Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
People, not Petri Dishes: Stories from a Research Recruiter
Summary
Less than a year ago, we opened an in-house participant recruitment service at Atlassian, a 3,000+ employees tech company, for anyone who wanted to do research. During that year, the Research Recruitment team grew to two people and serviced over 150 people who do research. In this talk, I share what our main learnings were, the pitfalls of opening a free-for-all recruitment service, and some of my top participant recruitment tips.
Key Insights
-
•
Manual recruitment processes with many tools (Qualtrics, spreadsheets, Calendly) quickly become unsustainable as volume scales.
-
•
Qualtrics is excellent for screener surveys but not designed for end-to-end qualitative recruitment workflows.
-
•
Offering swag boxes as incentives is as popular as e-gift cards and accommodates participants who cannot accept cash.
-
•
Treating recruitment as a service can lead to unrealistic expectations about turnaround times and product quality.
-
•
Involving research leadership is crucial to prioritize requests and maintain research quality by saying no to some.
-
•
Recruitment needs to be collaborative between researchers and recruiters due to domain expertise and nuances.
-
•
Moving to a highly supported self-service model empowers researchers and better scales recruitment efforts.
-
•
Protecting participant PII and managing outreach lists requires careful anonymization and strict data governance.
-
•
An internal research panel is helpful but not necessary—external vendor panels can suffice depending on the product.
-
•
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."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Users creatively circumvent broken enterprise systems, which traditional metrics often miss."
Alexandra SchmidtEnterprise UX Playbook
December 1, 2022
"People here want to be here. They want the company to succeed and to see customers succeed."
Jen Crim Jess Quittner Saritha Kattekola Alex Karr Gurbani PahwaCulture, DIBS & Recruiting
June 11, 2021
"Critique sessions work best when the topic is shaped so answers are relevant and help the process, especially by including business goals."
Christian CrumlishAMA with Christian Crumlish, author of Product Management for UX People
March 24, 2022
"Performance reviews at HubSpot are ongoing conversations, not one big yearly event."
Libby MaurerTreating Diversity & Inclusion in Hiring as a Design Problem
December 5, 2019
"We need to harness the power of citizens to make real change."
Ali Jeffery Sheri ChudowHow DesignOps Helped Enable Wall Street to Work Remotely
October 22, 2020
"Jamie Foxx spent 14 hours with his eyes closed to inhabit Ray Charles’ world."
Daniel GloydDesigning From the Inside Out: How Method Acting Can Inspire Design Research
February 12, 2026
"Technology can revolutionize how we think about education."
Kristin SkinnerFive Years of DesignOps
September 29, 2021
"The most significant source of confusion is the difference between research questions and interview questions - Erica Hall."
Johanna KollmannInsights-Driven Product Strategy: Get your Research to Count
December 6, 2022
"Every piece of product can be described using components like intent, viscosity, and flow—making UX a physics problem."
David SternbergUncovering the hidden forces shaping user behavior
July 17, 2025