Online Canadian police recruitment videos: do they focus on factors that potential employees consider when making career decisions?

Given their potential to reach a large audience, online recruitment videos are likely a useful way for police services to recruit applicants. To increase the likelihood of people applying, these videos should focus on issues potential employees consider when making career decisions. A literature review revealed six job factors that people consider when contemplating a potential career. A coding framework focusing on these factors (and their respective sub-categories) was developed and applied to all available recruitment videos created by Canadian policing organizations (N = 37). The coding dictionary could be applied reliably and it revealed that only 23% of the job factors that emerged from the literature review are addressed in the videos and when they are, they are not particularly salient. Ways of using this study to develop more effective, data-driven, police recruitment videos are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]