Big plans for workforce expansion at Customs and Border Protection

"One of the things that we really focus on is how we're communicating with our applicants," said Simpson.


Interview transcript:

Terry Gerton: Before we talk about the future though, tell us a little bit about the current state of retention and hiring at the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

Bob Simpson: So CBP is actually always hiring. We have about 47,000 law enforcement officers and law enforcement officers have a mandatory retirement age, so just because of normal attrition, we’re always hiring and then over the past couple of years, we’ve been plussed up. Last year, we added 1,975 total positions to CBP. So we are constantly hiring and we’re constantly looking for new people who want to join our mission.

Terry Gerton: Is the increased attention to tariffs increasing your attention on the custom side of hiring in addition to the law enforcement officers?

Bob Simpson: Yeah, we’re hiring across the board. There have been a lot of changes in the tariffs and CBP is at the forefront of executing those. And so the trade community is very excited about all the opportunities that they’re getting to work in this space. And our CBP officers are actively involved in that as well. So we do have a large portion of our agency is committed to executing those tariffs.

Terry Gerton: You’ve already put some programs into place to help improve retention. Tell us a little bit about some of those.

Bob Simpson: So retention happens a few ways. So one of the things that we do is we make it better for people to work at CBP by addressing some of the life stressors. So there are things like childcare or eldercare, things around wellness that we provide. So there several programs that we give to our employees to fit them at their time in life, so that it helps to get them the support that they need when they need it and of course we need different things throughout our career. Earlier on there’s a lot of training, middle career there’s usually child care, and later in your career it’s it’s elder care and help with retirement and benefits and we have a number of programs. We also have a tuition assistance program for people who want to finish their college degree we can help pay for that, so there are several different programs throughout their career of an employee that we can provide.

Terry Gerton: Have you noticed a change in retention as you’ve implemented these programs?

Bob Simpson: So retention has gotten better and better over the last few years. And this year, it’s attrition is low as I’ve ever seen it. So I think people, our employees are really excited about our mission and they’re committed to our mission and they are staying longer. So there’s a point in time when you can retire, but you don’t have to retire. And before they hit mandatory retirement, and our employees are staying longer. They’re waiting closer to mandatory retirement because they’re really excited about contributing to the mission.

Terry Gerton: Well, that is really good news. So let’s shift our attention then to the hiring questions. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says in her testimony, your applications are up 50% this year. What is CBP’s hiring strategy?

Bob Simpson: So our hiring strategy has four pillars. The first pillar is recruiting. So in recruiting, we spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising to get our name out there, to get CBP in front of people who are looking for jobs. And we do get about 15,000 applicants per month. That’s a lot. We do a lot marketing advertising to keep that number up. We have many sponsorships with organizations that are based around fitness and the active lifestyle, activities like archery competitions or fitness competitions. We frequently attend or host recruiting events, both in-person recruiting events and online recruiting events. Since covid we’ve dramatically increased our online webinars so that it’s easier for people to attend. You don’t actually have to go somewhere to find out about our jobs. You can join online and ask all of your questions there. And we do use incentives as well to encourage people to apply to our jobs. A lot of those are location based, certain locations are harder to fill than others and so we offer incentives there. But for all new Border Patrol agents, they get a $20,000 recruitment incentive. And if they go to one of some of the more remote locations, they can actually get a $30,000 recruitment incentive. And as the secretary said, in the second quarter of FY25, we had the highest number of applicants I’ve seen in at least the last five years. It was tremendous.

Terry Gerton: So you’ve got tens of thousands of applicants. What’s your biggest hurdle in getting them from applicant to hiree?

Bob Simpson: One of the things that we really focus on is how we’re communicating with our applicants. So we hire mostly for federal law enforcement and there are qualifications that you have to pass and that ensures that you can do the job and that you’re gonna do the jobs safely. But there are several steps you have go through and we want to communicate with the applicants and make sure they have all the information that they need in order to get through the process quickly, and all the way to the end. And we also focus on how we’re administering the hiring processes. Just in terms of communication with our applicants, one recent thing we’ve done is we’ve started an applicant portal, and this is where applicants can log in and they can see where they are in the hiring process.

Terry Gerton: So tell us a little bit more about that portal because it’s really kind of state of the art, especially for the community that you’re trying to reach and bring in.

