Many police departments are finding it more challenging than ever before to recruit top talent. Some police agencies are reporting a 63% decrease in police officer applications. Current police officers are also retiring at a record-high rate, which presents a retention challenge. Due to the shortage of officers, there is increased competition for police officer recruitment. Recruits these days need a lot of convincing that your department is a better fit for their personality and needs than competing departments.
To encourage potential recruits to apply with your department, you need to make sure you treat your officers right and provide them with attractive incentives. You can also boost interest in your department with high-quality police officer recruitment videos.
Why Use Police Officer Recruitment Videos
You can create videos that are appropriate for every step of a job candidate’s journey. Recruitment videos can do a variety of things, including explaining your hiring process, presenting your department to potential recruits in an educational way, and providing a recruitment value proposition. Here are seven benefits of using police officer recruitment videos.
1. Reach More Candidates
People love to watch videos. Videos tend to be more entertaining and more personable than text alone. Depending on your department’s personality and style, you can create recruitment videos that are funny, clever, unique or visually interesting. The more fun and exciting your video is, the more likely it is to be shared. Your primary goal is not necessarily to create a video for the sake of popularity alone but to create a video that will reach as many potential candidates as possible.
2. Boost Your Visibility in Search Results
Video can increase your organic traffic from search engine results by up to 157%. Search engines tend to give preference to sites with quality videos, which means you can rank higher in search engine results by simply creating and sharing police officer recruitment videos on your site.
You want to have a favorable rating in search engine results pages (SERPs) because most job candidates don’t look past the first few pages of search engine results. It may take time, but your goal should be to consistently create and release high-quality content (including video content) so that you can improve your rank with search engines.
3. Get More Applicants
Besides attracting more attention from the general public, your police officer recruitment videos can also convince qualified applicants to apply with your department instead of some other department. One survey shows that organizations that include videos with their job postings have a 34% higher application rate than those that do not include videos. So if you want to increase your pool of qualified applicants, it’s worth it to invest in professional police recruitment videos.
4. Save Time on the Recruitment Process
Promoting your available police officer positions can take a lot of time. Your efforts will be amplified if you use video in your recruitment process. Since job postings with videos tend to be shared and viewed by more people, you may not have to spend as much time promoting your available police officer positions on various job boards.
You can even go a step further with your recruitment process and use video to screen and even interview potential candidates. This can be a helpful tool for candidates who live far away and ar hesitant to interview with you if they have to travel to your location.
5. Save Money
Saving money is another potential benefit of using police officer recruitment videos. Even though ordering such videos requires a healthy investment upfront, you won’t need to spend as much money trying to promote your video and to get it in front of as many people as possible.
Interesting and entertaining recruitment videos tend to be shared organically and can experience a significant amount of exposure with little effort (or investment) on your part. Many employers who use video as part of the recruitment process find that the videos pay for themselves before too long.
6. Sell the Position
It is much easier to sell something to someone if they can see the thing you’re selling. Videos are highly effective at “selling” available job positions because they make it possible to tell a story in a compelling and dynamic way. It is much easier to give potential recruits an accurate idea of your company values and culture through video than it is to try to convey these things through text.
7. Ensure a Cultural Fit
Not all job candidates are the right fit for your police department. If you hire someone who’s the wrong fit, the chance of them sticking around is not good. Police recruitment videos are great tools for ensuring your job applicants are the right cultural fit before they apply. If you create an effective recruitment video, potential job candidates can clearly envision themselves working with your department. They’ll be able to tell whether their personality and values are a good match for those of your department.
Once a candidate officially applies for a position, you should still use the interview process to help determine whether the candidate is a good cultural match, but a quality recruitment video can help naturally weed out some of the job candidates who would clearly not be a good fit for your department. People are not likely to apply for a department where they won’t fit in. On the other hand, people who watch your video and feel an instant connection are more likely to rapidly initiate the application process.
Order Your Police Officer Recruitment Videos
Police officer recruitment videos are a wise investment that can benefit your department in many ways. If you’re serious about recruiting some of the best talent, creating police recruitment videos is a great way to meet your goals. Here at MatchPoint Studio, we specialize in creating videos that engage and promote interest. We’ll help you reach your target audience so you can get some of the best police officers on your team. Pricing will vary based on your specific needs, so contact us today for an estimate. Learn more about how to start your video recruitment project.
Sources:
https://www.talentlyft.com/en/blog/article/232/9-reasons-why-you-should-use-video-in-recruitment
