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Comprehensive Guide to Recruitment Panels | Hubble

February 29, 2024

In unmoderated studies, you can recruit both B2B and B2C participants through our internal panel. We've partnered with Respondent, a market leader in linking organizations with high-quality participants for user research, to offer access to a pool of over 3 million participants distributed globally across 150+ countries.

With the recruitment process streamlined, you can connect with participants in less than 30 minutes. Our Respondent integration automates the process of distributing screeners, qualifying and incentivizing participants.

The recruiting feature is available depending on your team’s subscription plan. To learn more, schedule a call with us.

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This guide goes over step-by-step details for creating a recruitment request.



Pre-requisites

  • Live unmoderated study: You must have a live unmoderated study in your workspace in order to connect a new recruitment search to existing projects.
  • Participant profile: It is extremely helpful to have a clear idea of your participant criteria, including specific demographic information, industry, skill sets, and more. The detailed, the better you can target specific participants for your study.

Creating a recruitment request

You can access and start a recruitment request in this tab.
You can access and start a recruitment request in this tab.
  • Within your workspace, you can manage your recruitment projects under Recruit testers tab in the left hand side. You will be able to view and manage all the live, paused, completed, and closed projects.
🖌️ Quick Tip

The recruiting feature is available depending on your team’s subscription plan. To learn more, schedule a call with us.

Launching the recruitment request

There are four steps to launching a recruitment request in Hubble.

1. Requirements

This first step helps us understand your project requirements as you outline the details, including title, project descriptions, target number of participants, and more. Below are the overall fields to be filled:

  • Project details, including project name (internal and external), and description (external). Anything denoted as external use means that it is what participants will see about the project.
  • Study link: You need a live, active study to tell which project you need recruiting for. For multiple projects, you need to create a separate recruitment request.
  • Additional instructions for study: The text will be displayed to the participants once they are invited to the study. You can include information, such as what to expect, how to access the study link, or any additional information that would be useful to the participants.
  • Number of participants: You can set the target number of participants for the study. We will recruit double the target number of qualified participants for you to choose from.
  • Target audience (B2B or B2C participants): The demography details (in Step 2) will differ depending on the participant type. Read details below to learn about their differences.
  • Device, browser, data collection (video, audio, and screen share) types

2. Demography

You can set demographic details including region by country, age range, ethnicity, gender, education, and household income. Tailor the demographics to align with the research objectives and the intended audience for the study. Consider the diversity and representativeness of the participant pool to ensure that insights reflect the broader user base or market segment.

🖌️ Quick Tip
Demographic information often don’t tell much about participants’ behaviors, and only limits the participant pool. Double check how certain demographic criteria helps you refine the participant pool. The demography details differ by participant type (B2B or B2C).

Below are the overall fields to be filled:

  • Personal details, including country, age range, ethnicity, gender, education, and household income range.
  • Target background information depends on the type of participant you selected in the previous step (B2B or B2C participants).

With B2B, you can specify additional details, such as:

  • Industries
  • Job titles
  • Skills
  • Company size

For B2C participants, you can set:

  • Project topics: e.g., Real estate, education, arts, science, and etc.
🖌️ Quick Tip
To find the best fitting participants for your study, be deliberate on the filters. The more precise your criteria, the more focused your participant pool will become.

3. Screening Questions

Develop screening questions to assess potential participant fit for the study. These questions should filter out individuals who do not meet the specified criteria or who may not provide relevant insights. While you can add as many screener questions, make sure the screener questions are concise and take less than 5 minutes to complete.

The available question types are single choice, multiple choice, and open text. You can use open text to provide instructions and details about the study.

4. Review

Before submitting the recruitment request, review and refine the project details, demographics, and screening questions. Ensure that all criteria are accurately documented and aligned with the study objectives.

Once your recruitment request is submitted, the project will be reached out to potential candidates that fit your study's profile.

Reviewing responses and inviting participants

  1. Once the recruitment request is submitted, it will be visible under Recruit testers > live tab in your workspace. Your project will become immediately visible to potential participants based on the criteria.
  2. As soon as a screener response is submitted, it will be visible in the project space for you to review.
    Overview: will show you the overview of the recruitment project details.
    Participants: tab is where you can review individual responses.
    Completed: tab will show responses from participants that have been invited to the study.
  3. You can either invite or dismiss participants after reviewing the responses. Once you invite them, the study will become available.
🖌️ Quick Tip
The recruitment project will pause automatically once our system reaches x2 of the desired target number.

