Courageous Leadership with Travis Yates

The Recruiting Crisis Fixed with Doug Larsen

• Episode 128

Share episode

Send us a text

We unpack why policing doesn’t have a talent shortage as much as a process problem and show how a recruiting-first strategy beats marketing spend. Doug Larsen of SAFEGUARD Recruiting shares sourcing tactics, mobile-first communication strategies, and real-world results from major agencies.

• recruiting-first strategy vs marketing-led tactics
• decline of career fairs and organic interest
• how to measure return on hiring spend
• why videos and clicks don’t equal applicants
• sourcing candidates 24/7 and geofencing needs
• partnering with recruiters, not replacing them
• mobile-first messaging and nurture automation
• process fixes to reduce candidate drop-off
• case study on Philadelphia’s pipeline growth
• guarantees, dashboards, and weekly ROI tracking
• expanded services for testing, backgrounds, retention
• immediate tips: communicate faster and simplify steps

Join other courageous leaders at TravisYates.org

REach out to Doug Larsen: safeguardrecruiting.com


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

Announcement:

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

Travis Yates:

Welcome back to the show. I'm so honored you decided to spend a few minutes with us here today. And I've got a guest that you've no doubt heard of. He is doing incredible things in the police recruiting space. He's been on the show before, but it's been quite a while, and we wanted to get an update because when it comes to leadership, there could be no more important topic than recruiting. If you can't recruit effectively, if you can't retain effectively, you just simply can't really lead when you don't have the staff that you need. And we're obviously still seeing problems across American law enforcement well after this rearest ugly head post-2020. And it's certainly should be confusing for anyone paying attention. But I have a guy on here uh that has been at the uh spear of it all, fixing problems across the country. Doug Larson, the COO of Safeguard Recruiting. Doug, you really sort of turned heads last time you were on because you were speaking about a lot of things that people hadn't thought of. How does it go in the recruiting world today? And before we say that, let me just back it up. Tell us quickly about your career and kind of how you ended up in the recruiting space.

Doug Larsen:

Well, after I retired from law enforcement, been around as a lot of people know, I was in the driving world too, in the simulator world, got out and around the country doing a lot of training, and I got into truck driver recruiting. Um, and if we know anything about that industry, they get 100% turnover. It's uh a lot more difficult than law enforcement deals with. And I learned a lot from that. I learned a lot about best practices and how to get somebody not only interested in working for you, but keep them all the way to application and employment. And so as I was traveling around the country, I kept getting hit up by different departments in law enforcement that I have friends with, had connections with, because they were they had the same type of problems and always wanted me to take a look at what they were doing and what their issues were. Common themes kept creeping up. Um, law enforcement really was leaning heavily on marketing companies to help them out and even getting into this recruiting video craze. And so we started taking a deeper dive into what it would take to help law enforcement, and it's a lot of the same principles we were already doing and had perfected. And so it's kind of where Safeguard was born, more out of a necessity of law enforcement departments asking for help and us trying to step in and keep them from wasting their money on uh marketing ploys that maybe get a lot of impressions for you or a lot of clicks on your website, but don't really get you applicants.

Travis Yates:

