signed up for. I updated some pictures. It is nothing fancy. It doesn't have video. It doesn't have any of that type of stuff. We don't have a recruiting video and haven't had one in the entire 11 years that I've been there.

Travis Yates: 15:54

I bet you had a few chiefs that wanted one, though right.

Tom Sye: 15:56

We get asked all the time. So whenever we get a new chief, hey, what do you think about this? Or they'll get an email from somebody, hey, what do you think about this? And I'll just tell them yeah, I mean, if you want to spend the money, we can, but it's a gigantic waste of money. And fortunately, they've seen our success and they know that I know what I'm talking about. So they tend to go with that idea but yeah, you don't need that stuff. It's just is it great to have? Yes, but very much like what you were talking about is you got to have, before you get into those types of things, recruiting videos and fancy websites and going to job fairs like crazy, and billboards and whatever else that you want to spend money on?

Tom Sye: 16:35

Before you can do any of that, for it to be effective, you have to have everything else in place first. You have to have a good base for your recruiting, which means you have to have the proper staff. So we talked about this earlier. Right, you have to have the right resources in the right places. So many people don't even have a recruiting staff and they're trying to have a recruiting video. Okay, well, great, well, somebody calls up now who's going to talk to them? Whoever you know, whoever's in the office and answers the phone. You have to have the right resources in place, you have to have a team, you have to have a plan. That's the most important is you got to have a recruiting plan on how you're going to fill your vacancies. If you don't have that to start with, all the marketing in the world doesn't matter. It's not going to help you.

Travis Yates: 17:25

Yeah, we're kind of stuck in this sort of OODA loop thing where I had a recruiter come up to me in Nevada and I gave this kind of spill in this class. She says you're right, we spent $150,000 on a recruiting video and a website and our recruiting got worse. The problem is they spent all their money. The problem is she's the one that pitched it. She doesn't want to go to the chief now and say, oh, I was wrong. And we're just kind of stuck in this thing. And my concern and the reason I've harped on this so much is because this is a solvable problem. We can solve this problem. But if we keep spending millions of dollars in the wrong fashion, I'm afraid a lot of agencies are going to be like well, there's nothing we can do. We have this recruiting crisis. There's nothing we can do.

Travis Yates: 18:06

And what they're buying, Tom, is a philosophy. Unlike if you buy a car, you know what it's going to do. If you buy a technology product, you know what it's going to do. This is different. You can't just buy this and get results. You're actually buying a philosophy. You better buy the right philosophy or it is off or not. And you know. Talk about the agency just finished, just had $300,000. I can guarantee you there's no way that that chief's going to tell that city council he was wrong. Even if it doesn't work, he's just going to say we did all we could do right.

Travis Yates: 18:36

And so my concern is, if we don't get this right, it's going to really hurt national law enforcement, because the fact is, majority of law enforcement can't spend $300,000. And so I don't want them looking at this going. Well, we don't have the money to recruit, when what you're saying is that your agency, you have the right philosophy. Now, your agency is a little special, tom. They have people in place that know the philosophy. I think most agencies don't. So they need to reach out and understand that philosophy.

Travis Yates: 19:03

Now, I know I put out a lot of resources. Safeguard Recruiting's put out a lot of resources. You have excellent resources. So tell us, I know you're helping out a lot of agencies, and what is really insane to me is I was involved in EVOC training for many years and we had some success. Well, I had agencies contact me. Hey, what are you doing? What's the secret? Send us your curriculum. And we were helping them. But when it comes to recruiting, a lot of these agencies think well, we'll just hire a company and that's it, instead of finding the departments that are successful and reaching out to folks like you, tom, and going help us out here. What's the secret? Have you had people do that, or are they just hiring million-dollar companies to help them out?