Marking participation complete

  1. Review the completed submissions under the study summary and results page.
  2. You will need to finally confirm and mark a participant complete. Marking a participant complete will automatically incentivize the participant.


B2B and B2C participants

You have the option to recruit either B2B (Business to Business) or B2C (Business to Consumer) participants depending on your research objectives.

B2B participants

For B2B research, participants are typically professionals or decision-makers within organizations. They may include executives, managers, or employees who use or influence the purchase of products or services relevant to their business. Recruiting B2B participants often involves targeting specific industries, job titles, or roles that align with the research objectives. Participants have specialized skill sets or expertise relevant to their industry.

While recruiting B2B participants entails higher costs due to the niche nature of their roles, it ensures that your team engages with individuals who possess the right expertise related to the research objectives.

B2C participants

B2C research typically involves recruiting individual consumers who represent the end-users of products or services. These participants can vary widely in demographics, preferences, and behaviors, depending on the target market. The criteria is more loosely defined than B2B participants, in which you can set project topic areas, such as real estate, games, and travel. Recruiting B2C participants is cheaper than B2B participants but the profile may be more broadly defined.

🖌️ Quick Tip

To learn more about B2B participant recruiting, we recommend our article on Challenges and best practices for recruiting B2B participants.

Choosing B2B vs. B2C participants

Deciding whether to recruit B2B or B2C participants depends on the research objectives and clearly defining the participant criteria. B2B participants bring specialized knowledge and insights relevant to specific industries or sectors, making them ideal for studies focused on professional environments or enterprise solutions. Conversely, B2C participants offer perspectives from a broader consumer base, suitable for research on consumer products, services, and experiences.

Use cases and examples of B2B participants

  • Software evaluation: Conducting user research to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of a project management tool among IT professionals.
  • Enterprise Solutions: Gathering feedback from procurement officers and decision-makers in large organizations to understand their preferences and pain points when selecting enterprise software solutions.
  • Industry-specific insights: Interviewing healthcare professionals to explore their workflows and challenges when using electronic health record systems in hospitals and clinics.
  • Technical expertise: Engaging software developers and engineers in usability testing sessions to assess the user interface of a developer toolkit or API integration platform.

Use cases and examples of B2C participants

  • Consumer facing products: Conducting usability studies with parents of young children to evaluate the design and functionality of a new baby monitor app.
  • E-commerce platforms: Recruiting online shoppers across different demographics to participate in remote usability testing sessions for an e-commerce website.
  • Mobile applications: Gathering feedback from millennials and Gen Z users through surveys and interviews to enhance the user experience of a social media app targeting young adults.
  • Health and wellness: Conducting studies with fitness enthusiasts and health-conscious individuals to understand their habits and preferences.
  • Travel and hospitality: Recruiting frequent travelers to participate in interviews and usability tests aimed at improving the experience of a travel booking website or mobile application.

Elevate your continuous UX Research

Validate your concepts and collect post-launch feedback through Hubble

Frequently Asked Questions

How can I pay for the recruitment feature?

Please schedule a demo with our team to get access to our participant recruitment feature.

Where are Hubble's participants from?

Hubble partners with Respondent to provide participants to researchers. Respondent is a market leading provider of research participants to enterprise companies.

What types of research could I run with Hubble's panels?

You will be able to use all of Hubble's existing research and product feedback features with Hubble participants. In addition, you will still be allowed to invite your own participants and users for your research.

How many participants does Hubble's pool support?

Hubble provides access to over 3 million research participants from 150 different countries.

Jin Jeon

UX Researcher
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Jin is a UX researcher at Hubble that helps customers collect user research insights. Jin also helps the Hubble marketing team create content related to continuous discovery. Before Hubble, Jin worked at Microsoft as a UX researcher. He graduated with a B.S. in Psychology from U.C. Berkekley and an M.S in Human Computer Interaction from University of Washington.