Revolutionizing Law Enforcement Recruitment with Doug Larson

Unlock the secrets to modern law enforcement recruitment with Doug Larson, co-founder of SAFEGUARD Recruiting, as he joins us on Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates. Learn how to attract and retain the best candidates through revolutionary strategies that go beyond superficial marketing tactics. Doug shares his transition from a Utah police officer to a recruitment expert, emphasizing the importance of self-sufficiency for police departments through targeted training.

Discover how proactive engagement and continuous communication can transform your recruitment process. Traditional methods are outdated; today’s approach involves a 24/7 digital campaign that keeps potential recruits engaged and informed. Doug discusses the necessity of multiple touchpoints and expert-crafted messaging to ensure candidates stay interested throughout the lengthy hiring journey. This strategy not only helps fill vacancies but also meets the needs of contemporary law enforcement.

Addressing budget concerns, we delve into cost-effective recruitment solutions tailored to fit various financial constraints. Doug highlights the inefficiency of relying solely on flashy websites and videos, advocating instead for acquiring candidate names through targeted social media ads. With detailed data and metrics, Doug demonstrates how to convert traffic into actual applicants. For departments looking to enhance their recruitment efforts, valuable resources and training are available at safeguardrecruiting.com. Join us for an episode filled with practical insights and a courageous call to action.

We encourage you to contact our partner, Functional Medical Institute, for your wellness and health needs.  

Owned and operated by law enforcement, Dr. Yates credits the FMI team for his successful wellness journey.

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Transcript

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Leadership, Recruitment, and Retention Strategies

Doug Larsen 0:00

We can handle all forms of this that you see , so we can put a website up for you . We can provide applicant tracking systems so you can track all your applicants that come in , put them in categories , mass messaging from them and make yourself more efficient . We can do videos for you . But what I'm going to tell you , Travis , when I talk to a department is I want to prioritize what they need . A lot of departments right now think they need the fancy websites and the videos up front , and but they need names . They need people working for their department , and that's what we need to go after first . We'll follow it up with the marketing elements . Keep people interested and understand what the department's about . But I think there's a priority of how you should be spending your money if you're going to be most effective in getting people interested in working for your department .

Speaker 2 0:51

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

TRAVIS YATES 1:01

Welcome back to the show . I'm so honored you're spending a few minutes with us here today and I think this is going to be a show that you have to listen to and you've got to send to anyone and everyone that cares about the law enforcement profession leadership , recruiting and retention . I have on today's show the co-founder of Safeguard Recruiting , doug Larson . It's an incredible story . It's an incredible story . It's an incredible company . You've heard me talk about them a lot . I'm even more involved now today than ever with them . That's because , when it comes to leadership , if you don't figure out recruiting , there's no need for the rest of this stuff . It is literally the most important topic of our generation , and Doug and his team have figured this out . So , doug Larson , how are you sir ?

Doug Larsen 1:46

Doing excellent .

TRAVIS YATES 1:49

Thanks for having me on . Well , man , I know you've been going here what three or four years now and it's a pretty incredible story , so I know many of our listeners have heard it . But quickly tell us how you went from a retired Utah police officer doing a lot of stuff in the private industry to now you literally are solving the recruiting issue for all these agencies . How'd that even happen ?

Doug Larsen 2:10

Yeah , it's kind of been an incredible little ride here . I didn't start off right away in law enforcement recruiting . I actually started in truck driver recruiting and it's even a much more difficult industry than the law enforcement has . They're up against a lot of barriers there , so we learned a lot from what works over there , best practices and in my travel still doing training in law enforcement , I come across a lot of departments that are struggling to hire . They're struggling to get enough interest in their department and they kept asking us to take a look at what they were doing , what was working , what wasn't working , why they couldn't get enough people interested in their openings , and Safeguard was born from that . Safeguard not only gets people to apply for departments , but we've got a training arm where we're trying to educate and assist in every way possible . So these departments are recruiting most efficient and effective as they can .