You know, I saw this on the job. I was over uh our recruiting. I worked at a major Metropolitan Police Department for 30 years. And so about 10 years ago, I was over recruiting. And people may not know this, but we started seeing a decline about that time period. Because if you look back, 94 cops bill, crime bill put 100,000 more cops on the streets. Uh, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden was the one that pushed that one. So I'm gonna I'm going back a long ways there. But those 100,000 cops, you know, 30 years later, now it's 2024. So in this last 10 years, we've seen a lot of those folks hit retirement. And so we saw this convergence of sort of the the drama of the 2020 plus all these cops being retirement eligible. And of course, we should have seen it coming. Many people didn't see it coming. My agency didn't see it coming, and so we started seeing a decline when I was over the recruiting unit. And like most commanders over recruiting unit, when I got there, Doug, I didn't know anything about recruiting, but we were going to job fairs and doing all this and that. But I started noticing we were going to job fairs, but we were the only ones at the job fairs. There weren't any, you know, potential recruits at job fairs because this thing called the internet was invented. But I saw my own department keep doing the same old, same old, and they were just they were surprised that there wasn't the volume. And then at some point after I'd left the unit, uh I'm in a staff meeting, and the recruiters were saying, Ah, we've we've hired this advertising agency uh to get more views on our website for recruiting. And they were bragging about all these different views. I think they were spending five grand a month, and uh and so I everyone was like, Oh, that's great, that's great. And I was just this silly person that didn't know anything about recruiting at the time and raised my hand and said, Well, that's great, but how many hires did we make off of that sixty thousand dollar spend in a year? And they couldn't answer the question. So I sort of knew before I talked to you about this, Doug. Of course, we've known each other for years, but before we started talking about recruiting, I sort of knew what was sort of going on in the industry that we were basically throwing money at this problem, but no one was really thinking about was this actually solving the problem. And of course, here we are, and we're seeing this all over the country, right? We're seeing departments that are from billboards to bus ads to commercials to a bunch of marketing elements that may be useful, but that's why we're seeing a lot of these agencies still struggling. I mean, when you think about it, if that stuff would work, these major cities wouldn't be having a problem because they're spending a lot of money on advertising and marketing right now. So, how do you find that when you speak to potential clients, Doug, that you've got to almost educate them on what works and what doesn't?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, you're exactly right, Travis. It is education. If we kind of go back and look through that timetable and the amount of people interested in getting in law enforcement, the the old way, the organic way, where they'd come knock on our door and it was really easy. We had a lot of applicants, it just kept declining. And like you're bringing up with your department, law enforcement is slower to adjust. We're still going to career fairs and we're not meeting people where they are, we're not communicating with them properly. So, right now, a lot of departments are struggling to get enough people to talk to them and they're they're trying whatever they can. And a lot of times they're using methods that they can't track and they can't tell you what kind of return they got for their spend, and they're still not getting enough people to talk to and enough people to hire. So you're exactly right. We spend an awful lot of time educating folks on what the best practices are, not only to get people to talk to you, but once they talk to you, how do I keep them engaged? And that's that's another key piece in this.

Travis Yates:

The other thing I noticed is uh police one every year runs this uh video of the year, you know, recruiting video of the year, and they have like the top 10 recruiting videos. You're laughing because you know where I'm going with this. And I started just looking at the top 10 video of the years, and I would go to the department and hit the news sites and find out that these departments were all struggling with recruiting, you know. And I'm thinking to myself, well, they're they had the recruiting video of the year, but they still are struggling with recruiting. Is nobody putting two and two together? So kind of talk about that for a minute. You've probably seen the same thing, right?

Doug Larsen:

Oh, we see the same thing. And and we love watching all the the videos and the creative work that goes into that. That is pretty interesting, and and that's a good way to show off your your department and the brand. But is that the good way to get people absolutely interested in working for you and giving them the next steps so they know how to apply and and what to do to get into the process of becoming employed in your department? And that's part of what is left off in these videos, well as a big piece is all right, I like your department, but am I going to remember that and go track down how do I apply and and how easy do we make it for them?

Travis Yates:

The the other thing is the practicality of that. Yeah, I like the videos too, but I almost get this sense that we're putting these videos out because we like it versus thinking about what the recruits would like. Because, you know, I I just think about my college-age kids, that doesn't impress them. They're watching these videos online all day, every day, from TikTok, you name it. And so these two, three minute videos, I mean, that really doesn't, it doesn't really ring their bell that much, so to speak. But the videos may be useful, you know, after you get somebody on the hook. But so marketing is useful to keep people interested. But you have this recruiting first philosophy, Doug. I don't know, I don't think there's any other and anybody else in this industry doing it. Uh because there's a huge difference between recruiters and marketers. And and we keep seeing these agencies asking for marketing elements, thinking it's going to fix recruiting, where they need a recruiting first philosophy. That's what Safeguard proposes. So kind of line out and tell us what a recruiting first philosophy actually is.