Tom Sye: 19:42

Yes, I've had quite a few agencies contact me since I got this thing off the ground and started doing this back in June, last June. And it's great, you talk to them and they're so excited to learn and they just they know that that there's a there's something out there, there's something better, there's a better way to do things, and that's what really fires me up and drives me to want to keep doing this. Is is just that passion. You know, for me. I have a passion for teaching and for helping people. That's that's, you know, number one. I've always been that way. I've always liked helping people out and trying to learn something so I could teach somebody else. And then, second for me is I'm a cop. I want to see our profession be strong for years and years and decades and decades to come, whereas when you enlist the help of somebody who's just a marketing guy, again, they're not bad people. I don't want people to mistake me.

Travis Yates: 20:39

Well, they're doing their job.

Tom Sye: 20:41

Their job is marketing they're doing their job, but they don't care. They don't care if there's cops 20 years from now, they don't, they just don't. They couldn't care less. So yeah, so when agencies call up and they're just lost, they don't know what to do and you just start breaking down the basics to them and it's like well, do you have?

Intro/Outro: 20:58

an Instagram account.

Tom Sye: 20:59

That's the one thing that always blows me away when I see these articles and they're on LinkedIn all the time where you see you know this place can't hire and we throw up our hands. No one wants to be a cop anymore. We've spent all this money and I'm trying to do this the first thing I do. It's a fun game. You should try it out. The first thing I do whenever I see somebody saying they can't hire people is I go to Instagram only the most popular app for 18 to 25 year olds, I don't know. Maybe you know people that are trying to get jobs in police work. So if you get, there's a first place. I go. Let's see if they have a police page. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Let's see if they have a recruiting page. 99% of the times they don't have a recruiting account. So it's like are you even trying? You're not even trying. That's where your applicants are they go to?

Travis Yates: 21:48

but they're on all the job boards. I mean, come on, you have to go to page 24 on the job board to find it, but they're on the job boards, right.

Tom Sye: 21:55

Right, and job boards are great. I found my job 20 years ago, in 2004. I found my job on a job board, tom, I got to tell you man, you really crack me up online.

Travis Yates: 22:07

I want to tell everyone to follow you on LinkedIn and we'll give all your socials in a minute. But I love what you do because I see these, because obviously we're connected on there and some department will have a nice little flyer right. We're hiring and you unlike me, who just goes? You're an idiot. What are you doing? You just go and you say good luck with the recruiting campaign on every one of them. What are you doing there? Are you just are you? Are you needing them a little bit, or are you? Are you truly that positive of a person to do that?

Tom Sye: 22:37

Yeah, it's, it's, it's positivity. Positivity won't hire anybody, will it it's not going to hire anybody. And I know full well when I see those flyers with a million words nobody's reading that.

Travis Yates: 22:49

You're scrolling right up. I mean you read them. We read them because we're cops.

Tom Sye: 22:56

We want to know what's getting paid or the benefits, but no one else is reading them. No one else is reading those. But it is one of my pillars of this company when I started was positivity. There's so much negativity in law enforcement and you know, as you know, there's two things that cops like and it's changed in the way things are, so that just breeds negativity. So I just want to be positive and it's it's. I feel. I feel bad that that they're trying. So that's the thing is. I see agencies trying and that's why I comment Cause you're trying. You're putting a post out on Facebook or on LinkedIn or on, you know, instagram or wherever that you're at. You're trying. You're putting this post. It's not working, but you're, but you're, you're giving it a go. So I just want to try to encourage you and say, hey, I saw your ad. Just keep going, keep doing it. The problem is with those is they put it out one time and then you never hear from them again. Yeah, I mean.

Travis Yates: 23:46

I'm envious because I love that attitude that you have. I think we could all use more of that, and it always lifts me up when I see it, even though I'm thinking Tom. And it always lifts me up when I see it, even though I'm thinking Tom knows full well this isn't going to work. He's just being super positive. So let's get back to the scam artists. I will be nice about it.

Intro/Outro: 24:02

I'll just call them scam artists at these marketing companies that are just doing their job.

