The pitfalls of User recruiting
: Updated in November 2nd, 2019
As a UX professional in the rush of our projects, it's common to focus (or even being distracted by) in planning and application of several UX methodologies. However, User recruiting it's very essential and fundamental as the execution of a Usability testing or interview, which sometimes does not get the same amount of attention.
Well, if I not give attention to recruitment… What might happen?
A poorly done User recruiting can seriously compromise the results of a research and subsequently of a project, which can do that all the focus you gave to the methodologies has been in vain.
Imagine an Usability testing where my goal is to discover if an app purchase flow follows the Usability principles, however the team recruited participants who never or rarely interact with a Smartphone or Tablet. In this case, do you think these research results would be trustable? No, we can not trust the results because it already started with a bias.
How is it usually done?
User recruiting for research sometimes it's done by an internal department, by third party companies or by the UX or Product team. For each one there are advantages and disadvantages which must be thoroughly considered.
Apparently, the User recruiting being a UX or Product team responsibility seems to be the spot on path since they are more involved with the project and know the specificities about the profile needed, but like everything in the UX field the answer is: It depends!
It depends because usually (and must be) directly connected to a planning which considers variables, such as: time, budget, location, number of participants, participants availability and interest, number of recruiters, personas or segments needed. In addition, the research method chosen will affect the recruitment.
- User recruiting planning
Regardless of the team that will do the recruiting, the most important thing is define a good planning, even (and especially) knowing that participants will not appear in the research day.
The planning needs to indicate how many people need to be selected, the research methodology and location, the recruiting method (phone, e-mail, survey, recruiting tool, etc), how long the recruiting will last (preferably close to the research session), duration of each research session and especially the Screener.
The Screener is a script to the user recruiting which contains all the important questions to determine if a person is eligible to participate or not of our research.
A good Screener requires a few hours of attention. The questions must be objectives, however try to avoid "Yes" or "No" questions. It should be as short as possible to not tire and lose this potential candidate, sometimes this person is responding the Screener from work, from the car, from a supermarket queue and has little time to pay attention. Above all, it's important to enrich the Screener with details and all instructions to the recruiter who can have no doubts when starting to recruit.
Below there is a structure example that I usually use to create Screeners to User recruitment:
- How tasks of User testing affect the recruitment?
The user invitation should be done without any doubts, distrust and especially without letting them know exactly what will happen and what they will do.
Imagine if, during the recruitment, I say to the participant that one of the research tasks will be purchase something in Amazon’s website and as a thank you for the participation on the study she/he will receive the product of the purchase? The first thing that she/he will do when hang up the call is to access Amazon’s website and choose the desired product, which means the participant will repeatedly run the task I would like to observe in the lab and maybe the problems that I wish to identify will not appear when she/he participate on the test.
We should explain what will happen, but not too much to not anticipate any research task or action. Some participants get extremely nervous and some details can make them feel safer. Tip: Talking to the participants about a “test” doesn’t help much, it actually gets in the way because the last thing they want is to feel tested.
When speaking to a participant, either when recruiting or after recruitment, avoid using words that indicate they will be under any type of approval.
So, is not the UX team supposed to do this work?
- Recruitment responsibility
At first we can think about UX team to do this work, especially considering the level of understanding of the profiles needed for the research/project in we have full involvement, however when we want to reach a good recruitment using a good Screener, someone to clarify any doubts and good recruiters, other areas can do this job very well.
The problem with leaving the recruitment entirely to others is the level of project involvement and recruiters' commitment to the required profiles. Sometimes, in order to achieving the goal, some recruiters try to fit participants to the profile we asked for. The cost of this "fitting" can be very high for the project, for everyone involved and especially for the company.
Even if the recruitment is done by other departments or companies, the involvement of the UX team with the participants is important to provide security or clarify any questions they have about the research and UX professionals can provide more details.
The involvement of the UX team is very important in the User recruiting, even not being the responsible for this work. The UX team needs to pay attention to the Screener, to the profiles being recruited and checking all information from the participants recruited making sure they are within the profile set for the research.
- Monitoring the information until the research is finished
What if a recruiter "fitted" a participant into a requested profile?
At first there is no way to know, this participant will be scheduled. However, in the research day is always a good idea to ask the moderator to ask some recruitment questions subtly and quickly to check if the participant actually fits in the profile we asked for. Asking subtly is very important as the recruiter may have an agreement with the participant about the answers. This way you can confirm that the participant is a fit to the research, especially if the stakeholders are watching. Sometimes you will know that the participant should not be in the research after it started already and believe me this has already happened!
Sometimes the problem does not arise from the recruiter or the UX team, but from the participant himself. Some people are always looking for research to participate, some really like to contribute and others like more to receive rewards. With the crisis of Brazil these last years, the number of people interested in research grew considerably in the projects I participated. With this, some people changed data to be able to participate in some research. In this case, it's good to be extra careful to not bump into the same person in less than 1 month and, also because of this, a greater involvement of UX team in this phase is important.
Talking about User recruiting
User recruiting is a step which requires full attention in a project, ensuring research quality and enriching the time the company has invested. In Brazil the subject is not as much discussed on UX community as it could (or should) be, but we can change that with a collaborative culture, leaving our daily impressions the same as Vinicius Ayub. The thinking about recruiting in Vinicius article motivated me to write more about my experience in User recruiting.
If you also feel motivated to talk more about your experience with User recruiting, please comment below, write an article or talk directly with me because I would love to know! =)
Thanks and hope to help you with the next posts. :)
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tathianema