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, we we are going to take your opening, your qualifications, and we are going to find the people that fit that instead of hoping that people come across your website and take the next steps. So we're going to take those elements, we're going to go 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and take that out and find people that are interested in working for you and getting them started in the process towards employment for you. And marketing is different, right? They can drive a lot of traffic to a website or whatever you want them to look at. That doesn't necessarily convert or hit the right target audience of people that can work for you. You don't need a whole bunch of 80-year-old women looking at your website if you're trying to employ people. I mean, you need the right people.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, that's what people don't understand is when you drive traffic through marketing, you can't dictate the age range or specifications or anything. So you're paying for people that aren't even qualified to work for your department. And then even if they are qualified, you're hoping that they'll go to a website and just make a decision. And so what you do is you're almost sourcing these candidates, Doug. And I'll give our audience an example. Maybe they're not familiar with law enforcement. But if a major city or even a mid-sized city has city has a police chief opening, they hire a recruiting firm to go find potential candidates. We call them headhunter firms. Industry and private industry are the same thing. And so we do that for major city chiefs, mid-city chiefs all the time. They don't put a website up, they don't put a video up, they they don't advertise or market. They literally hire a company to go out and source high-level potential candidates for that police chief's job. Where did we lose it to where we don't do that for the police officer job? That's sort of what you do, isn't it?

Doug Larsen:

It's exactly what we do. And we find those candidates, whether it be new hires or if you want to go after laterals or people with specialties, we will find those people for you. And you can do it across the country. You can geofence a location near you. Everybody's different in what their needs are and what their wants are, but that's exactly what we will do. You have a problem with not enough people talking to you and interested in your opening, we will solve that problem for you. We'll get you people that meet your qualifications and are very interested in working for you.

Travis Yates:

And I would imagine, just being in the profession for 30 years, that you probably have some recruiters that aren't fans of you because they may think that these guys are trying to take their job or they're trying to report or they're trying to say I'm not doing my job correctly. Uh, do you ever encounter that and how do you deal with that?

Doug Larsen:

Yep. So it's change. Anything in life with change comes with a little bit of pushback until there's some understanding. And some of this is education. We're not here to take the place of the recruiter. Recruiter is an essential part of that department. They know the department, they know the process. They're going to form a mentorship role with people interested. We are supplementing that, not only with sourcing enough people for the recruiters to talk to, but helping with the processes, the communication channels, what messages go out, how they go out, how you efficiently communicate with them through our software. So we we help with all those processes. We will get you a lot of people to talk to, but we're not gonna make your life harder as a recruiter. We're not gonna overwhelm you because we have automated processes in place that are gonna make your life actually easier, but you're gonna have the volume your department needs to be successful in hiring.

Travis Yates:

I mean, I've said this multiple times here on this show, and it's not gonna be a surprise to our regular listeners, but we don't have a recruiting crisis, we have a leadership crisis, meaning we're not making the correct decisions when it comes to recruiting. We there's plenty of people that want to do this job. If you found that to be true, I mean you've had over 500 campaigns you ran for agencies. I mean, is there an actual crisis of people that want to do this job, Doug?

Doug Larsen:

No, there's not a shortage of people that want to get in into this profession. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of people that want to be in this profession. It's a process problem, it's it's a way of reaching out to those people, and that's where the breakdown is, and that's where we bridge the gap for departments. And a lot of departments don't have that specialty to be able to get out and source the people, keep them engaged. And we're just helping be that bridge for them. And you're exactly right. There are plenty of people that want to be involved. It's just waiting for them to come find us is not the answer, and it doesn't work.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, it's almost like a 1995 arrogance that we think we could just set back and people will come knock on our door. That may that may have worked at one time, but that's over with not just for us, but for every profession. So I would imagine you've leveraged technology, Doug, and seen what's worked in other industries. Because I mean, if I was to, you know, everybody's got a short attention span now, you know, and it's that's with people with with trying to get employment and trying to find recruits, people don't want to pay attention a lot. How do you use technology to sort of show these processes up and to get interested people to want to do the job?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, everybody's carrying around a phone, everybody's on their phone all the time, and we keep people on the phone, we keep messages to them. As soon as they show interest and we capture enough information to be able to communicate with them, we do communicate with them on behalf of the department until we can pass that person off to a recruiter. And and once they're in the system with the recruiter, we still help with the communication and keep them involved. And and some people, life events, maybe they're interested in working for your department, but they can't right now. We'll help with messaging too to keep them engaged and and a part of your organization and keep their interest level up. So we we've automated a lot of those communications and it works really well.

