Police Departments Fighting Over Candidates

I’m in Winnipeg, Manitoba visiting family, friends, and seeing what has changed since I moved to Minneapolis in 1988. The recent growth is impressive, but pales in comparison to that in Calgary, Alberta. That city has seen explosive growth in the past few years due in large part to the huge growth in energy costs. Alberta has more oil than Saudi Arabia, although the oil in Saudi Arabia pretty much spurts out of the ground when you stick your finger into the sand. The oil in Alberta, unfortunately, needs to be extracted from the sand and that’s a costly process.
So what does this all have to do with recruitment? Well, the explosive growth in Calgary’s energy industry has led to a rapidly growing population and more and more difficulty for local organizations in their efforts to recruit qualified candidates let alone highly qualified candidates. The Calgary Police Departmet is no exception and is now paying its new hires $50,000 per year plus benefits. They’re also running recruitment billboard and other ads across Canada, including in Winnipeg. While Winnipeg has seen some growth, the growth here is so much slower that the police department here is paying $32,000 per year. For those who struggled through math, that’s almost half what Calgary is paying for the same people.
Now here’s what drives me nuts. Rather than the Winnipeg Police Department focusing on the benefits to living in Winnipeg versus the hassles of living in Calgary, they instead are focusing on the compensation issue by proactively telling potential recruits that the cost of living in Calgary is much higher so the salary difference isn’t as bad as it seems. That’s true, but why would they want to draw attention to the issue that is probably their weakest? They should focus on quality of life issues, safety, culture, anything that they are better at than their Calgary counterparts.
Successful recruiters understand that they are more like sales people than human resource administrators. They need to sell their organization — not lie — but sell. Those that do thrive. Those that don’t run a lot of ads that don’t pull well and then point their fingers at external forces which are beyond their control. There are external forces beyond the control of all of us. But to shrug and fail to adapt is not acceptable. Adapt. Try new things. Don’t be afraid to take risks in order to succeed.