The Strengths and Weaknesses of Facebook in Recruitment

Using Facebook for recruiting qualitative studies is a great method for staying engaged with younger segments. It enhances our ability to provide a higher caliber qualitative research product, especially when targeting those in the Generation X & Y segments.

At Baltimore Research, our main channel in social media for recruiting qualitative studies is unequivocally Facebook. It has definitely been a great method for us to stay engaged and relevant with the 21-35 year old segment.  They seem more reluctant to answer the phone than their older counterparts, and tend to monitor Facebook more than email. 

It keeps word-of-mouth going in a new way too.  Even though initial readers of a post may self-terminate - "oh I don't have rheumatoid arthritis, but my friend Sue does, she ought to read this" - there is certainly a peer-to-peer networking going on that did not exist in the same way prior to social media. 

There are benefits to using Facebook on both sides of the equation for respondents and recruiters.  If someone has a question, they can post it directly to a Facebook page without having to access email or messaging.  Conversely, it helps a recruiting agency reach a broad swath of panelists in a much shorter period of time. 

One pitfall to using Facebook for qualitative recruiting is the volume of feedback one can sometimes receive in a short period of time.  A well-timed post can flood the phone room with calls, so we have to use it judiciously and be prepared for the inbound calls.  A partial work-around to this is combining online screening with posts.  Instead of directing people to call us, we direct them to a website that collects preliminary screener data for later follow-up by a recruiter.  

Overall Facebook enables us to engage with a younger audience in a timely manner.  Most young people are accessing Facebook and email via mobile devices today.  By not utilizing social media, it would be very difficult to stay relevant to this audience.

Projects that require a younger audience are more likely to warrant Facebook as a first line of recruiting.  Also, anytime Baltimore Research has worked on a study for an extended period of time and made no or slow progress (e.g. very low incidence), we post it on Facebook as sort of a "what have we got to lose?" approach.  At worst it may have no effect, meaning no one calls in, but very rarely have we had any negative consequences as a result of posting on Facebook. 

The only conflict encountered to date was when a rogue follower had become overly critical of our recruiting process and started posting negative comments on our page.  We were able to correct this quickly as we sent a private message to that individual explaining the importance of careful and thorough screening. 

It is safe to say that Facebook works most of the time when we need it.  While we do not use social media to recruit across the board, when we do it has only enhanced our ability to provide a higher caliber qualitative research product, especially when targeting those in the Generation X & Y segments.

Jeff Henn is a Senior Research Manager at Baltimore Research and a member of Qualitative Research Consultants Association. His work at Baltimore Research includes serving as an in-house focus group moderator and handling research proposal writing and consulting, screener development, writing of moderators' guides, focus group moderating, report writing, and presentation of findings.