Travis Yates:

So you talked about processes. Um, I would imagine you've got some agencies that if they would just show their process, they don't need more volume, but they have processes that people are self-taking themselves out of the system. I mean, I can only imagine some of these old school human resource programs that a lot of these government entities use, right? Is it possible? Let's say a department is a, we don't really need a lot of more people, but we need to make our processes to where people don't dump out as much because they lose. I mean, these a lot of these agencies, and I hear from them every week, is they'll lose up to half their people. They won't even apply because they just get in some who knows. I mean, who knows why, but they show interest, but then they don't ever take the first step. Do you offer something to where you go, hey, we'll we won't source people, but we'll help you with your actual processes to make things better?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, exactly. We we we will offer a consulting role, a training role to be able to help departments fix their process as much as they can within the realm. I mean, we we understand government, we've all been a part of it, and sometimes HR, you can't change their rules, but you can work within those rules to maximize the effect for the return for your department when somebody's interested. And we will help with that. And we will point out to departments this is where you're losing people, this is why you're losing them, and this is how we can fix it. And we'll give them a solution and we'll give them the proven method from start to finish, how to maximize the return and be the most efficient with their phones and fill their slots, but not everybody can do that. So along the way, we'll give them ideas and we'll help them fix their processes so they can at least not lose as many people. Because yeah, if you're struggling to get enough people to talk to you and interest in your job, and when they do and you start losing them, that's that's disheartening for those recruiters.

Travis Yates:

Now, I would recommend everybody listening. If you're just now joining us, we're talking to Doug Larson, the COO of Safeguard Recruiting, just to cutting edge of what's going on in recruiting. They are fixing agencies and staffing them up across the country. We don't have time to go into all of it, but it's pretty amazing. But one of the things when you go to your website, Doug, you quickly see your software, Safeguard Connect. And I don't think people realize this, but you sell that separately. Like you could just say, hey, you're doing a great job, but you just need this little extra oop, so to speak, to help your process, and you'll you'll provide them with this software package. Explain that to the audience because I think we take that for granted. We have recruiters that are just running emails and are using some HR software that's it was built for HR, not for police recruiting. You built this from the ground up for law enforcement, did you not?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, Safeguard Kinetic is built for law enforcement. Is it just like Safeguards born out of a need, you would be surprised at how many departments around this country are tracking their applicants, tracking the recruits either on a spreadsheet or a whiteboard. And when you start getting the kind of volume we will generate for you, that's not going to work for you. But just common efficiencies and communication works better through our Safeguard Connect platform. So you can individually communicate with somebody through text and email, and it's all tracked for you. So, Travis, if you and I were working on recruits and I was out one day and somebody had sent a message in, you could see exactly what had happened, all the communication, and pick up where I left off. And we can bulk email through it. So if we have a PT test coming up and I need to get 50 people there, we can send that message out to all of them, right, all at once. And we use our this as part of our nurturing too, to keep people engaged, let them know how the process is going, what to expect next, what documents they need to get ready, how to prepare for whatever the next steps are. Safecard Connect, some departments call us up down the after they've used it and they say it saves them weeks worth of work with how quick you can communicate. You don't need to individually do it through your phone or your email. And it comes with an app. So when a name comes in, somebody's interested in working for you, that recruiter will know right away and they can jump right on it and start the communication process with them right away. And it is it's a great tool, and we have set it up so it's available for departments of all sizes. If you're a small department, we've got some we can make it work for you all the way up to the large ones. And these recruiters love it, they can't live without it once they get on it.

Travis Yates:

What I was so impressed with is you put the cost right there on your website. You can go to safeguardrecruiting.com and go over to the system. And I mean, I think the smaller departments are like a couple hundred bucks a month. I mean, it's just so ridiculously low. I'm not sure how you're doing it, but the cool thing about it is you got the capability in there to automate all the messaging because you can imagine if you're just having to constantly email people and communicate, like that can all be set up automatically, and the recruiters can focus their attention on that mentoring that you talked about.

