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People, not Petri Dishes: Stories from a Research Recruiter
Summary
Key Insights
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Manual recruitment processes with many tools (Qualtrics, spreadsheets, Calendly) quickly become unsustainable as volume scales.
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Qualtrics is excellent for screener surveys but not designed for end-to-end qualitative recruitment workflows.
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Offering swag boxes as incentives is as popular as e-gift cards and accommodates participants who cannot accept cash.
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Treating recruitment as a service can lead to unrealistic expectations about turnaround times and product quality.
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Involving research leadership is crucial to prioritize requests and maintain research quality by saying no to some.
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Recruitment needs to be collaborative between researchers and recruiters due to domain expertise and nuances.
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Moving to a highly supported self-service model empowers researchers and better scales recruitment efforts.
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Protecting participant PII and managing outreach lists requires careful anonymization and strict data governance.
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An internal research panel is helpful but not necessary—external vendor panels can suffice depending on the product.
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Building a participant community and updating consent processes improve engagement and trust over time.
Notable Quotes
"If you want a unicorn ask for a unicorn and so lo and behold Sarita turned out to be a bit of a unicorn."
"Recruitment is a collaboration between you, the researcher, and me, the person doing recruitment."
"It’s not a one-stop shop, this is people we’re dealing with, not Petri dishes."
"Qualtrics is fantastic for quantitative surveys and screener logic but isn’t made for qualitative recruitment workflows."
"We don’t talk about incentives, we talk about thank you gifts to avoid implying participants are employed."
"People started to view recruitment as a service like an IT help desk, expecting fast turnarounds."
"Saying no was really tricky because everyone has a good reason for their research."
"We’re moving to a highly supported self-service model so researchers can recruit themselves with tools and vendors."
"We want participants to feel like part of a community and improve how we share research outcomes with them."
"Protecting PII means anonymizing data when sharing and being careful not to post emails on company-wide pages."
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