From time to time, a police job vacancy can struggle to attract many applicants. There could be any number of reasons for this, but what many may not realise is that changing the emphasis in that advertisement could make all the difference.

When a force in Southern England told us they were struggling to recruit for the role of PCSO, we used A/B testing to get to the root of the problem.

A/B testing is used to compare different versions of an advert, measuring the response to each to determine which performs the best. 

We created three different adverts for the PCSO role to see which one attracted the most applicants. The first ad focused on the community service element of the PCSO role. The second stressed the competitive salary. The third advert specified the exact area where the person would be stationed. 

The force expected the advert which focused on the money to be most successful.
However, the results showed something quite different. 

Although roughly the same number of people clicked on the job details, the third advert, specifying the exact location of the job, received twice as many applicants.

What mattered most to applicants is knowing exactly where they would be working. However, despite this, I would estimate that around half of all vacancies across policing in the UK don’t specify where the job is. 

We currently have 19 PCSO jobs advertised. Just three forces have included the location of the job. Others have put ‘forcewide’ under job location. This may be because candidates will have the choice of where they work, but applicants may not read it this way, and may assume they could be posted anywhere in the force area, thus deterring them from applying. 

A/B testing has its drawbacks, namely it requires high volume responses to make it statistically valid. Thankfully, that isn’t an issue for All Police Jobs which receives between 20,000 to 25,000 unique visitors every week. 

With such high traffic levels, we can be confident in the reliability of our findings.

A/B testing is offered as part of the annual subscription to All Police Jobs. If you are a subscriber and would like to use the tool to help you create more effective adverts, please contact  admin@allpolicejobs.co.uk

If you’re currently not a subscriber, but would like to discuss an annual subscription or A/B testing, please contact us on admin@allpolicejobs.co.uk

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