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, it can be set up automatically, and then we will help with that that copywriting and the right messages and the right cadence of those messages, because that's another thing that maybe everybody that gets into recruiting doesn't understand. And without the right messages, the right urgency, the right tone in there, you can lose some people that way, or you don't get the urgency that you're requesting. But automating it saves everybody so much time. It's it's an amazing tool, and it's very effective. If if you look at the conversion rates for people that are using our nurturing, the numbers go up so high that it's an amazing tool.

Travis Yates:

I think the first last when we talked to you earlier, you know, I think early last year on the show, I was like, how come you don't have thousands and thousands of people? Like you've you've kind of cracked the code here, and I know you've been busy lately. Uh, give us some examples. I know Philadelphia came on board with you. Kind of tell us this. That's obviously a large, large agency that were really struggling. Kind of tell us, I don't think they mind it. They've been on your show before. Uh how tell us the story of Philly and and kind of what you guys are able to do. And I think you're still working with them.

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, we still are working with them. They're they're a great department. They, I mean, when they came to us, they said they were down twelve hundred. They just spent about three million dollars with the marketing firm, and the problem was not solving itself. And they were worried with attrition that, you know, over time, a year or two, they could be 2,000 officers down, which is devastating. And so we came in and we got involved and we started putting our system in place and we started sourcing candidates for them, and we're getting a lot of candidates for them that are they're drawn from the areas they want to, mainly around Philadelphia, but they branch out as far as they want. And we are gathering a number of people that are interested in taking the next steps, and we're filling those academies up for them.

Travis Yates:

When you say numbers, I mean, can can you give us a little bit of the numbers a month that they're getting?

Doug Larsen:

Uh, I think Philadelphia is getting around a thousand people a month interested in working for them that we're sourcing for them.

Travis Yates:

That's crazy, man. That's crazy. Uh so I saw on your website you got all these case studies of these departments, and uh and so it's not a secret what you're doing. I mean, you have before and after real data, real studies. And I guess I would just ask you if I mean it excites me because this should not be a problem. What you guys are and uh what you guys are doing is incredible, but you're you're swimming in a sea of sort of uh I wouldn't call them fraudsters. I mean, advertising is what they say it is. It's advertising. You're recruiters, you know, you're recruiters, and and what do you think it's gonna take to get the masses to go, yes, we need actual recruiting uh versus advertising? I know I'm singing a broken record here. We already talked about it, but it seems to me this is such an easy answer. We'll talk about the cost in a minute because in my mind this must be crazy money. But we'll but first off, is there what what what would you tell them that are maybe on the fence about it?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, uh, I mean, education is what we keep doing and showing the difference between what marketing and recruiting is going to do. And if you come in with a solid recruiting package like what we're gonna help you with, I mean, these are the things that are gonna heal your department and gonna skyrocket your career too, because you you are gonna solve this problem for your department. But it's heavy education, and that's why you see us putting out a lot of articles. You put us, we we got our recruiting show that we're doing all the time. We travel around doing training whenever we can because it's changing a mindset, right? We're shifting out of, you've talked about it before. When you got into law enforcement, 800,000 people showed up for that job. That stopped happening and it started getting worse and worse until where now departments maybe get 70% of the people they need interested. And we're just trying to educate them on how the proper way to spend those funds to get the maximum return and keep your community safe by having a full staff of officers.

Travis Yates:

Pretty wild. So let's talk cost. Uh, if an agency is trying to make a decision, and by the way, there's no there's nothing against anyone that asks for help. I mean, we get help for a lot of things. We hire civilians to help us with crime data, we hire third-party people to help us with a bunch of things in law enforcement. Um, and so it's no slap in the face of anybody that that you're called in to actually assist recruiters because recruiters have only so much time in the day and only they're only access to so many resources. You're just kind of a forced multiplier, it's a numbers game. To get more applicants, you've got to talk to more people. And there's only so many people that a couple of recruiters in the office can talk to, right? And so you just you sort of bring them that multitude. But if an agency is trying to make that decision with any company, what should they be asking that company as far as cost goes?

