After years of enduring the consequences of bad recruiting, SonicRim has developed some best practices, and we have drastically improved the quality of our participants.
One way we increased the quality of our participants was to hire a recruiting coordinator to the SonicRim team, with in-the-trenches recruiting & screening experience. Her sole responsibility is to manage the national and international recruiting agencies we hire. And by “manage recruiting agencies” I mean grill them, harass them and be a constant thorn in their side. We question everything, and unfortunately assume everyone is guilty until proven innocent. This may sound awful, but it has become a necessary evil.
We also use visual recruiting methods to get a snapshot of the participants’ lives –the people, places, products and experiences that define them. Some organizations refer to this as snowball sampling. When a project’s budget allows, we employ a phased approach which takes our agencies’ initial recruits and filters them through a series of visual blogs, questionnaires and telephone interviews to assure their qualification, honesty, commitment, and thoroughness.
The recruiting process starts with a well-defined, tight screener. But even the best of screeners aren’t enough. Even when you think you’ve closed all the loopholes, skilled scammers find their way in. Good recruiters will help you close the loopholes. Others simply tell you after the fact that your screener was poor, and charge you for your mistakes—it’s in the fine print of their contract.
If you don’t have time yourself, or the knowledge to detect this epidemic of recruiting fraud, I recommend that you carefully vet the agencies bidding on your project. Ask them to give specific details on how they filter out focus groupies. Ask them how they manage their database of participants. Ask them how they charge for participants who aren’t who they say they are, or who the recruiter says they are.
We are currently developing new tools and methods that will employ viral recruiting techniques to further increase our chances of finding qualified, virgin participants.
Along with our hand-selected recruiting partners, we are winning the battle. It’s time to put an end to dishonest recruiting practices and hold guilty companies accountable. I welcome you to join us in the fight. To clients, I would recommend staying away from last minute deadlines, and introducing some flexibility as a trade-off for higher quality. To recruiters, I’d ask for greater collaboration to improve the quality of screening and find new participant pools.
