Approve qualified candidates for your study

Who is this article for?
‍🗣️ All researchers
⭐️ For any User Interviews plan

Once candidates start applying to your study, the next step is to approve the participants you’d like to confirm. When you approve someone, they receive an email invitation to book themselves for the study. Participants must opt-in before they are scheduled for your study.

How do I approve qualified candidates?

Candidates who apply to your project will appear in real-time in the "Participant management" section of your project's workspace, under the “Applicants” tab. By default, we’ll show a few basic columns such as participant name, status, and applied date, as well as any key criteria or screener questions you’ve marked when creating your project. 

But this is just a starting point—you can customize your table view to highlight the information you care about and more easily compare and contrast potential participants.

Reorder, sort, freeze, and hide columns

Click on “Columns” to open the edit columns drawer. On the left side you can search for and select specific columns to display, such as screener questions, characteristics, and more. On the right side, you can check or uncheck the columns you’d like to show/hide, and click+drag to reorder. Click “Apply” to save your changes.

You can also make customizations on the participant table itself. Click the arrow on a column to hide, sort, or freeze the column. To reorder the columns on the table, simply click and drag to move columns to the desired location.

Apply filters

Click on “Filter” to open the filter modal, and apply filters to see only the participants who fit your criteria. Click on any participant to view their profile for more details.

Approve & invite participants

If you decide to invite a candidate to your study, click "Approve & invite" in the bottom right corner of the profile view. If you choose not to invite the candidate, click "Not a fit" or "Next" to move on to the next candidate.

How do I manage quotas?

While we do not currently have a system to help you manage specific quotas, the following tips can help our team find you the right candidates for your quotas.

1. If a participant is not meeting the study criteria mark them as “not a fit” to remove them from your qualified participant pool. 
2. If a participant qualifies for the study, but not a fit for your current quota, we recommend using our participant rating tool to mark the candidate as “poor fit” or “potential fit”. This allows you and your team to keep track of participants before working with them.
3. Once you’re confident you have enough participants for a particular segment, you can edit your screener survey to only qualify candidates that match a new quota. This will ensure future applicants who would have previously qualified will now move to your “unqualified” pool, saving you time during your review. 
4. For more help targeting the correct folks, contact your project coordinator to let our team know what criteria you’re looking for and how many more participants you need. 

If you want to run a study with specific quotas, you can create multiple projects for each segment, use the Premium Screening (AKA Double Screening) add-on to message folks prior to approval, or get in touch with us at projects@userinterviews.com for more assistance.

FAQ

What are the columns that show by default? Can I customize them?

• For Recruit, the default columns are: Participant, Status, Match %, Applied Date, Key characteristic, Key screener questions
• For Hub, the default columns are: Participant, Status, Match %, Applied Date, Key screener questions

You cannot choose which specific columns show by default, but you can easily hide or reorder these columns if they’re not relevant to you.

Will other researchers have individual views of the participant table, or will we share the same view?

All collaborators on a project will share the same customized participant table view, so it remains a single source of truth for your team to work with.

Will the .csv export reflect my customized table view?

Currently no, the .csv export will not reflect the customized table view—it will include all participant data in the table.

I approved a participant, but I’m not seeing them in my confirmed sessions. Why?

Approving does not confirm a participant's spot. Once approved, participants need to take the final step to confirm their spot via our booking link. Once confirmed, the schedule will be updated and you'll receive a notification email.

How many participants should I approve?

Please approve 2x as many participants as you'd like booked. This allows us to account for anyone who cannot make it. This helps us account for drop-outs, participant availability, or other scheduling issues that may come up.

Help! I approved a candidate, but then a better fit applied. Can I update the status to prevent them from confirming a session?

Statuses can be moved from Approve & invite to Not a fit (or vice versa). If you update a participant’s status from “Approved” to “Not a fit”, they will be blocked from confirming their spot.

Can I review and/or invite candidates who were disqualified?

We recommend reviewing unqualified candidates if you have any flex in your characteristics or screener. In some cases, you may decide that participants who were marked as “unqualified” based on this match percentage still fit the needs of your study after reviewing their profile and screener responses. 

You’ll have visibility into any disqualifying factors by opening the participant’s profile and navigating to the “Characteristics” tab. You’ll see a yellow icon with an exclamation point beside any question or characteristic that disqualified them.

To invite one of your "Unqualified" candidates to your study, simply open their profile and select "Approve and Invite" in the bottom right hand corner.