TRAVIS YATES 3:11

Well , that's what , to me , is so unique and that's why I'm highly involved , because this is such a cool thing to be involved in . Doug is from a business standpoint , most people would say man , do the job , because what you do is unique . We'll talk about that . As you provide candidates to these agencies . These agencies are spending crazy money on branding and a bunch of stuff , whatever it is , and you say that's fine and dandy , but do you want recruits ? Do you want applicants ? Do you want candidates ? That's what we do .

TRAVIS YATES 3:43

So to kind of barrel this down into simpleton terms , to let the audience understand exactly what this is if your department and most departments needs to hire a chief or a captain or an administrator , you're not doing a branding campaign . You're hiring a recruiting firm or a headhunter firm to go find good candidates . That's not being done for the line officer , it's not being done for law enforcement . That's exactly what you do . You go out and you find qualified people that want to work for that specific agency and you send them to the agency and that's why you have clients that are in the top five cities in America to smaller clients , to everybody in between , because they have figured out this is the way recruiting is done .

TRAVIS YATES 4:28

You go out and find people and that's what you've been able to do , doug but from a business standpoint , you talked about the training arm . That , to me , goes against everything in my mind about if I want to make money . I don't want to really tell people how I'm doing this . I don't want to tell people about the processes that we use . I don't want to educate the clients . I want them to pay me to do it . What made you decide to go deep into the training arm ? And just for transparency , I do some of that training for you on the leadership end , but you guys pull in all the recruiting stuff

Modern Recruiting Strategies in Law Enforcement

TRAVIS YATES 4:59

. What made you decide to go there ?

Doug Larsen 5:01

Well , Travis , both you and I have an extensive training background . I think that's probably our first love . We've been doing our whole law enforcement careers and when I look at law enforcement and the availability of training for people that are put in the recruiter position , there's really nothing available . You come into that spot . There's no training to keep you up to date on the latest trends , the latest laws , how to make the algorithms work for you , where to place your ads , how long you leave that ad up .

Doug Larsen 5:33

And getting the candidate is just the first step , Travis . That's probably the easy part . From that point on , we've got to work that candidate and we've got to kind of work it like a sales pipeline . So we keep them interested . We have , we make sure they understand what our entire process is . We take the stress out of the process and we keep the communication lines there so they can fill a part of our department , they feel needed and they know exactly what's going to take place every step of the way . Because getting into law enforcement is a lot different than getting into just a regular job where you can be hired to work that week . This can take three to six months . It's a process and we don't want people dropping out .

TRAVIS YATES 6:15

Well , and that's really a mindset shift , because I know I speak about this often in training . Like you know , when I hired in law enforcement over 30 years ago , I put my application everywhere and I just sat back and waited . Back then it was a letter , right , you wouldn't even get a phone call and six months later I'd get a letter . Hey , here's the first step , or ? Sorry , we don't want you , and I'm not bitter against the Arkansas State Police . They said I was too young , but anyway , I digress . I would get the rejection letters , or okay , you can come take our test , but you would wait for six , seven . I mean , I've talked to officers that waited years to get that initial letter in the mail saying okay , it's time . You can't do that today because it's not that that worked back then . But the people that are looking for jobs now 20 something year olds , in , but the people that are looking for jobs now 20 something year olds , right , for the most part , that's not how they need to be communicated with . And you found that out , have you not ?

Doug Larsen 7:12

Yeah , exactly right . So anybody listening to this if that is the way your department is recruiting right now , you're losing a lot of opportunity and we can help you out with fixing those steps in there . But no , the way people want to communicate now is , first off , lack of communication translates into lack of interest in their mind and they've moved on . You're already dealing with a generation that maybe isn't so career oriented , thinking hey , I'm going to do 20 , 30 years it's more of I want to try this , so they're not as locked in . But we need as much communication as possible with these people and touch points Studies show it's seven , eight touch points to get somebody to take that big step to get an application . So what are your touch points ? What is your messaging you're sending those people Because you need to be on point with those messages so you don't lose them . It's not only competitive with other law enforcement departments , but you're competing with every other industry out there right now and the other industries can move a lot quicker than law enforcement can in getting a hire .