Bob Simpson: Yeah, so the applicant portal for us, it’s a new way to communicate with our applicants. Previously, we would send them emails or maybe text messages to keep them updated. And then if they needed information, they would call us or email us. But of course, they would have to call us during business hours. And if they called after hours, they would had to leave a voicemail and then we’d have to get back to them. But now we have information on every step in the applicant portals. The applicant portal is available 24-7. It’s updated in real time. It has all the key information that applicants are looking for. Now, if you haven’t applied for a job lately, it may not seem like a big deal, but if you have, you know what it’s like to feel the anxiety of wanting to know, how’s the hiring process going? Did I get the job? And even the worst case scenario, you told somebody you care about that you have applied for the job. So now they’re bothering you. They wanna know how it’s going. One of your spouse or your sibling or even a parent is constantly asking you, well now you have the applicant portal that you can log in, see where you are in the hiring process. It has every step in the process so it walks you along your path, it tells you what you’ve completed, what you still need to finish, it tell you due dates, it tells you how each step went And there’s even a section in the applicant portal where you can contact us. And if you contact us within the applicant portal, the HR specialist who will help you has all of your information so they can quickly give you a tailored response to your question.

Terry Gerton: So I’d imagine this is keeping people connected to the application process longer. You’re able to track where they are. You’re also probably able to track your time and response. What are you seeing in terms of improved performance as a result of fielding the portal?

Bob Simpson: So we look at what we call the discontinue rate. And so that’s applicants who just simply walk away from the hiring process. And those discontinue rates are going down. And I think it’s because we’re giving them information and we’re given information in the right way that they want to receive it. And we’re give them information in a timely manner. So it’s okay if somebody participates in our hiring process and they don’t need a medical qualification or something like that. But if they walk away because we’re not doing a good job communicating with them, that’s what we want to cut down on, and the applicant portal significantly helps us in that area.

Terry Gerton: Those are complaints kind of across the board with federal hiring. It takes a long time. You don’t know where you are in the process. Nobody ever gets back to you. Is your portal something that OPM could take and sort of field government-wide.

Bob Simpson: I think it’s certainly a good idea to take. I don’t know if they can use our systems. Our systems people would have to figure it out, but definitely the idea of communicating with applicants the way they wanna be communicated with. Another example is our videos. So it turns out, this might be surprising, but it turns out applicants these days, they don’t like government forms. They don’t things written in government ease. Instead, they want to see videos. So we’ve taken many of the steps in our hiring process and we’ve created YouTube videos for those steps and we posted on CBP’s YouTube page. And those are some of the videos that have the most hits of all of our videos in CBP. So again, we’re just trying to give applicants the information in the way that they want to receive it.

Terry Gerton: So what’s next for your portal and your application process?

Bob Simpson: We have a technology roadmap, and we have several things coming. And for us, it’s all about the applicant experience. So with every new feature we bring, we want applicants to fill our values, which are collaborative, simple, accessible, responsive, transparent, caring, and grateful. And so some of the items in our roadmap include the CBP officer entrance exam. Parts of that exam you can take online, but there’s one part that you have to come in person to take. And so probably in early FY26, all of that exam will be online. Now you can go in person to take it, that’s what I would do with one of your distractions, but once it’s all online, you can take it at any time, anywhere from a mobile phone. And so that’s really making it more accessible. We have a redesign of our careers website at careers.cbp.gov. We want job seekers to be able to find open positions really easily, so we’re updating that. We’re going to be installing an FAQ section that’s based on AI. AI will track which FAQs are accessed the most and it’ll elevate those to the top so you can find the information you want more quickly. We also make it easy to access a recruiter from our website and we’re going to have an AI-supercharged bot to handle some of those with a bot before you talk to a person. So really for us, it is about installing our values to account the hiring process so the applicants know that we care about them, we’re grateful that they applied, and we want to see them succeed.

Terry Gerton: Are you doing any focused outreach to former federal workers who may have lost their jobs in other agencies now and might be IT specialists or accountants or project managers? Is there a place for them at CBP?

Bob Simpson: Absolutely. We have webinars every month for people looking for jobs and we constantly advertise those on job boards and LinkedIn and other places where people are looking for jobs. I know there are several new sort of homegrown job boards that federal employees have created and some of them have reached out to me and I’ve been sharing with them when we have openings. Recently I had some openings for recruiters and I got several thousand applicants all across the nation. So the word is getting out that CBP is hiring and they are applying.

Terry Gerton: Well thanks for sharing the news about your new portal with us and we’ll hope it continues to make a difference. Thanks for joining me today.

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