Cleveland, Ohio, Oct. 17, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Successful Recruiting Program Now Available to Police Departments

By: Edward M. Stevens, APR, Stevens Strategic Communications

Cleveland, Ohio (October 17, 2018) Police officers have received negative media coverage in many regions of the United States. That doesn’t help when it comes to recruitment. How do you recruit police officers— especially minorities including women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and others? How do you make your police department reflect your city’s demographic makeup by recruiting a similar demographic group? Police departments face a tremendous challenge.

Headquartered in Cleveland, Stevens Strategic Communications created the Join the Force Now campaign for two nearby police departments. It is a recruitment campaign that features deep community penetration, workshops and videos that educate candidates on what they need to know about becoming a police officer. If you want your police department to look like your community in terms of demographics, you need a program that attracts quality potential applicants who are African-American, Hispanic Asian and female. The campaign is now available to police departments across America.  

The Join the Force Now campaign has won five local, regional and international awards from the Public Relations Society of America, PRSA East Central District and Public Relations Global Network in the categories of media relations, video production, social media, community relations and multicultural communications.

The Join the Force Now campaign includes these PR disciplines: public relations, social media, video production, community relations, website enhancements, copywriting/content, training, events and workshops, digital marketing and monitoring. 

Campaign results were outstanding! Previous recruiting campaigns for the police departments attracted about 120 candidates, many unqualified, with no women or African-American applicants. Few could even be considered to hire. The Join the Force Now campaign produced a pool of over 270 candidates, consisting of 9.5% African American, 7.1% Hispanic, 2% Asian, 2.3% mixed race and 1% Native American. The majority were qualified because the webpage helped filter out unqualified candidates.

This group matrix was within approximately 4% of one city’s demographic makeup, according to the U.S. Census. The gender breakdown was 19.8% female, which is 4.8% higher than a Department of Justice study of female applicants.

A recent visit to one of the police departments indicated that over 250 candidates are still being tracked on the website to fill future job openings.

About Stevens Strategic Communications

Stevens Strategic Communications is an award-winning, full-service public relations agency that serves business-to-business as well as consumer clients with marketing, public relations and crisis consultation services. A founding member of the Public Relations Global Network (PRGN), Stevens Strategic Communications provides clients with a global presence and local reach in partnership with one of the leading PR networks in the world. For more information, call 440-617-0100 ext. 201, or visit www.stevensstrategic.com. To learn more about Join the Force Now go to www.stevensstrategic.com/police-recruitment.

Ed Stevens
Stevens Strategic Communications
4406170100 ext 201
estevens@stevensstrategic.com