TRAVIS YATES 8:13

I think that's what's really changed , doug , because law enforcement traditionally always said we had recruiting , we were recruiting . The truth is you were recruiting from department to department . You had three , 400% of people that wanted to go into law enforcement . You were going to get plenty of applicants no matter what you did . But what departments did with their recruiting teams is they did a lot of branding and messaging and marketing to make their department more attractive . They weren't actually recruiting people into the profession .

TRAVIS YATES 8:38

That , to me , is what has really changed , because you still have I call it the 80-20 rule . You still got about most departments , about 80% . You could do nothing . You're going to fill your ranks up to 80% because there's still people that want to go into the profession , but it's the other 20 , unlike in years past when they just came right . You've got to go out and actually recruit them . I know you talk to clients every week and you're hearing that 20 , 25% I'm down type mentality . So I think I'm pretty accurate on that and that those branding messages won't work for that , because those are recruiting from department to department . So you're right . What you're doing , doug , is you're going out and you're grabbing people that maybe didn't think they were going to go into law enforcement . And then you switch them through the ads . You run through the emails you send , because you don't just write emails . You have some experts behind that , do you not ?

Doug Larsen 9:28

Yes , we have expert copyrights specializing in the messaging that goes out . And you're exactly right , Travis . It's that extra 20% , right ? The extra 20 , 30% that puts us up to full staffing on our departments . I think there are plenty . I don't even think that , Travis . I know there are plenty of people that still want to get in law enforcement . I'm dealing with it every day with departments across this country . There is so much interest in applying for these . It's the matter of how you're going out and making contact with these people . That is the difference here and that's what we advocate 24-hour-a-day , seven-day-awake digital campaign . That is going to go out and it's going to hunt for those folks that are interested in working for your department .

TRAVIS YATES 10:16

And when you do that and when you do that , you're sending them the actual people , names , contacts , emails . When it comes in and it's real time they can come to . Like . You showed me a campaign last week . It was a Monday , I think you should check this out . It was one of your clients and on a Monday morning the recruiter came in and looked on the dashboard that you provided and they had 23 people over the weekend that said I want to work for you , so that recruiter is off on the weekend , going to the lake , doing whatever , not having to go to job fairs . They come in on Monday and there's 23, . You call them . You know these warm leads I want to work for you . Then that next step that recruiter takes is important and vital , is it not ?

Doug Larsen 10:56

It's very vital because we are providing you with a qualified candidate that has met your filtering metrics and they want to work for you . They know they were applying for your department and so , from this step on , it's key . Now at Safeguard , we'll handle the first three touch points for you until that recruiter can come back from the lake on the weekend , in your example , and then they need to take over . Best way to take over get a call . Get a phone call right to the person . Start building that relationship , start having it so if they have a question , they're comfortable calling back in and saying hey , what do I do in this part I'm a little concerned about this area in my background . Answer all those questions for them , relieve that stress for them , Make the process as easy as possible and then have and we'll help with this copyright those emails go out , so you have a cadence of messages to keep this person interested , and that's what's necessary .

TRAVIS YATES 11:50

And this is just private industry standards . Everybody listening to this has bought a t-shirt or they've applied for a university and they're getting that cadence of messaging sent to them and of course those are written in a certain way . I mean , copyright experts are expensive . Law enforcement's never had to do that , doug . We just say show up here or else , and we just sat back and waited for them to show up . But you're saying this has all got to change from a philosophy standpoint or we're just going to be treading water .

Doug Larsen 12:17

Yeah , oh , it 100% needs to change . And everybody's got a phone with them . They expect information right away and you need to have the proper information there . And what we need to do is we need to change the mindsets within departments . And that's why this training is so important , because we can't find ways to knock people out of the process . We need to find ways to keep them in the process . I'm not saying lower standards , travis . I'm saying let's do everything possible to capture every person that is interested in working for us and make it easy on them to get through that process .

