Focus Group Recruiting with My Recruiter Rhonda
Discover the secrets to successfully recruiting focus group participants in my conversation with Rhonda, a seasoned virtual assistant based in Charleston, South Carolina. Learn how our innovative recruitment system, utilizing platforms like Craigslist and Facebook, has proven effective in drawing in participants from various locations across the US. Rhonda’s own experience as a focus group participant drives her passion for helping others find the perfect candidates for their groups.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The importance of advertising and maintaining an active Facebook page for focus group recruitment.
- How to utilize Google Forms and questionnaires to vet potential participants.
- The benefits of using a step-by-step email sequence to confirm attendance and manage expectations.
- The necessity of maintaining a master list and a no list to ensure proper eligibility and successful participation.
- How to handle payments through platforms like PayPal and Venmo, and streamline communication using email templates.
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Supporting Resources:
If you have questions or a particular challenge with focus groups, email Elizabeth directly for assistance: elizabeth@larricklawfirm.com.
Episode Credits:
If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Danny Ozment.
He helps thought leaders, influencers, executives, HR professionals, recruiters, lawyers, realtors, bloggers, coaches, and authors create, launch, and produce podcasts that grow their businesses and impact the world.
Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com
Episode Transcript:
Elizabeth Larrick: Hello and welcome back to the podcast. I am your host Elizabeth and so glad that you are here.
And we have a very exciting episode I’m going to get to introduce. My focus group recruiter to my audience. And I’m really excited to have Rhonda here with us. She’s going to talk a little bit about [00:01:00] what she does and how our system works and how we try to do our best to have focus groups that are full of folks that are going to talk with us, that give meaningful feedback and that are from the correct kind of location.
So anyhow, before we jump in, let me just go ahead and say, Rhonda, welcome to the podcast. Thank you. It’s good to be here. Fantastic. Rhonda and I normally communicate on zoom. That’s pretty much what we always meet and greet on zoom. And so that’s because Rhonda, you’re not here in Austin, Texas. Where are you located?
Rhonda: I’m in Charleston, South Carolina.
Elizabeth Larrick: Awesome. And is that where you’re originally from?
Rhonda: No. So I’m originally from Atlanta, Georgia. I’m a native Atlantan and I moved here about 15 years ago and I love it here. I wanted to be near the beach and it’s a great city to live in.
Elizabeth Larrick: We worked together remotely. How long you’ve been, was it a pandemic choice or was it, you’ve been working remotely for a while?
Rhonda: Oh yeah. I’ve worked off and on remotely in different jobs, but I decided [00:02:00] about two years ago. To take a turn and I wanted to be a virtual assistant because I wanted to set my own hours and I wanted to be able to travel and I wanted to be able to just take my laptop and be able to go wherever I wanted to go.
And it’s worked out really well.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. And I know that you help me, but you help a lot of other kinds of people in businesses as well. Right. That’s right. So tell me, did you decide, Hey, I’m going to be a virtual assistant and just put it out to the world? Or cause here’s the thing. I get a lot of questions about how do you find a virtual assistant?
Like, where’s it go? And I know how we met up, but maybe help everybody who’s listening to find out how can they find a virtual assistant if they want one through your path.
Rhonda: Yeah, so I just decided I was going to do it started researching doing a lot of research on what direction I wanted to go in and what kind of services I wanted to offer and I started putting it out there, I advertised a little bit on LinkedIn, [00:03:00] I went through some Facebook groups that I was a member of.
And I just would go out and network and talk to people. So that’s really the best way to do it. And if you’re looking for a virtual assistant, I think networking and referrals are the best way to go because, Oh, so and so worked with this person and they did a great job. That to me is the best way.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah.
And that’s how we found each other was through a locator, a recruiter, pretty much. Cause I had a really specific kind of virtual assistant that I wanted, cause I’ve been trying to find somebody to help me really specifically with focus groups. And Rhonda has been helping me for over a year now, and it’s been awesome to help get into the system and even fine tune it, but help it run smoothly because sometimes it can go haywire.
So you love it. You’re in Charleston. I’m in Austin. So where are some of your other clients located?
Rhonda: Oh, wow. So I actually had a client in St. Louis, Missouri. I have one in Chicago, one that [00:04:00] is actually located in Charleston, but I don’t ever see her. I’ve met her one time, and I’ve also worked with someone in Champaign, Illinois.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, so
Rhonda: all over. Yes. Awesome.
Elizabeth Larrick: Obviously, I had a recruiter that kind of put a lot of feelers out to find somebody. So what made you interested in doing focus groups or being in a focus group role?
