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2024 is long gone and overall things have gotten better with police recruiting as agencies have embracing new technologies to help get back to hiring good people and seeing staffing numbers improve. It’s a good thing. 👍
But if you want to keep seeing that trend continue, you better stop telling yourself these five things about police recruiting in 2025...keep reading! 👀
Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO, and this week, we’re talking about the five things you absolutely need to stop telling yourself about police recruiting in 2025. 🖐️
Now…this list could probably be 25 or 30 deep, but I’m focusing on 5 really common and pretty basic thoughts where I keep seeing agencies getting stuck on that are preventing them from being able to see the abundance of applicants that are sitting there right in front of their faces. 🐭🐭🐭
The fact is there are still plenty of people who want to be in law enforcement…that’s not what has changed over the years…it’s the way you have to think about and reach applicants that has. 🤯
So…if you want to see better recruiting in 2025, remove these five statements from your vocabulary and thought process immediately...
1. Things will eventually get better
Look, I’m just going to come right out of the gate swinging here…no…no they won’t. 🥊
Things aren’t just going to magically be fixed and suddenly you’ll have thousands of applicants applying for you again. That’s now how recruiting works. Hell, that’s not how anything works. 🙅♂️
If you want better recruiting in 2025, you have to change whatever it is you’ve been doing that hasn’t been working. Job fairs, out of state recruiting trips? How have those been working out for you? Likely, not good. Billboards, recruiting videos? How ineffective have those been? 😳
Just because every other agency is doing it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Break free from that thinking that’s been holding you back and act! You gotta do something different. 💯
2. It doesn’t matter who works in recruiting
This is another area many agencies just staff and forget about. The simple truth is a bad recruiter or background investigator can cost you applicants left and right and you’ll never even know it…simply assuming they chose another agency for better pay, benefits, or whatever other reason you tell yourself to mask the fact that you got the wrong people in place. 🤥
Recruiting in 2025, just like it was in 2024, is all about relationship building. You have to have the right resources in the right places to be able to pull it off. This might sting a little bit, but you need to reevaluate your whole recruiting staff and make sure they’re the right people so you can ensure every contact they have with an applicant or potential applicant is a positive one. 😁
3. I have to spend a ton of money to effectively recruit
The notion that you have to spend a lot of money to keep up with police recruiting exploded in 2024 and there’s a really good reason for it…salespeople. 🤑
The so-called recruiting 'crisis' opened a lot of doors for salespeople to enter our realm and begin to pitch agencies on why their recruiting solution was going to fix their problems. Unsuspecting Chiefs, and Captains, and Sergeants, and even line-level personnel fell victim to these pitches because they don’t understand how marketing works and simply took the salesperson’s word for how effective their product would be. 😑
Listen…if you remember nothing else from this newsletter…remember this… 👇
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to effectively promote both your agency and its job openings. I’m living proof of that. Been doing it for years! You don’t need fancy websites, costly recruiting videos, billboards and airport advertisements or any of the other junk you’ve been sold on. 🤷♂️
Using the power of social media, you can attract plenty of qualified applicants, month after month, year after year…all for free. 💪
4. Hiring/Referral Bonuses will solve my problem
This is another area that has gotten out of control this year with agencies trying to one up each other with skyrocketing hiring and referral bonuses. 💸
I’ve talked about this before and I’m going to do it again. People choose your agency for two reasons and two reasons only…they like what your agency has to offer (specialties, culture, location, that kind of stuff) and they believe that people like them, work for you. ✅✅
That’s it. No hiring bonus, referral program, vacation/sick time accruals at hiring or whatever else we come up with will change that. They like you and believe your agency is the kind of place people like them work. Getting applicants mentally to those two places is what will solve your problem. 🧠
5. I can’t do this myself
Many people believe that recruiting in today’s landscape is simply too complicated and requires some kind of media specialist, or marketing professional, or outside company to handle things for you. This is unequivocally, one hundred percent false. I’ve been doing this stuff for almost 25 years without any degrees, formal training, or someone doing it for me. 😎
You don’t need to sit in a classroom for years and years, go through some ridiculous coaching program, or have someone with the most proprietary applicant generation system that’s gonna get you so many applicants you’re not even gonna believe it, do things for you. 🙄
Recruiting in 2025 isn’t hard…it’s just different. But you can do this. 👏
If you want to finally break free from all of these outside companies who are more interested in filling their pockets than your vacancies and are ready to take back your recruiting…I’m ready to help! 🙌
My Road to Better Recruiting course is open right now and will help you solve everything we talked about in this newsletter in an easy to digest, understand and learn online format you can take in the comfort of your own office. 😃
No long commute both ways to the training site, no awkward lunch with a bunch of people you don’t know, and no praying that a break is coming soon so you can get up, stretch your legs and go to the bathroom! Learning has changed. 🚀
Enroll now on my website by visiting forcopstraining.com/rtbr. I put a lot into this and it’s the only recruiting class in the world you’ll wish you took sooner!
Have a friend at another agency who really needs to get these thought patterns out of their life? Share this newsletter with them so they can learn too! They’ll be really happy that you did and our profession will thank you for it later. 🤝
Have more questions about police recruiting, marketing, or anything else you're struggling with? Don't hesitate to reach out...I’m always here to help. 🙏
Until next week my Police Marketing Squad, happy recruiting! 😃
Tom
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👋 I’m Tom Sye, your Police Marketing FTO. I founded ‘For Cops’ Training to teach Police Departments how to attract more qualified candidates through the same tried and tested methods I’ve used for the past ten years at my own department to keep up with turnover and stay ahead of vacancies.
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