TRAVIS YATES 12:54

I know what some people are thinking is they're hearing this and they've struggled and they've tried mightily and they're thinking this is too good to be true . What are you trying to sell me here ? You can't just go find names . There's people don't want to work for us . There's a recruiting crisis . What are you talking about ? Do you get some of that pushback ?

Doug Larsen 13:12

when you talk to people that are interested in what you're offering . We certainly do . People don't understand how the outreach is going , how it's going to work for them , because what they got in their mindset is is we're only getting this many applicants and we're doing everything we know possible to do this . I'll tell you , Travis , most departments don't have the expertise on there to keep up on all the advertising rules , all the employment laws , how to build the ads , what messaging needs to be in the ads . They just don't have that . And how long do I put that ad up ? We'll give you all that information with an ad campaign . We'll put ads up , We'll place the ads for you and every day we can show you exactly what the ad's doing , what kind of impressions it's getting , what kind of contacts and follow through that ad's getting , and that's important . You need all this information . You make the proper decisions to spend your money right .

TRAVIS YATES 14:10

Yeah , If you're just now joining us , I'm talking to Doug Larson . He's a co-owner of Safeguard Recruiting . You can find them at safeguardrecruitingcom . Fantastic information there . The content they're putting out above and beyond their business , from articles and training . We're going to get into the training in a minute . But , Doug , I want to sort of take you back to my example . I come in on Monday morning . There's 23 people . That's actually a real example , but you have clients that there's even more people than that . Think about the energy it would take to find 23 people that want to work for agency ABC and Y . I mean , how many job fairs are you going to ? How many billboards ? I mean ? How much effort that takes to go find 23 people in any given town . You hand it to them and they can then put their efforts into what you're talking about , correct ?

Doug Larsen 14:53

Exactly . We'll find them for you . Don't go out and waste a whole day at a job fair where you're maybe going to contact one , two people and you're competing with the other departments out there . We'll handle getting the interested people in your department . And we hear it . Some departments say , man , if you could just find me five people a month I'd be overjoyed . And this department good . Example 23 over the weekend . But that is where the work starts . Right there we have to take those 23 people and we have to keep them going through the process to make sure they apply , make sure they get through the backgrounds and get all the way converted to a hire . And that's the next step that we like to help with . It's one thing to get the names , the second thing to get them to the applicant and all the way through the process .

TRAVIS YATES 15:44

We all hear the horror stories of these large departments and they're down so many thousand people and this and that , but the vast majority of law enforcement in this country is 50 officers or less , and those departments don't typically have people dedicated solely to recruiting . And so what would you do if one of those chiefs or sheriffs called you up and said hey , man , I'm a 50 person department , but I'm down 10 . We're down 25% . We're sucking wind here .

Doug Larsen 16:09

We're having to cut services . I don't have the people to do what you're saying . You offer this from A to Z , do you not ? If they need it . We really don't find a department that's too small to work with us . I mean , we try and get packages tailored to everybody , but we will take it from not only finding the name , we will take that whole process all the way to where they apply to your department and , if necessary , we'll nurture those leads , we'll keep the contact going and we'll get them to that stage where they apply , and then you can take over with your background checks , your other parameters like physical tests and whatever you got .

TRAVIS YATES 16:57

Yeah , I wanted to sort of make sure our audience understands this . I actually talked to a chief a few weeks ago and he said hey , I'm the recruiter , I'm the guy , I'm the background guy . He had a department , I think , of 17 people . He was down six man and he's stressed right , because that's not a big deal . But if you're 17 , you're down six , he goes . But listen , the applications come to me . I'm the one that's vetting them , I'm the one that's hiring them . And so what you're saying is , if he hires you , you would just give him , he would just get more applications , it would just happen . And then he would get to be able to have enough applications to get us hiring done . And you , how do you base that ? Doug , I know your cost differs depending on what they need . How do you base those costs ?