Rhonda: I’ve participated in some focus groups over the years, and I always found them fascinating because you never know what you’re going to talk about.
They don’t tell you beforehand, usually, and you’re usually there with a very diverse group of people, right? So you never know what you’re going to hear and who’s going to be there. It’s just interesting.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah.
Rhonda: And
Elizabeth Larrick: before you started, I said, Hey, will you sit in and be on a focus group? So you got a little taste.
Awesome. Like I said, you’ve been here with me for over a year now. Let’s talk a little bit about the system that we use to recruit. So talk a little bit about folks who are listening, kind of [00:05:00] our system and how we put together. Participants in a focus group.
Rhonda: Yeah. For us, the first thing we do is once we have a focus group booked, we advertise, advertise on Craigslist.
This is what works best for us. So we advertise on Craigslist. We put it on Facebook, on your Facebook group. And the third place too, is referrals from past focus group participants. Those are the three main places that we pull from.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, and one of the things too that you handle, which is, which I think is a big part of recruiting, which is keeping a really active Facebook page.
So we, moons and moons ago, I set up a Facebook page specifically for Advantage Focus Groups, which is the name of my focus group company and just started feeding it. Holiday stuff. And we do some survey stuff just to get followers. And I think that’s really helped when now, and again, you keep up the Facebook page and occasionally [00:06:00] I’ll get on there too, to hide some unnecessary comments that we get on our Facebook page.
But yeah, so I stopped you there just to talk a little about that Facebook page and how helpful it is. And one thing too, is once we put something out there, we do occasionally we’ll boost. a post, but most of the time we’ll get in there and share to individual groups. So one of the things that we always try to do is if we’re going to have a focus group in Danville, Illinois, then we go and I try to find a group or a page that has Danville jobs and then we apply to get in and then we’re in and then basically once we post on Advantage Focus Group’s Facebook page, then you can share it to any other page you’re a member of.
That’s another way, just kind of, it feels a little time consuming, but it’s free. And that’s where people go to look for jobs. Keep going down our road here. Our advertising. What else is part of the system?
Rhonda: Yeah. So after we advertise, we ask them to fill out a short questionnaire and it’s a Google form [00:07:00] that they fill out and then we can get their responses and then start pulling people from there.
The thing that I really like about our questionnaire is that it’s not long and complicated. So sometimes if you want to be a focus group of participants, they ask you to fill out a questionnaire and it could be a hundred or more questions. It’s long. And if you answer a question wrong, it won’t stop you.
It’ll make you go through all the questions. And then when to the end, it’ll say, sorry, you’re not a candidate for this focus group. But. Okay. Our questionnaire is very short, and then once they fill it out, we don’t tell them yes or no one way or the other. We’re able to siphon through and sift through and start picking people out that we want to invite to come.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, that questionnaire has been molded and manipulated over the years to weed people out on very easy questions. People who, before the pandemic hit, everything we did was in person, so it was pretty easy to weed people out. They had to be in the area. Now, when it’s [00:08:00] virtual, they There’s been a lot more challenge of finding people who truthfully answer where they’re located and how to sift through those people that don’t.
So sometimes we’ll tweak a questionnaire to see who people are or there’s been feedback on the Facebook page about do you accept people outside the U. S.? We don’t because obviously our studies are for people here in the U. S. Right. We added that into the top of the questionnaire. Don’t apply if you are not a resident of the U.
S. Some people still do, but I think that questionnaire definitely helps us do a vetting job for us. That makes it super easy for us to say, Oh, that person’s gone. And then one of the things about the questionnaire that, Rhonda and I go round and round about, and I think it’s because we’re both like super OCD is the way we communicate with each other.
Like who’s eligible. Who’s not is we’ll do a highlight green or yellow, and I will black out people. And Rhonda’s like, why are you doing? I’m like, that’s because I don’t want my eye to look at that person. I’m scrolling down to eliminate people. And I [00:09:00] know, Hey, that person participated before, or maybe they’re not from the U S.
Rhonda’s like so busy. You’re like, I know. I would invite people and be like, Oh yeah. And sometimes I’ll invite somebody. It will, we generally run it as the heavy lifts on the recruiting. I’ll pick up a little bit of slack on the weekends. And Rhonda will say, I don’t know if this is a real person, but I’m like, Oh, you’re probably from the group.
Yes. All right. So we use our questionnaire. What happens next in the recruiting?
Rhonda: So we use our questionnaire and start sifting three people and then we’ll start sending emails. The email system is really good because it really weeds people out that are not serious. Or that maybe they thought they wanted to, but then when they read the first email, they’re like, no, I can’t do that.