Travis Yates: 24:04

I mean, listen, good for them. You can be a multimillion dollar company taking people's money and not solving a problem, solving a solution. But so there's no doubt that these agencies are getting nonstop calls and contacts from these companies saying we can fix your problem. Yeah, what could you tell an agency how they could vet them? What could they look at? If they get these random emails or phone calls where they can vet them to make sure that they could actually work, what would you have them do? Ask one simple question.

Tom Sye: 24:35

That question is I don't have a budget for recruiting. What can you do for me? That's good.

Travis Yates: 24:40

That's nice, yeah, and I would. I will parlay that in because I'm involved with Safeguard Recruiting that has actually done a lot of recruiting campaigns. They can put a dollar figure to applicants because they've done so many campaigns, so ask them. You can also ask them if it gets down to it. Because they've done so many campaigns, so ask them. You can also ask them if it gets down to it. Okay, give us your latest, give us your case studies on the last five or ten departments, on what it costs for a lead and what it costs for a recruit.

Travis Yates: 25:04

Marketing companies won't do that because, as you know, tom, it's about clicks to a website, right? Yeah, it's not about people, it's about clicks, and so they're either not going to answer or the number they're going to come up with. It's going to be extreme, like, for instance, a three hundred thousand dollar campaign. Yeah, they may be able to give them some applicants for forty five thousand dollars an applicant, right? I mean, it's going to be great. So, so that's the difference, really, in marketing and recruiting. Marketing will promise web clicks. Recruiters are going to promise people and, what is amazing to me, in law enforcement, we understand this when we're hiring executives. I see the recruiting firms, the headhunters. I've been contacted by some that are out looking for chiefs or assistant chiefs or captains recruiting firms. They don't use marketing for that, so they're going out and getting, they are getting. They are using recruiting to pull in executives, but they haven't figured out that. Hey, maybe we should do the same thing with officers, right, pretty?

Tom Sye: 26:00

wild, is it not? Yes, it is.

Travis Yates: 26:03

So let me ask you this Tom, I mean I think we both are in agreement. It's an educational issue and I've been working for a couple of years just trying to educate people and I'm so glad I found you because you know you are as well. There's not a lot of us out here trying to do that and it must feel weird to sort of know a solution to a huge problem that nobody else is talking about. How does that feel to know that man? I know I have the answer, but not a lot of people are listening because they're still spending crazy money on marketing.

Tom Sye: 26:30

Right, it's a struggle every single day. It really is. It's a mental struggle, and that just sums it up perfectly. I often say those exact same words. It's like to know I have the solution and no one knows. No one knows to say, hey, wait a minute, let's do that I want to bring out your super positive attitude here.

Travis Yates: 26:51

So there's going to be a fork in the road down the line. I mean, eventually, departments are going to have to figure out that this video stuff and website stuff isn't working. And I've seen a few bids come out where they did that a few years ago, their recruiting actually went down and they put out another bid, in fact, one crazy bid. I won't name the city. They did it in 2021. They spent crazy money on a website and video. Their recruiting went down and they did a bid and they picked another marketing firm to do another website and video. They said, oh, our video needs to be so. It's like imposter syndrome. I've seen that. But I've also seen some departments that have figured this out that have now decided they need to actually look for recruiting, but that's not the majority. Do you see departments eventually figuring this out? And then obviously, tom, you're going to be sitting pretty when they do, because you're like the only dude out there talking about it.

Tom Sye: 27:39

Right, yeah, I 100 percent see it. I have a vision and we're going to change the face of police recruiting forever. That's my mission is to change the way police departments recruit so we can restore the future of this profession we're in. That's what this is all about, and I'm not going to sleep until we do it, putting out content all the time. Got things in development and I just want to help. I see the injustices, just like you do To me. It's insane that somebody would spend, you know, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand, just on minneapolis nine hundred seventy five thousand dollars for a commercial campaign a commercial campaign and, tom, I want to tell our audience that maybe hasn't listened to either one of us yet.

