Participant recruitment starts with listening

60+ countries · 400+ projects delivered · 50+ global clients. Our research services bring local knowledge and international coordination to the same project, with support from study design through to strategic recommendations.

Who should we recruit for our study?

Participant recruitment means finding, screening and scheduling the people whose experience your research needs. The most important choice comes before a single invitation goes out: whose story will help you understand the decision in front of you?

Imagine a subscription brand trying to understand why customers leave. Someone who cancelled last week can walk you through the moment they decided to go. Someone who nearly cancelled, then stayed, can tell you what made the difference.

Same age. Same city. A year with the service each. A demographic profile would seat them side by side. Their stories send you looking in two different places.

That is where we start. We help you describe the people you need to hear from, including the ones your team rarely gets to meet. Already have a research design and a screener? We work from those.

What we look for is a conversation where people draw on something they have lived, used, chosen or decided. Nobody needs a polished opinion about your brand.

They need a real experience, and room to tell it in their own words.

Can you find the people our research needs?

MindMarket recruits consumers, B2B decision-makers and healthcare specialists, and we check access for every brief. The starting point can be as everyday as the weekly shop, or as specific as a professional's role in choosing an investment manager.

Which consumers will help us understand the question?

Consumer recruitment starts with what people do in the part of their lives you want to understand. Current customers, occasional buyers, people loyal to another brand, people who walked away: each brings something different to a study.

Take a breakfast product. The person who asks for it, the person who pays for it and the person who eats it may all live under one roof. Who you invite depends on what you want to understand: the shopping decision, the morning routine or the moment of eating it.

We turn those distinctions into a profile recruiters can use. Age and location still matter, alongside buying habits, product use and how recently it all happened.

Every requirement earns its place by what it lets you learn.

Weighing a new direction? Make room for people who chose differently. Hearing why someone stayed with another brand can expose an assumption your most enthusiastic customers would never think to question.

How do you reach B2B decision-makers?

B2B recruitment looks at what someone is responsible for and the part they played in the decision you are studying. A job title is a starting point, nothing more: the director who signs off the budget and the colleague who evaluates suppliers describe different parts of the same purchase.

In a technology study, we want to know which decisions the participant took part in, and what they did. The person using the system every day can show you exactly where it causes frustration. The person who bought it can tell you why it was chosen.

We choose the route after reading your brief. Professional networks, direct outreach, referrals, specialist panels: each audience has its own way in.

And nobody joins the research until we have checked they have lived what it needs to hear about.

Can you recruit healthcare specialists?

Healthcare recruitment starts with a clear picture of the professional experience you want to hear about. Specialty matters. So do the setting someone works in, their day-to-day responsibilities and how closely they are involved in the topic.

In a study about clinical equipment, the setting and how often someone uses it can matter as much as their specialty. A nurse who uses a device every shift describes a different reality from a consultant who sees it once a month. The brief tells us which perspective you need.

Tell us which perspective you need and where the research takes place. We check access to the right specialists and plan participation around the demands of their work. The more precise the brief, the more honest our answer on feasibility, including where the audience will be hard to reach.

What does specialist recruitment look like in practice?

Specialist recruitment is as much about earning someone's time as checking their experience. MindMarket's institutional investor case study, published in August 2026, follows a rebrand study commissioned by a brand strategy consultancy for an asset manager across seven markets.

The project delivered 21 in-depth interviews and 35 completed online surveys. In the US and UK, 2,650 professionals were approached. Of those, 147 started the screener. Just 22 qualified.

One detail says as much about the work as the numbers. Some profile approvals took more than two weeks. Our recruiters stayed in personal contact with the people waiting, and kept them informed while the project moved forward.

Passing a screener was only part of the relationship. The team also had to keep the invitation credible and respect the time people had already given. For a challenging expert audience, that continuing contact belongs in the recruitment plan from the start.

Twelve cardiac nurses. Three countries. Every one of them had to have used the same infusion pump in the past month, and most of them worked nights.

We'll be honest: when the brief landed, we weren't sure we'd find them.

The screener went out on a Monday and brought back forty leads by Friday. Then came the phone calls: how they talked about the pump, what the interview would ask of them, their ID. Nine were left.

So we kept going. Hospital networks, a nurses' association, two referrals from nurses we had already confirmed. By the end of week three we had fourteen people: twelve places, plus our usual 20%.

On interview day, two of them were pulled onto an emergency shift.

The client never felt it. The two reserves stepped in, the twelfth interview finished on time, and the findings reached the board on the date we had promised.

Nobody pays for a no-show with us. But the real cost of a missing interview isn't money. It's walking into the boardroom with one market still unanswered.

How do you know someone is right for our study?

Participant screening checks who a person is, what they have experienced and whether that experience fits the agreed research. MindMarket screens in two steps, against criteria your team approves before recruitment begins.

