The Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office knew it needed to change its recruitment process as the agency began to see fewer applicants starting the hiring process and even fewer completing it. Their difficulty was in figuring out how to increase the number of deputies without lowering standards.
Public Information Officer and Sergeant Bryan Lovell describes the agency as the “A to Z of law enforcement” facing the challenge of filling multiple positions with a shrinking pool of applicants.
“We had to do testing cycles more often and the amount of people that were coming to test was less and less,” Lovell said. “On top of that, we were washing many of them out initially. We did not want to lessen the requirements, but we were seeing a combination of fewer people testing, having to put out tests more frequently, scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
Lovell added that even though the pay increased to be competitive with surrounding jurisdictions, the agency was still only doing simple advertising of testing dates, and was finding that people were still not lasting through the process. With the added pressures of a growing population rate and personnel retirements, the decision was made to try and rework the sheriff’s office recruitment information and marketing.
Lovell searched for public safety-related marketing companies and found First Arriving and two others. “The two just laid out ‘here’s what we can do,’ and left it at that,” he said. After meeting with First Arriving, the selection was obvious. “First Arriving was the top to bottom of everything we were looking for. That is what they specialize in, public safety, so they understand what is driving the market, the marketing pieces and the audience, and how to use those recruiting and marketing aspects, the theme and branding that are all public safety related.”
First Arriving Recruitment and Retention Strategist Walter Campbell went to Bonneville County to meet with the administration and personnel, and held a work session to guide them on defining themselves and what qualities about the agency keep them working there.
“Walter did a great job helping us summarize who we are and define ourselves,” Lovell said. “He put it all together in a recruiting roadmap that was part of First Arrving’s initial work with us. They just soaked up what we were all about, what our county is like, what we have, the job that we are doing, so they could get a feel of what we do before we even entered into a working relationship with them.” The results of the work session created a path for the overall recruitment and marketing process.
The marketing plan and new recruitment effort began with a new website designed to be the center for all recruitment inquiries since the sheriff’s office provides a range of community services in addition to law enforcement.
In the marketing plan, the best target audience was identified based on Walter’s observations and discussions with the sheriff’s office. From there, First Arriving developed marketing initiatives tailored to engage that audience and generate the most leads. This includes utilizing Facebook and Instagram with organic posts and paid ads, leveraging YouTube for videos, and running Google Search Ads.
“We started on that roadmap from First Arriving and saw a huge difference once the website was up, getting contacts and submissions,” Lovell said. The increased interest led them to update the FAQ section on the website with additional recruitment information. First Arriving also provided photos and videos for recruitment materials and messages that the sheriff’s office could place in areas identified in the recruitment roadmap.
The plan also included tracking and measuring project success along with a roadmap outlining tasks and focus areas for the next year, broken down into quarters.
“As of now, we’ve generated a total of 145 leads for this year,” First Arriving’s Assistant Director of Recruitment Marketing Services Kristina Greene said. “The client’s success goal was set at hiring 16 people within the project’s timeframe. The total goal or ‘total project leads,’ includes those collected after their new website launched in November last year, through to August 2024. In 10 months, we’ve generated 168 leads.”
Greene added that by dividing the total project leads by the sheriff’s office target, First Arriving’s marketing and recruitment plan achieved 1,050% of the original goal. Assuming a 25% conversion rate, the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office well surpassed its goal of 16 hires.
Lovell said the sheriff’s office saw a 40% increase in recruitment interest submissions that progressed to applications. They also experienced increased interest and applications from the corrections side to move to patrol, and other lateral applicants.
“We saw lateral applicants coming from Oklahoma, California, Utah, Colorado and elsewhere in Idaho,” Lovell said. The new recruitment efforts also captured the attention of youth interested in careers in law enforcement. “Our teen career camp had students coming from 2-1/2 hours away to participate after seeing the advertisements,” he added.
“There is no way we could have done this on our own,” Lovell said about First Arriving’s recruitment and website project. “We are even getting compliments and inquiries from other agencies about what we are doing.”