Doug Larsen 17:35

Yeah , we'll go through and we'll figure out what it takes , how many qualified candidates it takes , to convert to applicants , converts to hires , so we can get a pretty good idea of how many people we need to come in contact to fill , whatever your ranks are . If it was six people with this department , we try and do that as efficiently as possible for the departments and give them an upfront idea of this is the success rate you're going to have , so they can kind of factor in timelines of how long it's going to take them not only to hire the person but get them . You know , if they got Academy slots , if they can FTO them . I mean there's a lot of factors that go in there that department's got to deal with .

Affordable and Effective Law Enforcement Recruiting

TRAVIS YATES 18:18

Yeah . So somebody's probably listening to this and I think they're probably thinking what you've already said , man . They think this is too good to be true . And then , if it is true , this is going to cost me a gazillion dollars , right . And we see departments out there offering $25,000 , $50,000 , $75,000 hiring bonuses right , that's not actually a long-term solution . We know that that's a temporary solution . I know you probably don't want to give away everything , but if I'm sitting out here thinking to myself , man , this doesn't even sound believable , and I know I couldn't afford it , what would you tell that person ?

Doug Larsen 18:50

It's a lot more cost effective than you would think it is . It really isn't that expensive to go out and find candidates and get them interested in your department . We can develop an affordable package based around what your budget and what your needs are and we can make that work for you . And we can make that work for you .

TRAVIS YATES 19:11

So I know that . I know you also do the marketing . But you know you're different in that you recruit names first and then you use marketing elements . So you know a lot of the bigger departments . They have the big budgets , they bought the fancy websites , they got the fancy videos and stuff . But what's cool and I saw you just roll this out you actually have packages . It's almost a subscription based package . From what I can tell that even if you're a smaller department and you can get the website , you can get the materials , you get all this stuff right , because a lot of these small departments I mean they don't really have that stuff right , it's really not in in their budget . So you've made it affordable for them to kind of put these websites up and to do all the marketing stuff as well , have you not ?

Doug Larsen 19:47

Exactly . We can handle all forms of this that you see . So we can put a website up for you . We can provide applicant tracking systems so you can track all your applicants that come in , put them in categories , mass messaging from them , and make yourself more efficient . We can do videos for you .

Doug Larsen 20:11

But what I'm going to tell you , Travis , when I talk to a department is I want to prioritize what they need . When I talk to a department is I want to prioritize what they need . A lot of departments right now think they need the fancy websites and the videos up front , but they need names , they need people working for their department , and that's what we need to go after . First . We'll follow it up with the marketing elements keep people interested and understand what the department's about . But I think there's a priority of how you should be spending your money if you're going to be most effective in getting people interested in working for your department . And the fancy videos I'll tell you right now do not have the throughput that a lot of other methods have . So it would be a little lower on my priority list .

TRAVIS YATES 20:52

And you have the data to support that . I mean , what's your data ? Because you've done hundreds of these campaigns . What's the data showing you is the most effective ads to get names ?

Doug Larsen 21:00

The most effective approach is the social media platforms and you need to place those ads . You got to have the content that's going to resonate with people . You got to place the ads in the right place and put them up for the right amount of time to be effective . And we track all that information and we track it against every metrics we can so we can show departments this is what we think is going to work for you . Our research base says we feel like we can get you this many people interested in working for you off this spend and I believe in being efficient . I've been on both sides of this , just like you have Travis and want to make sure departments are taken care of and they're getting what they're paying for .

TRAVIS YATES 21:44

So if a department's spending money now on recruiting help and they can't tie names candidates or applicants to that spend , and they can't tie names , candidates or applicants to that spend , there's a problem .

Doug Larsen 21:54

And that's what you see a lot of right , no-transcript people to your website . So you're going to get on there and say , look , we have this much traffic on our website , but if that doesn't convert to getting a name , getting information off somebody , then you got a problem . And sometimes people go to the website and they get lost . They get distracted in everything that's going on . They can't find your application easily or it's multiple steps to go through it . I'll even tell you some departments . When I go in there and try and find their job openings , it's like a game of where's Waldo trying to find just this opening I came here specifically to apply for and it makes it hard on the candidate and then the chances of them keeping interest go away them keeping interest go away .