Travis Yates: 28:28

I'll give you one example of safeguard, who I'm involved with, because I I'm not I'm not an owner, but I, like you, they have the answer and I want to help the profession. Their last campaign $27 per applicant, because their processes are right. They go get the recruits, they send the recruits to the marketing to retain them, and it was $27 per applicant, meaning the department that's down, 10 officers, you're 300 bucks and done, man, I mean. And so when we talk about these departments spending 300,000, that's what we're talking about before, something that won't work and but the process has to be in place and you're a big process guy, tom. And so if someone's listening to this, and man, they just need a quick advice on how to kind of get started, what would you tell them?

Tom Sye: 29:18

is you got to have. It's my recruiting map is what I like to call it MAP. You got to have the right mindset. You got to have the right assets and the right places. That's the way to do this as you go through. So, first of all, mindset wise Travis is you got to believe you can. You have to believe that A people want to do this job. B you can find them. C you can. You have to believe that A people want to do this job. B you can find them. C you can get them through your process and hire them. There's a ton of agencies.

Tom Sye: 29:47

We talked about this a couple of times already. Right, who? Just they throw their hands up. No one wants to do this anymore. I see posts on LinkedIn all the time from chiefs and deputy sheriffs and commanders and lieutenants. Just nobody wants to do it. We opened up. Nobody wants to do it. It's just you're already defeated, you haven't even tried.

Tom Sye: 30:05

So first is you've got to have the right mindset, right. And then, like I said, those assets you've got to have the right assets in place. You need a recruiting team, you need a you know background investigators, you need a plan and then, in the places, you got to have the right places. So that's where the plan comes in. Where am I going to do this? How am I going to do this? Where am I going to? You know, if you want to go to a job fair again I've been to two job fairs in two years but if that's your thing, then figure out which ones you want to go to and go to them, right. But when you're there, have something to talk about other than here's a flyer and here's this. Right, you got to get people interested in your agency.

Travis Yates: 30:43

Well, I think you nailed it. There are plenty of people that want to do this job, but they're not like we were 20, 30 years ago, where we would make an application and just sit around and wait nine months and not hear anything, because they didn't have to let us know they had so many applications and it was on us to get hired, not the agency.

Travis Yates: 31:01

So it has to be a mindset shift, so to speak, a different philosophy. And, tom, I'm so thankful that you get it. In fact, when I found you, I was so relieved because I thought I was almost crazy, you know, I mean I'm sitting here watching the climate out here. I mean I'm at my own department staff meeting and they're bragging about this $60,000 market campaign. And they're bragging about this $60,000 market campaign and they're bragging about website hits and everyone's like, oh, that's awesome, that's awesome. And I'm like how many candidates did you get for that? And they can't answer me because there's no tracking, it's just not a recruiting campaign. And they just act like I was the crazy one, right? Because what are you talking about? People are going to our website. Well, nobody ever went to a police department because they saw a website. I've been asking for years in my seminars who's your age? Because you saw a website or video? Nobody In fact.

Travis Yates: 31:47

Washington DC Metro. You probably saw this on Police One. They named their recruiting video the recruiting video of the year. They're the lowest staffing in history and no one's putting this together right. I'm like wow. And so I don't want people to think we're bashing videos and websites. I think marketing and branding is great, but it's not a source for recruiting and I just love that you're. I love the fact. Very rare, tom, does somebody get to actually know a solution to something, because there's literally no competition. There's no one else really talking about this. I mean, you are, and I talk about it once in a while. Safeguard is obviously talking about it, but you get it, you understand it. I'm so thankful that you're not just keeping this within your own agency For success. You're trying to help others and, man, to me that's a game changer. It's the power of one and I do believe, without a doubt, you are going to change the face of recruiting, tom.

