BART Police Recruitment Advertising Campaign

Target Audience: The BART Police Department (BPD) seeks to hire a diverse workforce that mirrors ridership including more women and people of color. This includes people who may not already be on the path to police work, or may not have considered it in the past, but are in careers that provide the experience and skills BPD is looking for – teachers, social workers and customer service professionals. Also, traditional target professions including military/protective services, firefighting, and criminal justice. Targets included recent/soon to be graduates and people seeking career change looking at law enforcement, government/public sector and customer service jobs. The geographic target expanded beyond the BART service area to include adjacent counties such as San Joaquin, and Solano

Strategy Objective:To increase the number of qualified applicants for Police Officer job openings To increase the diversity of the applicant pool (gender, ethnicity, and educational/professional background) Create a relationship with potential applicants that may need mentoring in the extensive hiring/testing process. To de-mystify the process by building relationships with applicants and helping them through obstacles they may encounter. Create awareness of and interest in BART's Progressive Policing Model and other benefits of working at BPD

Situation Challenge: In response to system expansion and increased quality-of-life issues in the service area, BART allocated budget for additional officers. BPD was already facing challenges keeping the force fully staffed due to retirements and difficulty identifying qualified candidates. In June 2023 the BART Board approved a 20% salary increase for officers to make BPD salaries more competitive with other local agencies. Besides great pay and benefits and a mobile jurisdiction, BART is a national leader in the area of progressive policing, and it is central to BPD's brand https://www.bart.gov/about/police/progressive-policing. BPD wanted to get the message out about the unique nature of police work at BART as well as the increased salaries.

Results Impact: During the period of the campaign, there were 847 applications of which 18 have been hired, 8 are pending hire and 56 are in background check. When asked how they heard about the job at BPD, over 50% cited hearing or seeing an ad. 76% of website traffic to the BPD hiring page came from paid search or social ads. 10% of website traffic was direct, driven by radio and in station advertising Additionally, we learned about what types of digital ads are most effective for future use Google Search, Facebook/IG and Twitter had overall strongest performance for highest conversions at relatively low cost/conversion versus display ads, LinkedIn and Programmatic (see attachment).

Why Submit: As with most police departments BPD struggles to identify and recruit qualified applicants. BART Marketing suggested that a digital advertising strategy would cost-effectively target the desired recruits, including covering a broad geographical area beyond the BART service footprint, and that digital ads with a direct click to hiring website would improve ease of application and the ability to contact a recruiter directly. Due to strategic targeting the campaign had over 15 million impressions, 77,000 clicks and 16,570 conversions for a conversion rate of 21%. The average cost per click was $0.52, making the campaign extremely cost effective. This entry should win because it illustrates a compelling cost effective campaign and strong collaboration of 3 separate executive offices at BART.