First, we programme the screener as an online survey and share it with the identified audience, which lets us run IP checks. Then we phone every qualified lead: we check how they express themselves, explain what the study involves, gauge their enthusiasm to take part and verify their ID, to be sure we are dealing with a real person. Only once both steps are complete do we present the profile to you and invite the person to the study.

Start with the experience. A screener is the short set of questions that decides whether someone qualifies. Ask a person to describe their part in a recent purchase and you learn more about their fit than by asking whether they see themselves as a decision-maker.

The detail suits the topic. A consumer describes when they last used a product; a professional explains who helped assess a supplier. That shows whether they fit, without asking anyone to give the interview before the study has begun.

Leave room for an honest answer. We word screeners so people can explain what happened without spotting the answer that gets them in. If recent use matters, we ask when and how they used the product before we describe the profile we hope to recruit.

Someone who does not qualify has still given you their time. We make the screening conversation clear and respectful, including when it ends without an invitation. The experience people have at this stage is their first contact with the research.

It is often hit and miss in our industry, and it is where MindMarket excels.

Check the person behind the answer. ID checks back up the screening. For a specialist audience, we also confirm the responsibilities someone can talk about, so a plausible job title never carries the whole decision.

The checks fit the audience and the brief. In our investor study, we verified professional identity and decision-making responsibilities before any session was booked: each person had to be able to speak from experience about selecting an asset manager.

Ask about recent research participation. Previous studies can shape what someone brings to a new discussion, especially if they recently talked about the same category. We check recent participation and agree the exclusions with you.

Every exclusion needs a reason. Having taken part in research before does not make someone's experience any less real.

What matters is whether it could get in the way of the conversation you need to have now.

Let people speak in their own way. A great participant may pause, search for a word or take their time. We make sure they can take part, without selecting only the people who sound confident on the phone.

In a group, we check the person can join the discussion. In a one-to-one interview, the moderator has room to follow their pace. How someone tells a story is part of the research, so our screeners leave room for different ways of telling it.

How do you help participants feel comfortable taking part?

A clear invitation lets people decide whether a study fits their lives. Topic, time, format, preparation and incentive all make sense before anyone says yes, along with whether sessions are recorded or observed and any practical conditions.

When we recruited soccer fans across the US for a five-day online diary, the invitation said everything up front. Fans aged 21 and over, in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, New York and New Jersey, and Texas. About 30 minutes a day, from their phone, around matches they would be watching anyway. $180, plus a $50 bonus for completing all five days. A one-minute screener.

Nobody had to guess what they were signing up for. The invitation even told fans what we hoped to hear about: their ordinary game-day rituals. The lucky jersey, the group chat, the same seat on the same couch.

Make the time commitment visible. A discussion booked for an hour may also involve travel, a product to try or a task to complete beforehand. We put those details in the invitation, so people can judge the whole request.

Think of someone fitting a session around a shift or caring for a relative. A preparation task revealed at the last minute changes what they agreed to.

Saying it early is fairer to them, and it makes planning easier for everyone.

Explain what the activity feels like. People know in advance whether they will talk alone with a moderator, join a group or record parts of their routine over several days. For online research, we check the device, the connection and the setting the activity needs.

An eligibility criterion can look simple until it meets daily life. Someone may use a smartphone with ease and still have no quiet place for a long video call. Spotting that early lets us choose a format that works for the people you want to hear from.

Keep the arrangement clear. We explain the incentive alongside the time and the activity, so people understand the invitation before they agree. When your team runs the sessions and we run recruitment, we agree upfront who owns scheduling and participant communication.

If plans change, we tell participants what it means for them. Respect for someone's time runs from the first call to the session itself.

How do you recruit across different countries?

International recruitment pairs one shared research question with local knowledge of the people you need to reach. MindMarket works with local researchers in each market and one project manager who coordinates the whole study, so your team always has one point of contact.

Local coverage sometimes comes down to one person. A client once needed a researcher based in Liverpool. We had Manchester and Leeds covered. Liverpool? Nobody.

Except a UK researcher Sina had connected with on LinkedIn a few days earlier, who turned out to live there. One connection, one week, one gap filled. That is how a network across 60+ countries gets built: one relationship at a time.

Keep the experience comparable. A job title can mean different things in different companies and countries. If the study needs people involved in choosing suppliers, we define what they do in that decision, so local recruiters look for the responsibility behind the title.

The same goes for consumers. The main grocery shopper might order online in one household and walk to the shop in another. If the channel matters to your research, it goes in the profile; if it does not, we keep it from becoming an unnecessary barrier.

Check the language of participation. The language someone uses at work may not be the one they are comfortable using to talk about family routines or a personal purchase. We agree the research language early and recruit for it.

