Looking for respondents who wear glasses three times a week, eat steak tartare once a month, and go for just one run a year (every January)?
In our last blog, we discussed the power in using recruitment software to fend off and quarantine problem participants, such as those troublesome ‘professionals’. The latest technology and quality recruitment methods take care of these problem participants for us – allowing us to move on and focus on the good.
With technology in defense mode, recruiting companies can switch their focus to offense -to proactively search for the best participants – those ideal candidates most suited for any qualitative research project, no matter how targeted.
So, how do you know if a participant is the right participant? Of course, you want to attract only the people that are in research for the right reasons. Researchers want the people who are excited to help and want to share their opinions about the products and services they are passionate about. They want to help a brand meet their needs.
But once again, recruitment technology and leading software platforms are here to support an easy and high-quality recruitment process. The technology secures the highest quality participants by tracking behavior, while also providing a great way to engage with participants prior to the in-person research taking place.
So how does a research company locate these quality recruits?
The technology makes it easy to search for top recruits. It uses specific keywords and product mentions to perform a thorough search, in order to continue building the database. The software finds and adds more than 100 new participants each day. The search criteria and strategy in itself is rigorous, and it includes filtering tools from basic demographics to many other data points (over a hundred to be exact). For example, basic data points would include age, ethnicity and marital status. More specific criteria could be home type (such as owning a town home), food restrictions (gluten free) and technology (owning a Google Home). This allows researchers to zero in on precise recruits. So basically, you can afford to be picky.
In order to keep things accurate, the management tools also provide respondents with 24/7 access to their profiles for continual updates. The participants are also constantly tracked. For example, tracking participation and behavior in previous studies can eliminate respondents based on participation requirements. Behavior tracking also allows panel companies to build relationships and tap into new consumer segments. Reward programs make a big difference, and they can really work in terms of referrals. The software runs reward programs that help to build panel through the company’s funded initiatives and people who are dedicated to panel growth and panel integrity.
So, you might be wondering if the technology can be used to help you find an entrepreneur in Arthur, Nebraska (population 119)? The answer is yes.
Looking for more best practices on recruitment? Download our latest white paper on best practices in qualitative research recruitment here (no form to fill out).