External Recruitment | User Interviews
External Recruitment with Great Question via User Interviews
Learn how to use external recruitment via User Interviews to find qualified participants beyond your existing customer base.
What is External Recruitment?
External recruitment in Great Question allows you to source qualified participants from User Interview's consumer and professional panels — perfect for when you need to reach audiences outside your own panel.
This integration helps you:
- Recruit high-quality participants.
- Save time by automating the recruitment process.
- Maintain research consistency — everything still runs through Great Question.
Who You Can Recruit
Panel Type | Description |
Consumer Panel (B2C) | General population. |
Professional Panel (B2B) | Target specific populations. |
Pricing & Credits
Each recruited participant costs one credit, billed through Great Question and transferred to User Interviews.
Funds can be drawn from your account wallet or the card on file, similar to funding incentives. Study funding will display at the top of the study dashboard.
All recruitment request payments are in USD and managed through Great Question. View Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) pricing below, or contact [email protected] for our Enterprise discounts.
Credit Type | Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) pricing |
Consumer (B2C) Moderated | $47 |
Professional (B2B) Moderated | $93 |
Consumer (B2C) Unmoderated | $31 |
Professional (B2B) Unmoderated | $62 |
Requirements & Limitations
Before enabling external recruitment, make sure your study meets these conditions:
Requirements
- Funding available (incentives funded and approved).
- Minimum incentive = $5 USD
- Screener with at least one question.
Limitations
- Supports USD currency only.
- Not available for Panel studies.
- Recruitment pauses automatically once your participant limit for the recruitment request is complete.
- Ad-hoc messaging is not available at this time. We're working towards having this available ASAP.
- Images that are added to the screener will not be seen to the potential participants at this time.
How to Enable External Recruitment
You can enable external recruitment during setup or after your study is active.
Enabling on a Draft Study
- Open your draft study and go to the Plan step.
- Toggle on Recruit external candidates.
- Incentives and Screener options automatically enable, defaulting to a $5 incentive.
- Configure incentives, screener questions and your recruitment criteria.
- Review your setup, then choose to:
- Fund incentives only (save request as draft), or
- Fund incentives + fees and publish the request with your study.
- Follow the steps below to enable your recruitment request during setup.
Enabling for an Active Study
- Go to the Plan tab and toggle on Recruit external candidates.
- Incentives and Screener are enabled automatically.
- Adjust incentives via Manage incentives or Incentives page.
- Follow the steps below to create your recruitment request when a study is already created.
Creating an external recruitment request
Below are the required parts of every recruitment request:
- Participants to recruit – How many people you want us to source.
- Request title – A clear title describing the study or recruitment goal.
- Request description – A short explanation of what the study is about.
- Recruitment criteria – Demographic, behavioral, or professional requirements.
- By default, recruitment comes from the general population.
- You can add more specific criteria from available categories.
- The default view surfaces Popular criteria first.
Reviewing Participants
Participants recruited externally:
- Do not appear in your internal panel or candidate list.
- Can still be viewed like any other participant in your study.
External participants function the same as internal ones for interviews, surveys, and incentives.
FAQ
How many participants are part of User Interviews Panel, and where are they located?
- 6 million participants across these countries:
- United States
- Canada
- India
- South Africa
- United Kingdom
- Australia
- Germany
- France
- Brazil
- Pakistan
- Spain
- Netherlands
- Mexico
- Poland
- Portugal
- New Zealand
- Italy
- Ireland
How fast will I receive participants?
- General Population: Under 3 hours.
- Professional Population: 1-3 days.
How much should I offer for an incentive?
- Depends on who you are recruiting for and what you are studying. Take a look at User Interviews's Incentive Calculator.
Why am I not receiving responses?
- Check that the request is Active (not draft or closed).
- Review your screener and incentive amount.
Do external recruits appear in my panel?
- No, they remain User Interviews participants.
Do eligibility rules apply to external participants?
- Yes — if you’ve enabled Candidate Eligibility, it filters User Interviews candidates too.
How are incentives handled?
- Once participants are marked as Completed, they can redeem incentives directly via User Interviews. If there’s an issue, share User Interviews's Participant Resources.
Troubleshooting External Recruitment
Issue | What's Happening | How to Fix It |
Recruitment toggle not available | The study type isn’t eligible for external recruitment (e.g., Panel study). | Check that your study is not a Panel study. External recruitment only works for Moderated Interviews or Unmoderated study types. |
Can’t publish recruitment request | Screener requirements not met (no screener questions). | Add at least 1 screener questions before publishing. |
Participants not appearing after request is Active | Criteria may be too narrow or audience too small. | Review your criteria in the request. Broaden filters and check the audience estimate preview before publishing. |
Recruitment paused unexpectedly | The participant limit in your recruitment request is complete. | If you need to recruit more participants, increase your participant limit in the recruitment request, add additional funds and resume recruitment. |
Incentives not processing | User Interviews integration failed or participants not marked as Completed. | Ensure participants are marked Completed in Great Question. Incentives will process automatically through User Interviews afterward. |