Doug Larsen:

Well, as far as cost, you you need to know what they're gonna deliver. Like, are you gonna deliver a certain amount of people for what I'm paying? Uh they should be able to kind of give you that answer up front of what you can expect. And you're you're exactly right. What we're doing is we're trying to be a specialty because a lot of recruiters come into law enforcement and they don't come in with this background of how do I do the creative work, where do I place these ads, how long do I leave them up, how do I monitor them, how do I grab the information. And we're just bringing that specialty to help them out. We're not replacing anybody, but you need to know what you're going to get in return for your money when you bring you hire an outside group, an outside contractor.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, I'm on your website now, Doug, and um you actually have different packages on there where you say how many people they're gonna get. I'll just read them real quick. Tier one is a hundred people a month, tier two is three hundred people a month, tier three is nine hundred people. That's probably the Philadelphia one you talked about, and you could probably do customize in between. So you literally give a direct quote for number of people. Is that how you do it?

Doug Larsen:

Yep, yep. We're gonna tell you where you're gonna get. We'll we'll tell you what you can expect and the processes to make sure those 100 people, if that's what you're going with, are gonna we're gonna maximize them coming through your system and go into an application.

Travis Yates:

And you guarantee this. I see that on the website as well. I mean, you say we guarantee this many people. How how in the world are you able to do that? Because I don't think no one, no one in the right mind is doing that.

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, no, we've been doing this a long time, Travis. So we understand what we're gonna be able to do and how we're gonna do it, and we're that confident we'll deliver for you that we're guaranteeing it it's going to happen for you.

Travis Yates:

Well, I know people are listening to this, and this is a little bit different than the show we normally do. I mean, obviously, this is a commercial for safeguard recruiting because this is so incredible, and so that's why a lot of these questions are geared that way. I need to see people to understand like this recruiting crisis is not a crisis, you just have to make the right decision. And hey, if you don't want to hire a safeguard, you can hire someone else. Just make sure when you pay them money, they tell you how many people they're gonna deliver. Is that a fair statement, Doug?

Doug Larsen:

Very fair statement. And so, yeah, be careful out there. We get calls from a lot of places that have hired somebody else and it's not getting better, so they're asking for help or what they can do on the side, and and we'll take those calls and we'll help you out the best we can. But make sure you know what's getting delivered because you're gonna have to answer back to your counsel or your chief or whoever on how you spent that money and what the return is. And with us, you're gonna get a live dashboard. You can just pull it up and show them right there. This is what we got, this is where they're coming from. Because if you don't have a lot of information, you can't make your month-to-month, week-to-week decisions on how to spend your money and what's gonna be most effective for you, but they should be able to tell you what the return is going to be. We do.

Travis Yates:

Well, the other thing that is really cool is last time we spoke, you weren't offering nearly the amount of things you're offering now. I mean, obviously, I don't think Safeguard Connect was around then. You that's an applicant tracking system, you've rolled that out. Now you've expanded to where if a department calls you and says, Hey, we don't we don't only need you to source our recruiting, but we need psychological testing, or we need to background checks, or we need to actual test. You're doing all that now, aren't you?

Doug Larsen:

We're doing it all, and we're really ramping up on the retention side also. And yeah, we're we're we're we'll be a solution for you. If you have all those needs, just it's it's one stop shop for you. We we've added it all, and it's born out of need so we can help these departments.

Travis Yates:

So if I'm a department, and let's say this is the average size department, Doug, it's about 30 to 50 people, and if that's the average size police department in America, I'm a department of 50 people, and I'm like, hey, I don't have a full-time recruiter, I don't really have people that do full-time background checks. I'm having to pull people off the streets to do that because that's most of those size departments, they don't have those full-time folks. Yep. You're telling me you could come in, you can recruit, you can source, you can recruit, you can get them to an exam. I assume that's the virtual exam, and you can do backgrounds and everything, and you can hand them a list of qualified people to hire. Is that what you're telling me?

Doug Larsen:

Exactly. We can do it. We'll we'll hand that list that's ready to go, and they take it from there.

Travis Yates:

And your testing's all validated, all that's been validated.

Doug Larsen:

Exactly. Yep.

