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Hey everyone, it’s Tom Sye your Police Marketing FTO and in this week’s newsletter I’m taking on one of the hottest and most debated topics in Police Recruiting today and that is how to attract more lateral applicants to your agency! 👮👮🧲
The demand for lateral officers has exploded over the past three years or so and with good reason. Laterals are typically easier to hire, as they’ve already shown they can make it through a hiring process and know how to do so, they save your agency money because you don’t have to send them through an academy, and they give you quicker relief on the streets if you offer an expedited training program as Laterals have the experience to get what you are doing quicker than an officer fresh out of the academy. 🧠💡
On the other side of the debate, many agencies are upset because they feel that law enforcement agencies are cannibalizing each other and have begun creating officer repayment programs, where an officer has to pay their agency back for training if they leave, agency repayment programs, where the hiring agency has to pay the originating agency for training costs if they hire a lateral, and in some cases, although I don’t know that anybody advertises it, agencies have threatened to or removed training classes, specialty positions, or promotions from officers who may be looking to leave. 😳
Since this edition is about attracting laterals not keeping them, I’m going to keep this part brief, but I do want to let you know where I’m at on this whole thing, because I believe in that. You may agree with me, you may disagree with me, both are fine. I’m always going to give it to you straight and you’re gonna know exactly where I stand. 💯
I’m simply going to sum it up this way...
If the only thing keeping someone at your agency is the fact they can’t afford to pay you back a large sum of money, they’re scared they’ll be kicked out of their position if they even look at what options are best for their family, or can’t get another agency to take them on because they don’t want to pay an exorbitant amount of money to another agency, how happy is that person really going be working for you? How productive do you think that person will be in the long term? Holding someone hostage is not retention. Keeping somebody who doesn’t want to be there, so you don’t have a vacancy, is not solving your staffing problems, you’re actually creating bigger ones. 🤷♂️
This is gonna sting a little bit...but if you’re hemorrhaging officers to other agencies, you need to take a look at what you’re doing...not what other agencies are “doing to you”. If you’re a smaller agency and can’t compete with bigger agencies who offer more money or opportunities...that’s not your employees' fault. You either need to accept the fact that people who come to work for you are doing it for the experience and use that to your advantage to appeal to short term officers to continuously fill your ranks or start appealing to people who want to work for a small agency and the benefits that provides. 🏡
OK? All right...let’s get to what you came for! 😎
How to attract more laterals to your agency.
The number one thing that everyone starts with is their hiring bonus. Nearly every ad I see for lateral officers, no matter what platform, does this same thing. Two years ago, when we had a big lateral push at my agency, I lead with exactly that too. A massive, for that time, $10,000 hiring bonus. I put that number everywhere! Every post I made, on top of every page of the website, digital billboards all around the valley...literally everywhere we had a presence, and it worked! 🤑
Today though, that would not be my game plan, at all, and here’s why...👇
Unless your hiring bonus is so eye popping, and I’m talking like forty, fifty grand or above, that number should not be displayed in the picture of your ad because it’s not grabbing anyone’s attention. Again, when we offered $10K, bonuses were still fairly new. Everyone else either had none or up to around $5,000 or so, so our figure, that at least doubled what anyone else was doing, really stood out at that time. That’s just not the case anymore. 📉
Look, you have right around one second, depending on the person scrolling, driving, or flipping through pages, to grab someone’s attention with your ad. Featuring the same bonus that everyone else has is not going to get anyone to notice you. Translation...wasted ad. 🧟
So, what will get them to stop?
To figure that out...first...you have to be aware of what you’re dealing with...in this case laterals. 🚔➡🚔
Why would a lateral officer leave their agency? 🤔
That’s the question. ❓
Well, many reasons could be given here covering a broad scope of things...but at the end of the day, it all comes down to one thing...they aren’t happy. 😠
As a Police Marketer it’s your job to figure out what they aren’t happy about!
Is it their agency and the new policies and restrictions limiting their ability to do their job? This was a major factor over the past year and a half and one that I attacked with a simple four-word advertising campaign. ‘Be a Cop again’. All I did was highlight the support we had from staff, our council, and in the community and coupled that with the ability to go out and still do actual police work. 🙌
The response was incredible, and I smashed our record for lateral hires last year. I can’t tell you how many emails, social media messages and phone calls that started off with “hey, I wanna be a cop again”. Now that’s effective...that’s what you’re looking for! 🌟
So, what if a lateral is not necessarily unhappy with their agency but moving somewhere else to be closer to family or a place they’ve always wanted to live. It’s the same approach. This is where you would highlight all the cool things to do in your area...hiking, fishing, sporting events, concerts, hometown festivals, real quality of living type things. This was the case for me when I moved from Florida to Arizona. ☀🌵
As a sports fan in Miami, I had four professional teams, major college events like the orange bowl and national championship games, Super Bowls, concerts, all kinds of things...so that was really important to me. Glendale matched that to a tee for me, and I still, twenty years later after moving here, get excited about that kind of stuff, so it was a major factor in my decision, and you better believe something I regularly use in our advertising to help attract others who are interested in the same. 🏈🏀🏆🎤
That’s what it’s all about...and you’ve heard me say this a million times and I’m probably going to say it a million more... 🗣
You have to show people that people like them, work for you!
If you’re a big agency trying to attract laterals from a small agency, show them the benefits of working for you ala specialty positions, pay scales, benefits, nearby backup, things to do...all of it. If you’re a small agency trying to attract those from a big agency, highlight your low crime rate (translation = they won’t be running call to call to call), your family atmosphere, the hometown feel you provide, all the things that aren’t the hustle and bustle of a big department. 😌
Think about any reason that someone would not be happy where they currently are and how your agency solves that problem for them! That, my Police Marketing Squad...is worth more than any hiring bonus on the planet. 🤩
So, let’s get to figuring it out! Attracting applicants isn’t about a social media post here and there. It’s about focusing on what your agency brings to the table and highlighting it in such a way that makes people say...that’s the place for me! 😁
Have questions about recruiting, marketing or anything else? Please 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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