Tom Sye: 32:47

Your mission is more important than any mission I can think of right now. Yeah, I'm very passionate about it and it's something that you know. I say this a lot and I'll say it again too. So if anybody's seen me, it probably sounds like a broken record right now, but I don't care, I'm going to keep saying it. Right, recruiting is not hard. It's just different here in 2024, it's not hard at all. It's just different, and we have to change, we have to adapt. Those techniques that worked in 2015 aren't working anymore. Those videos and products that all these people are trying to sell you and to pitch to you and I just thought somebody on LinkedIn was talking about some agency in Canada was doing television ads, and TV ads are the best Like I wouldn't waste a single penny in television. You're talking about spaghetti on the wall.

Travis Yates: 33:35

You have no idea who's watching that channel and the chances that that person at that time wants to be a cop. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of the contracts now that these marketing companies that are winning contracts and they're talking about we're going to put you on Hulu and YouTube and, of course, to an executive, oh wow, that's cool. Well, what an executive thinks is cool isn't going to work for actual recruiting. In fact, tom, recruiting actually isn't that sexy, right, it's just a grind, it's hard work. It's the right ideology to make it happen.

Tom Sye: 34:04

Yeah, it is and it's, you know we, you know with us. You know I talked about, you know, our job fairs and all that. We don't have billboards, we don't have advertisements, we don't have bus bench ads, like I said, a recruiting video. We've never had a recruiting video in 11 years again. We don't do any of that stuff, right. We're just simply where people are. That's what we do and we build relationship with them. So, as part of my job and I get my coworkers make fun of me because they just think that I'm sitting around chatting with people on Instagram, but I'm constantly answering messages in our chat room on Instagram and having conversations and answering questions that's recruiting, right? That's what it's all about. It's just in a different place now.

Travis Yates: 34:55

Yeah, it's no different than someone who used to walk up to you at a job booth or walk into your office at the department and ask you questions. You're just having to go to a different place. So that hasn't changed. But how we do it has changed. And I think oftentimes, tom, we think that we can just hire a company. It's a one-stop shop and we can walk away. But successful recruiting you just described it it's a constant monitoring of your campaign to see what works, see what doesn't work. It's a constant relationship building with those that are interested, because someone may say they're interested but you still have to like you always had to talk to them and get them through that application process. And that's really where these marketing firms really fail, because they just throw it out there and that's it, and you have to. I just know from my experience with Safeguard. You have to monitor these campaigns daily and have constant communication with those candidates to get them through that process.

Tom Sye: 35:45

Yeah, but post and hope is what. I like to call it right and a lot of agencies do it. They just make a post and they hope it works and yeah, I guess we'll check back in three days and see how it went. And a lot of them focus on and it's because they're being sold. Much like what you were talking about how these companies talk about clicks on the website and likes and oh, we'll do this video. It's going to get this many likes. The vanity metrics, as I like to call it right.

Tom Sye: 36:13

It's all the oh, somebody shared my video and they liked it. I couldn't care less if somebody shared or liked the video. Did you see it? Are you sending me a message? Are you applying? That's what I care about, and all the other things really doesn't matter. And people are trying to go viral and there's all kinds of things that it's like. I don't know. I have no idea why. I saw an article by somebody in recruiting not too long ago. Was talking about here's how you go viral and I'm like why on earth would you?

Intro/Outro: 36:39

want to go viral.

Tom Sye: 36:40

Why would I want my ad going out to hundreds of thousands of people who aren't interested in my agency, or being a police officer for that matter? I need targeted. I need people who are interested and want to work for me, not anybody else.

Travis Yates: 36:53

But for me. You did a really great job in this interview of Tom of not telling anybody where you worked, and I think that's a good plan. When I was on my agency, I would try to do that as well. But I will tell you. I was in your area recently and, of course, phoenix PD. That's not where you are, but Phoenix PD is about 24, 25% down in staffing, with a significant portion of people about to retire in the coming years, and I saw all the billboards all the billboards for Phoenix PD.