TRAVIS YATES 22:47

I know you were telling me a story about one of your clients and they had spent I want to say it was two or $300,000 . It was a huge amount for this marketing campaign . And when they came on board with you they said we can't tie one new hire or one person to this big market campaign because it was just driving traffic . It was just traffic . That , to me is I think our brain tells us well , yeah , this fancy website is going to attract people , but if we're talking reality here , nobody out there knows a police officer that went to work for the police department because their website was cool . Right , this is not how it works , if we're really honest about it , and that's why we don't put up a website to hire chiefs or whatever . Put up a website to hire chiefs or whatever . I mean we , we go out and find people . So I think it's amazing what you're doing and I , you let me .

TRAVIS YATES 23:28

There's a free course on your website that I got the opportunity to film a few years ago . It was really cool to talk about all this philosophy and it's totally free right there on the website safeguardrecruitingcom . But you just rolled out another class that I'm kind of amazed that you want to roll this class out , doug , because it kind of really gets behind the curtain and tells everybody how you're doing it . I would think that would hurt you as a business person , but you just , you truly are wanting to just help people , because this is so much more than just getting names , and so this class goes into real detail .

TRAVIS YATES 24:03

I've actually previewed the class before this show and I can tell people listening if you watch this class and you take notes and you pay attention , you will improve your recruiting . There's no doubt about it . But I know you said that you did that . One of the reasons you wanted to do that is because there was no official training for recruiters . Now that I think about it , you're right . There's no recruiter association , there's no recruiter certification , and so you wrote out this sort of high level class . It's two hours of real content , heavy content . I mean you better watch that thing a few times . If you go get it , tell us about that , why you decided to do it .

Doug Larsen 24:35

Travis . We travel around the country , we do seminars . We get invited out a lot and anybody who wants to have us come and speak on recruiting . We're happy to come out and speak to people and help them out . Part of this is just learning from departments where their gaps are in recruiting , where their lack of understanding , where their new people come in and they got nowhere to turn for training . We hear this an awful lot and we want to be able to put some training out there to help departments improve on the recruiting side .

Doug Larsen 25:08

People want to get into law enforcement . We need to make sure we're capturing those people and getting these numbers back up so everybody's safe in the community and the whole idea about it . And it just goes back to I love training . I feel like it should be there . Law enforcement's a group that'll grasp onto training . They'll take it , they'll learn from it . Some people want to do it on their own and that's fine . We're here and we'll help you in a consulting role , bounce questions office . Others will take it and go through and say , man , I just don't know that I got enough time to be able to keep up on all this . I don't want to build the ads . I don't want to place the ads . I don't want to build the ads . I don't want to place the ads . I don't want to nurture the leads . I don't want to turn them into applications . There's not enough of me , so I want to turn that over to somebody that specializes in it , and then we're right there to step in and do that for you also , man .

TRAVIS YATES 26:00

It's amazing stuff . You got to go check out what they're doing . It is believable

Recruiting Assistance From Safeguard Recruiting

TRAVIS YATES 26:06

because I've seen it firsthand . Doug is doing this every day with his team safeguardrecruitingcom . Doug . Any last words before we get off here . Thanks so much for doing the show .

Doug Larsen 26:14

Thanks for having me on , and if you have recruiting questions , don't hesitate to reach out to us . You can go to our website , get our contact information . My contact information is floating around out there a lot too . Even if you just want to ask us some questions , fine , if you want to talk through what your processes are and what your help is , we'll help you out . We'll quote out whatever the needs are and look at our training that we got out there . I think it'll help you improve your processes .

TRAVIS YATES 26:43

Doug Larson , Safeguard Recruiting . If you've been listening , if you've been watching , thank you for doing that and just remember , lead on and stay courageous .

Speaker 2 26:53

Thank you for listening to Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates . We invite you to join other courageous leaders at www . travisyatesorg . travisyates . org