Local knowledge shows us where a question sounds unfamiliar or where a category needs explaining differently. The goal is to find the same experience in each place, with enough shared meaning for your team to compare what it hears.

Plan around local availability. Time zones, working patterns, travel and incentive expectations all shape the invitation. One project deadline still needs a realistic recruitment plan for each audience and market, especially when several requirements combine to make a profile scarce.

Where we manage the full study, that local understanding continues into moderation and analysis. The people helping interpret the conversations need to understand the setting in which those experiences happened, so they can uncover the most relevant insights.

Does the research method change who can take part?

The method changes what you ask people to do, and that changes recruitment. Someone can have exactly the experience you need and still find a particular activity hard to fit into their life. So we choose the method and the participation requirements together.

Choose a group when the exchange matters. Focus groups let people hear and respond to different views. We think about who will feel free to speak together, especially where seniority or relationships could shape the conversation.

Choose an interview when someone needs room. In-depth interviews give personal experiences, detailed responsibilities and sensitive decisions the attention they need. Recruitment focuses on what each person brings, without needing everyone free at the same time.

Choose a diary when the experience unfolds. Online diaries capture moments close to when they happen. We check that the occasion is likely to occur during the study and that people understand the repeated commitment, including photos, videos or written tasks.

Online and in-person formats each have practical consequences. Sometimes we send a product to someone's home before a remote session; other activities need people in a particular place. We explain those arrangements before recruiting, so the invitation matches the research you intend to run.

Some people are best recruited on the spot. For a London hospitality study, we ran 100 conversations with guests outside two restaurants, while the evening was still warm and before the memory could smooth into something polite.

Guests told the brand things it had never heard before. Not because nobody had asked, but because nobody had asked at the right time, in the right place.

What happens if our audience is difficult to reach?

When the people your study needs are hard to find, we look at which requirement is holding recruitment back, and why it matters. More time, a different route or a wider area can help, as long as the change keeps the experience you need to understand.

Back to the subscription brand. Swapping people who cancelled for people who might cancel would make it a different study. You would hear intentions about leaving and lose the story of what happened when someone went through with it.

A narrow location requirement may be easier to relax. If the question is about using a digital service at home, a wider area can work. If it is about access to a particular local service, the same change could remove the context you are studying.

We talk the trade-off through with you before changing the brief: more time, a different recruitment route or a revised participant mix. When a comparison matters, such as people who left and people who stayed, the plan keeps both perspectives or makes clear what the revised study can answer.

Should we commission recruitment alone or a complete study?

Bring us a finished brief and we recruit to it. Bring us a business question and we help design and deliver the study around it. Wherever responsibilities are shared, we agree a clear handover.

You already have the design. Share your screener, participant criteria, markets and dates. We assess feasibility and scope the recruitment and any fieldwork support you need, and your team keeps the responsibilities it wants to manage.

You know the question but need help choosing the people. Start with what you need to understand. We connect that question to participant profiles and methods, so you have a research design to discuss before you commit.

You want one team to manage the study. MindMarket handles design, recruitment, moderation, international coordination, analysis and reporting. Our strategic recommendations then explain what the findings mean for your next decision and why, with the evidence behind them.

When responsibilities are shared, we agree how the handover works. Your moderator knows which experience each participant was recruited for and what they have been told about the session, so the conversation picks up where recruitment left off.

What should we share to get a recruitment quote?

A recruitment quote starts with the people you need to hear from and what you want them to do. Send the brief you have, even with gaps.

We fill them in with you.

The question and the people. Tell us what the research will help you decide, the experiences you need to hear about and any essential exclusions. If you need separate groups, explain the comparison; a quota is simply the agreed number of people with a particular characteristic or experience.

The place and the commitment. Countries, languages, session format, duration and any preparation. Tell us when you need the findings and which dates are fixed, and we will check the recruitment timetable against the rest of your project.

The help you need. What your team will handle, and where you want us. Recruitment, incentives, moderation, translation and analysis all appear in the scope, so the quote is easy to read and to compare with another proposal.

The main cost drivers are how difficult the audience is to reach, the number of markets and participant groups, the commitment required and the work we manage. Incentives are itemised. Our research pricing page gives broader planning context; recruitment is quoted against your study.

MindMarket's quote timeframe is 48 hours. Recruitment timing is agreed separately, once we have assessed the audience and brief. A fast quote still gives you a realistic picture of the work needed to reach the people who matter.

Commissioning research for your own organisation? Our first conversation is about getting to know each other, understanding the need and seeing whether we are a good fit. We then build and cost the proposal and present it at a second meeting. You can start before every detail is settled.

Questions about participant recruitment

Tell us who you want to understand better

Every research brief is an invitation to hear something your team does not know yet. Tell us who you want to understand, the question you are working through and where you need help.

We will help you bring those voices into the room.