What Is External Recruitment?
External Recruitment publishes a recruitment request to a participant marketplace instead of drawing only from candidates you already have. It’s a paid, managed sourcing option, distinct from Panel Recruitment, which recruits from your own candidate database. You can’t use External Recruitment to build a panel, a study can be one or the other, not both.Note: Your account recruits through one of two marketplaces, User Interviews or Respondent, set at the account level, not chosen per study. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support if you’re not sure which one your account uses. The two aren’t identical: Respondent supports messaging candidates directly through Great Question, which User Interviews doesn’t offer, and Respondent’s targeting and eligibility-exclusion options go further too — see the comparison below.
Why It Matters
Fill gaps your own network can’t. Recruit qualified participants even when you don’t have anyone matching in your candidate database yet. Keep everything in one workflow. Screening, incentives, consent, and results all work the same way as any other study — you’re not managing a separate tool. Scale beyond manual outreach. A marketplace request can reach far more potential participants than recruiting one at a time.Requirements to Enable External Recruitment
A study must meet all of the following before you can turn on External Recruitment:- It has a screener that meets your provider’s requirement: at least two questions with qualifying answers configured if your account recruits through Respondent, or one question if your account recruits through User Interviews (no qualifying answer required unless automatic review is on).
- It offers an incentive of at least $5 USD, paid in USD.
- It is not a Panel study — you can’t use External Recruitment to build a panel.
Note: Once a study has an active recruitment request, you can’t turn External Recruitment back off until that request is closed.
Setting Up a Recruitment Request
- In your study, open Recruitment Requests and start a new request.
- Set Participants to recruit — how many participants you’re looking to source (up to 150, and capped by your study’s overall participant limit).
- Configure your targeting criteria (see below — the exact fields depend on which provider your account uses).
- Add a public title and description for the request.
- Publish the request.
Tip: You can increase Participants to recruit after publishing if you need more responses — this is the normal way to “boost” a request that’s underperforming. You can’t decrease it once published, so start conservative if you’re unsure.
Targeting Criteria
The specific fields depend on which provider your account is configured for:Note: The “Automatically remove past participants that do not meet the eligibility requirements” option only appears for Respondent, not User Interviews. When it’s on, a responding candidate who already exists in your account and is currently marked ineligible under your Candidate Eligibility Settings is automatically excluded, rather than added again.
Managing a Published Request
Once published, a request moves through a few states: draft → publishing → published → closing → closed, with a separate paused state you can toggle at any time without closing the request outright.- Pause and resume a request to temporarily stop new responses without losing your configuration or progress.
- Close a request when you have enough participants or want to stop sourcing.
- Track progress from the Recruitment Requests tab, including how many responses have come in against your target.
Note: Pausing a request isn’t just a display setting — it actively blocks new activity. While paused, new candidates can’t apply, and existing links (screener, landing page) stop accepting new entries until you resume.
Note: The number of eligible candidates a provider estimates for your criteria is just that — an estimate, not a guarantee. Actual response volume depends on your incentive, screener, and how narrow your targeting is.
How External Candidates Show Up
Candidates sourced through External Recruitment aren’t added to your account’s Candidates page, they’re scoped to the study they responded to. You’ll see them as participants within that study (Participants tab, screener responses, results), but they won’t appear when you’re browsing or segmenting your general candidate database.Incentive Payments
The marketplace (User Interviews or Respondent) handles actually paying the participant. Great Question doesn’t send the incentive automatically just because someone completed the study, you still need to trigger it from your side by marking the participant’s status as Sent Thanks, the same as you would for any other study.Best Practices
Set your incentive and screener carefully before publishing. Both are locked in as requirements before you can turn External Recruitment on, and a stronger incentive and tighter screener both meaningfully affect how many responses you get. Use the eligibility-exclusion toggle if you’re recruiting repeatedly from the same audience. If your account uses Respondent, turning this on keeps previously-ineligible candidates from being re-added when you run another request. Increase your target gradually rather than guessing high. Since you can raise “Participants to recruit” after publishing but can’t lower it, start with a number you’re confident about and boost it if you need more. If a request is underperforming, start with your screener and incentive. There’s no funnel view showing exactly where responses are dropping off, so those two settings are your best first check — and support can help dig further if you’re still not sure why a request isn’t converting.Troubleshooting
| Issue | What’s Happening | How to Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Can’t enable External Recruitment | Your study is missing a required screener, incentive, or is set to USD-only requirements, or it’s a Panel study. | Add a qualifying screener, set an incentive of at least $5 USD, and confirm the study isn’t a Panel study. |
| A request is stuck in “publishing” | This is a known, occasional issue with the publish flow. | Contact support if a request doesn’t move to Published after a few minutes — don’t resubmit repeatedly. |
| Few or no responses coming in | There’s no built-in diagnostic for why a request is underperforming. | Review your incentive amount and screener length first — these are the most common levers. If you’re still stuck after checking those, contact support for help digging further. |
| Need to reuse a request’s criteria for another study | You don’t have to recreate targeting criteria by hand — a request can be duplicated. | Use Duplicate on the existing recruitment request, then adjust it for the new study. |
| Incentive settings look outdated after deleting a request | Deleting a recruitment request doesn’t automatically reset the study’s incentive configuration. | Manually review and update your incentive settings after deleting a request. |
| Can’t turn off External Recruitment | The study has an active (non-closed) recruitment request. | Close the existing request first, then disable External Recruitment. |
Still need help? Contact us at support@greatquestion.co — median response time is 19 minutes during support hours.