Recruit

Recruit helps you find and manage participants for research within your Dovetail project. It connects you to a diverse database of over 3 million people through Respondent, allowing you to define target audiences, set recruitment criteria, screen participants, and schedule sessions, all in one place.

Please note the following limitations of Recruit at this time:

• We currently only support external recruitment, internal recruitment is not available at this time i.e. bring your own participants.

• Users can only recruit B2B and for interviews only. B2C is not available at this time.

Managers and Contributors can access recruitment by navigating to the Recruit tab within a project. To set up recruitment, you must first connect your calendar (powered by Cronify) and conferencing tool.

• To do this, open your project, click the Recruit tab, and click + New to begin setup.

• From there, connect your calendar and video conferencing service, powered by Cronofy. Note: this is a one-time setup.

Once you have connected your calendar and conferencing tool, complete each section to set up your recruitment and start scheduling participants. This includes:

• Details: Add a name, description, and expected time commitment.

• Criteria: Define who you're looking for.

• Availability: Select a date range and time slots based on your connected calendar.

• Screener: Add screener questions to qualify or disqualify participants.

• Payment: Set participant incentives.

Once recruitment is live, potential participants who meet your criteria will start to appear. You can review their responses to screener questions, as well as associated demographic details.

After reviewing participant profiles, you can mark them as:

• Qualified: The participant meets your criteria and can be invited to book a session.

• Disqualified: The participant does not meet your criteria and will not be contacted.

This updates their status in the recruitment flow. If a participant is qualified, you can invite them to a session by clicking Invite. Once invited, they’ll receive a notification with details of the session and who will be running it.

Participants who book a session will automatically appear as Scheduled. These bookings sync with your connected calendar.

After the session, you can mark participants as Attended to trigger incentive payments or mark as No show if they didn’t attend.

• To update a participant's status, navigate to the participant's profile and click •••

• Next, select the appropriate status. Participants marked as Attended will be automatically added to your Contacts database.

You can also cancel a scheduled participant if you no longer need them. Navigate to the participant’s profile, click the ••• menu and select Cancel session.

If you’ve reached your target number of participants or want to temporarily stop participants coming through the pipeline, you can pause recruitment to stop new applications.

• To pause recruitment, open the Recruit tab in your project and click Pause recruitment.

Alternatively, when all sessions have been completed or you no longer need to continue sessions, you can end recruitment for your project.

Before ending recruitment for a project, make sure all participant sessions have been updated to reflect their final status — Attended, Canceled, or No show. This ensures that participants are properly informed, no one is left expecting a session that won’t happen, and eligible participants receive their incentive payments.

• To do this, open the Recruit tab in your project, navigate to Options button and select End.

Participants marked as Attended are automatically added to your Contacts database. You can sync participant fields at any time by clicking the Field sync button. This ensures their information stays up to date in your database and is ready to use when conducting follow-up interviews or future research. Turn on the metadata fields to be synced, then map their attributes to your workspace’s custom Contact fields to ensure proper alignment.

What countries can I recruit participants from?

Recruit is powered by Respondent, which gives you access to a vast and diverse pool of research participants from 150+ countries.

Respondent’s primary target markets include 21 countries (from a total of 242 targetable countries): Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Italy, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines,Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Check out Respondent’s documentation for a full list of available countries.

What are the top industries and job titles I can recruit participants from?

• Industries include Computer Software, Entertainment, Health & Fitness, Marketing & Advertising, Internet, Computer Games, Healthcare, and Education.

• Job titles include Software Engineer, Teacher, Management Analyst, Salesperson, Operations Manager, Marketing Manager, Chief Executive, and Healthcare Worker.

How much should I pay for an incentive per participant?

The incentive for research participants depends on factors like interview length, expertise, and effort required. As a guide, standard rates range from $25–$50 USD for short (15–30 min) interviews to $100–$250+ USD for in-depth (60–90 min) sessions, with specialists often requiring $150–$500+ USD.

Hard-to-reach participants or those providing expert insights may need higher compensation. Fair incentives help increase participation, reduce drop-offs, and ensure ethical research practices. Offering competitive rates aligns with industry standards and respects participants' time.

How can I request a refund for my study?

In specific cases, you may request a refund by contacting support@dovetail.com. Any refunds will be issued only to the credit card used for original payment.