Travis Yates:

Well, that's not real apparent on the website yet. I know you're probably working on towards that, but you are constantly expanding. Where do you see the future of recruiting? You guys are on the cutting edge now. What are you working on now for the next five, 10 years?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, well, one is and it is popular with AI always coming in. And we're we are ramping up, we're gonna be rolling out some products and some features in the near future that is gonna make life a lot easier on the recruiter, too, to be able to analyze these applications that come in, these cadets as they come in. So that is one step that we're rolling through. Um, we keep Adam features. I mean, if we need to, we could become that that full service recruiting arm for your department. Um, there's there's a lot, it's pretty exciting where everything's going.

Travis Yates:

Yeah, I think what I love about the more I talk to you about it, Doug, is you could play whatever role the department needs. If they say, hey, we just need another 100 people a month that are interested, you can do that. Or if they say, Hey, we need we need not only people, but we also need some software, or we need uh actual to do the test, or like you just you could give them big pieces of this stuff to help them along the way and really supplement what they're already doing.

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, you can you can a la card it or you can do the whole thing, and we've got some departments want us to take their application for them in Connect. Others have a different method to do it, but they want all the names going through Kinect. Um, we will help you out too. Let's let's get your army of officers out there on the road, they're your best source to find people. Let's get them QR codes, let's get them ways to help recruit, and we'll dump that stuff right into Kinect too. So we'll we'll give you all sorts of ways that you can enhance your recruiting and make it better and make it more efficient for you. Uh, we got a lot of tools, and you can pick and choose what uh services of ours you need, and we'll just get it up and rolling for you.

Announcement:

So if

Travis Yates:

I'm sitting here listening and I need a little bit of help. Um, and I think I don't really want to call anybody. Give give them give them a few tips, Doug. What could they do tomorrow to make the recruiting better?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah. I think the number one thing that everybody needs to do is communicate more. That's number one right there. Communicate and how you communicate. What's the lag in your communication? Um, that's a big step right there. So keep them all right there on the phone. Text, email, call. Make sure they know you're interested in them. If you if you don't and you show a lack of interest, then they move on. They're gonna go somewhere else. You're not only competing against other departments, you're competing against other industries, and you need to really stay on top of it.

Travis Yates:

You mentioned the phone more than once, and I have to imagine most of the people that are applying for jobs or looking for jobs are all on the phone. And I have to also imagine just knowing from my background with HR and kind of the old school doing things, a lot of that stuff doesn't play well on phones. So, what do you do to keep keep them on the phone?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, we capture a lot of information up front so we can communicate with them. And we have we have are able to communicate with them through the phone. Connect does a great job of keeping them on the phone and and spreading information to them, especially with our automated nurturing system. Um, the app makes it real easy for the recruiters to stay in contact with them. But we try and keep everything so it's easy, everything's mobile friendly. You don't have to get off there and register somewhere else and and fill out these long 60-page applications. We can capture a lot of information right up front on the phone and keep everybody interested and engaged so they don't move on and just try and come back to it later and then they never come back to it.

Travis Yates:

Man, this has kind of been a masterclass in recruiting. Probably the listeners are thinking thinking to themselves, man, this is more than I ever wanted to know. But I once again, I can't think of a more important topic when we talk about leadership. And I can't help but think there's so much more that this profession needs to be doing and taking just you know, taking some of these small steps, Doug. So, you know, you're sort of a unicorn out there. I don't see any other companies sort of doing what you're doing. You see a lot of general companies that have come into the law enforcement space and they're playing, but you guys are solely dedicated to law enforcement. You're all former law enforcement, you speak that language. I gotta think, man, if people would just listen and people would just sort of act upon some of the things you're saying, we can get past this problem. So thank you so much for being here. How do people reach out to you?

Doug Larsen:

Yeah, website safeguardrecruiting.com, perfect way to if you want to contact me direct, Doug at safeguardrecruiting.com and love to hear from you if you need some help, you want to bounce ideas off us, or just you know, get in contact with us. We'll help you out even if you don't come on board as a customer. We love to hear from people and and discuss recruiting and best practices. So just reach out.

Travis Yates:

Doug Larson, Safeguard Recruiting, changing everything you thought you knew about recruiting. Thanks for being here. And if you've been listening or you've been watching, just remember lead on and stay courageous.

Announcement:

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

Head Shot

Travis Yates

Host

Podcasts we love

Check out these other fine podcasts recommended by us, not an algorithm.