Travis Yates: 37:20

And listen, I shouldn't have an interest in Phoenix PD staffing, but I have an interest in public safety. And so I reached out to the recruiting team even a few politicians and I said, hey, this is not going to work.

Travis Yates: 37:32

You know if you're interested at all, I'll be happy to talk to you. I even know a guy close by that'd be happy to come by and talk to you. I did the same thing in Louisiana. The governor recently put out an executive. He basically he declared a state of emergency for police staff in Louisiana. So I reached out to the governor. I reached out to a bunch of police executives there. I said listen, I'll be on your front door tomorrow. I live close by there. I'm not asking for any money, I just want to help you. No one ever responds back. No one ever responds back. No one ever responds back. And it just blows my mind because I wonder do they really want to fix it or do they just not want to admit that what they're doing isn't working?

Tom Sye: 38:11

Yeah, I think it's more of the latter. Yeah, Because the billboards look great.

Travis Yates: 38:15

Tom. I mean, those billboards look great LEDs and great pictures and they like it when they see it. But I wonder, if anybody's sitting back going, how come our recruiting's not getting better?

Tom Sye: 38:26

Right, right, and so I saw the same billboards, as obviously we're neighboring, so they're everywhere, they're all over the place. So you know what we did is we spent a couple hundred dollars and I made these giant banners. I got them from a cheapo printing place and they look great and we put them up on all of our stations and at City Hall. Same effect as a billboard, for not a monthly fee. It was a couple hundred bucks, yeah, and we get comments all the time. I saw your billboard.

Tom Sye: 38:54

I saw your banner on City Hall or at the Foothill Station or wherever, and that's what got me to apply. And it's again you don't need all of these big fancy solutions. It's so much simpler than that. And it's not our banners that we put up, right? That's not what is driving recruiting right. So I can, it's less than five people who have come here because they saw that right. It's just that getting in and building that relationship with people that's the biggest piece of the puzzle is doing that.

Tom Sye: 39:27

But I think you're right. It's just like you spent this money, and it's big dollars, $300,000. That's a lot of taxpayer money that you gotta account for. And it didn't work. And again, you're mesmerized by how pretty it looks and how awesome it is. So you just you're left with no other choice, and that's kind of the hook of it all for these companies as they come in. And so what I talked about in the beginning, right, is that's what they deliver. They're selling you a nice looking product that you're mesmerized, but it couldn't have possibly been that. That didn't work. It's something else, it has to be something else, and you just fall into this trap and you just you're out of answers, and that's what I see a lot of places too. They're just out of answers and that's that's awful.

Travis Yates: 40:13

Yeah, tom, you are doing the Lord's work, man, I really appreciate your passion and your positivity. The police cop marketer when could people find you? Where could they? Because I know you've got some training coming out that I highly recommend. Where could they find all of that stuff so you can give, so you can help them?

Tom Sye: 40:30

Yeah, so my website is www. for copstraining. com. That's F-O-R there's not four of us F-O-R copstrainingcom and you can get all the info about me and some of the training that I got coming out here really soon, which I'm super excited about, to start getting agencies on the right path, like we just talked about. It's the road to better recruiting not to plug my stuff, but we got that coming up. And then I'm on social media as well at ForCopsTraining, on pretty much everywhere Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, which is now X, and even TikTok On TikTok. People like it on there. And then on LinkedIn it's Tom-Sye is where you can find me on there and I'm constantly on LinkedIn, always having conversations. We've spoke on there several times and that's a great platform for making connections and learning things. So if you're looking for a great place to start, that's a great place to get ideas and to learn from other people doing this.

Travis Yates: 41:30

Great stuff, Tom Sye, I can't thank you enough, and thank you for listening. And just remember lead on and stay courageous.

Intro/Outro: 41:38

Welcome to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates, where leaders find the insights, advice and encouragement they need to lead courageously.