When is the best time to recruit?

Policing remains a popular job choice for many, but the talent pool isn’t limitless and with most forces actively recruiting, it could be argued that they are chasing the same talent.

This means that when police forces choose to advertise is crucial to the number of applicants they receive.

So, when is the best time to advertise for new police recruits?

A deep dive in the enormous amount of data we hold at All Police Jobs reveals that between October 2024 and 2025, 1,094,926 visitors clicked to apply for 72,125 jobs.

The figures show that in February 2025, 39 out of the 42 forces in England and Wales advertised for new recruits - the highest for any month so far this year. This led to a click through rate of just 14.1 candidates per job vacancy.

However, in March 2025, there were just 11 police forces actively seeking new recruits. Consequently, the click through rate rose to 106.8 applicants for every vacancy. An increase of around 750 per cent.

A similar pattern emerged in 2024. In February, 20 forces advertised for new recruits, giving a click through rate of 95.3 applicants. However, in March 2024, when there were just 11 forces advertising, that click through rate was almost double at 176.6.

So, according to our data, March is the optimum time to open for new police officer recruitment, followed by May.

If March is the best time, then when is the worst, based on the number of forces advertising and the resulting click through rate?

Our figures show that this year, February was by far the worst month as already mentioned above. This was followed by June when 30 forces advertised for new police officers, leading to a click through rate of 18.5 applicants.

In third place is September. Out of the 42 police forces, 30 were open for recruitment leading to a click through rate of 17.9 applicants for every vacancy.

Again these figures mirror previous years.

There are, of course, caveats to this. We know that opening recruitment windows often depends on budgets along with other factors outside of the control of police recruitment departments.
We also know that some applicants will only consider their local force which will skew the figures, but we hope the data still provides a helpful national snapshot for police recruitment departments.
And, of course, if all forces switched to advertising in March, then competition would mean that the click rate would fall for all forces. However, keeping on eye out for when other forces are advertising to reduce the competition, may prove a helpful strategy

As the biggest national police recruitment website, All Police Jobs hold data on a wide range of national police recruitment trends. If you would like to know more, contact richard@allpolicejobs.co.uk to discuss this and ways in which we can enhance traffic to your jobs.

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