Preventing Burnout Working in Police Recruiting!

Thanks for reading the Marketing 'For Cops' Newsletter. Want this newsletter delivered straight to your email every week so you don't have to remember to check LinkedIn? Join my Police Marketing Squad and I'll send it to you every Thursday morning! Forever free, always delivering knowledge, and never spam!

Feeling the pressure of finding applicants, getting people through your hiring process, and tackling those vacancies of yours?  It can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be.  Follow these five tips to help prevent burnout in your police recruiting and background unit...keep reading! 👀

Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO, and this week I want to talk to you about preventing burnout in police recruiting.  This is a huge topic that rarely gets brought up, but it is very real and can seriously affect your police recruiting efforts in a major way. 💯 

Look, when you work in police recruiting, there’s one thing you learn really fast…hiring ain’t easy.  You’ve got standards to adhere to, fierce competition for candidates to deal with, a constant pressure to fill your vacancies, and to top it off…the unpredictable nature of applicant behaviors, so it’s completely normal and doesn’t take long for someone to start feeling that stress and questioning their career choice of working in the hiring unit. 😩

Let’s fix that before it becomes an enormous problem for you.  Here are five ways, in no particular order, to help prevent burnout in your recruiting and background unit…

1. Have enough resources

Ok, clearly, I’m going after the jugular here and coming at you double barrel with this one, but having enough resources is truly the absolute best way for your agency to prevent burnout in your recruiting unit while simultaneously improving productivity, quality of work, and the overall mood of everyone working there. 📈

Why is this important?  Because your Background Investigators and Recruiters are the face of your agency and their interactions with applicants and potential applicants quite literally will determine your very future.  🔮

I get it…every unit is screaming for help and more bodies and it’s easy to lump recruiting in with the rest…but no other unit has the ability to put your lights out if you don’t take care of them.  Make sure you have enough people working here to effectively handle the load. 💪

2. Allow for breaks

Now, I’m not talking about grabbing some coffee or allowing for lunch…that should be commonplace in any unit inside of a police agency.  What I’m talking about is allowing people to catch their breath and change things up for a minute. 😌

Whether it’s screening applications, giving a recruiting presentation to a local school or group, going to a job or career fair, attending a training class, or even just getting out of the office as a group for a little bit, make sure everyone who works in the unit has an opportunity to do something different. Even if it’s for just a day, a half day or a couple of hours. 🤷‍♂️

Believe me, breaking up the monotony is the best way to get someone back on track. 🎯

3. Support

This one is for those of you in charge.  If you’re the Chief, Sheriff, or the head of an agency or division, let me ask you a question… 🗣️

When’s the last time you visited your recruiting and background unit without asking about an applicant or how vacancies are coming along? 😳

If it took you more than a second or two to think about that time, stop everything you’re doing, and go visit the unit just to say hi.  If it’s been a while, everyone is going to freak out and be super quiet wondering what’s going on…and that is a good indicator that you need to do this more. 🫨

Check in, make sure everyone’s doing well, and let them know how much you appreciate the work they’re doing.  This action will pay you back tenfold in the long run.  👍

4. Attend Academy graduations

This goes right along with allowing for breaks and getting out of the office, but make sure that everyone in the hiring unit, both civilian and sworn, regularly get to attend police academy graduations. 👮‍♂️👮‍♀️

Trust me, there will be resistance and a lot of, 'oh man, I don’t wanna go to that…I’m busy, I’ve got things to do'…but get people to the graduation, I don’t care if you have to order them to do it!  This will quickly help turn things around for someone facing burnout. 🫡

Police academy graduations are a special time in every officer’s life and once you put someone back in that environment, they can’t help but to remember the feeling they had of walking the stage and receiving their badge.  It’s incredibly therapeutic and a fantastic reminder of what the work we do in recruiting is all about. 🙌

5. Keep outside supervisor questions away

As a line level Background Investigator and Recruiter for over a decade at my agency, I can tell you first-hand how awful it is when a supervisor outside of your unit comes to you asking about an applicant and wanting to know what’s going on. 😟

As if there wasn’t enough pressure in hiring already, now you have someone who you really aren’t supposed to be sharing information with, demanding answers from you.  This feeling gets even worse when the person asking is someone you know and have worked with for a while.  It’s a really awkward spot for most recruiters. 😬

There’s easy fix though. Make sure that everyone, especially outside supervisors, knows that Background Investigators and Recruiters can’t answer questions about specific applicants and those questions should be directed to the hiring unit’s supervisor only. 🤐

This will take an enormous amount of pressure off of the people working in hiring and allow them to simply do their jobs without having to answer to multiple supervisors.  Translation…happy people. 😃

Well, there you have it.  Put these five burnout proof suggestions into use and let me know how it goes for you.  Pretty sure, you’re gonna be very happy with the results. 😍

Need some more mindset shifts to help set your police recruiting unit up for success?  🙋‍♂️🙋‍♀️

My Road to Better Recruiting course is open right now and will teach you the exact mindset and strategies I’ve used at my own agency to keep everyone performing highly, while building a pipeline of applicants, and keeping ahead of our vacancies without dumping endless dollars on recruiting solutions that don’t work. 🚀

Check it out now on my website by visiting forcopstraining.com/rtbr and take control of your recruiting.   

Have a friend at another agency who needs to tackle some burnout problems of their own?  🤔

Share this newsletter with them so they can learn too!  Remember, it’s going to take all of us, working together, to change the future of police recruiting. 🤝

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

---

Did you find this newsletter valuable? Make sure to like & comment below. 👇

I'd love to hear from you! 🤩

Also, if you know someone who needs to see this content, please share my newsletter with them! I would appreciate the help in spreading the knowledge that will benefit us all and make our profession stronger! 💪

Have a marketing or recruiting topic you would like more info on? Drop me a message 📩 and let me know what you would like to learn! It might just make its way into next week's newsletter! 🤞

---

👋 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.

Want to learn more about police marketing and recruiting? 👇

🔔 Follow my profile

✅ Connect with me

🗞️ Subscribe to the Marketing ‘For Cops’ Newsletter

You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, X, or visit my website at www.forcopstraining.com to learn more about my Police Marketing courses which are enrolling right now!