But the good thing about virtual focus groups to me is that we pay them accordingly, but they don’t have to get in the car and come [00:10:00] somewhere. They can just, if they can turn on their computer, they’re there. And it saves them a lot of time. We send a first email that lays out what the focus group. Is when it is, what time, what day, all of that, and what the requirements are that you have to be on a tablet or a computer.
You cannot be on your cell phone because we show slides that need to be able to see them all. And you have to be able to be on audio and video the whole time. We have to be able to see you and hear you the whole time and you have to have the ability to answer some things in chat. We send that first email out and we give them basically 24 hours to respond if they want to join.
And the other thing they have to have is a PayPal account. Because that’s how we pay people and we pay them the minute the focus group is over, we send them their money so there is no waiting for a check in the mail or anything like that. It’s super simple and I think people [00:11:00] really appreciate that.
They’re going to get paid that day.
Elizabeth Larrick: Oh, absolutely. And we used to get a little gruff about PayPal, but What I figured and I’ve seen other lawyers do it differently. Well, we’ll use Zelle. I’m like, why? Just one, just pick one of these things and then just ride that pony on, because it makes so much more complication for us to issue that payment or jump around on platforms.
And
Rhonda: yeah. And if they want to participate. That’s the deal, right? You have to have a PayPal account. And we even have some people that are like, Oh, I don’t have a PayPal, but my friend does. Can you send it to my friend? Sure. That’s what you want. And as long as you’re the one that gives us the information, sure, we can do that.
So we just ask them to confirm all of that kind of information as well. And once they’ve done that, then we can confirm them. And so then after the first email, if they answer us and say, yes, I can confirm and they give us all the information, we send a follow up email, like a second [00:12:00] email that says, Hey, great, we have you, you’re good, you’re scheduled.
And we give them next step. So every time we send an email, we give them next steps, hook them a little bit more. And so we will send a calendar invite. We highlight them green that yes, on our sheet that yes, they’re coming and we follow them through. So, once they’re confirmed, and we’ve sent them the email that says, hey, you’re confirmed and we tell them, we’re going to send you a reminder email the day before.
And then about an hour and a half on the day of the focus group, we’re going to send you a confidentiality agreement and they have to sign that and send it back. And only once they do that, will we send them the zoom link to get into the focus group via zoom. So it’s a laid out process. It’s pretty systematic.
And along the way that will weed out people that aren’t really serious, usually.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, usually, and I think also it helps us because I [00:13:00] know some people who do the system where it’s like they get everything done all at once, and that makes it really easy for you, but it’s been really hard to predict who will be there because we get people who.
We send the reminder email day before and they say, Oh, thanks. And you’re like, okay, cool. Now I feel like I can rely on you. And then with the confidentiality forms being an hour and a half, like if they don’t send it back, we already know we’re going to be missing those people.
Rhonda: That’s right. And so it works and they know what is soon.
I have it already. And once they send back the confidentiality agreement, I immediately send them the zoom link. So they’re in, we ask for people to show up 10 to 15 minutes. Before it starts so that we can make sure that their audio and video are working and that everything’s good to go. And also because it makes us really nervous.
If we’re five minutes out and we only have three people there. That’s when we panic.
Elizabeth Larrick: It’s only happened a couple of times, but it doesn’t happen very often. Yeah. And luckily, like the nice thing about is [00:14:00] I was doing it a certain way and then Rhonda came in and kept with the system and then it was like, Hey, can we try this a little bit or can we give it them an hour and a half to fill it out?
It’s the nice thing about it is we’ve been able to tweak it so that it works a lot easier. And one of the things it is a stair step process, but the nice thing is. Rhonda’s got email templates for everything. So we’re not retyping these emails. We create the drafts. So it really makes it really easy on the day of to get whatever you need done.
And sitting out the reminder ones, those are all drafted and ready to go to make it super quick. But what’s our last thing that we do to make sure that they’re eligible? What do we do in our, inside the zoom itself?
Rhonda: Oh, yeah. So once they come into the focus group, they have to show a picture ID. Now they don’t have to show us their address per se, but we just have to see that the person that they say they are is, and they have a valid U.
S. I. D. [00:15:00] And sometimes that will, once we get in there, we have had some people drop off because they knew they didn’t have it and, and we lost them that way, which is okay. But we, we tell them at every step of the way, remember to have your I. D. ready. Yeah.
Elizabeth Larrick: And I think that, again, It can be any photo ID. We’ll take your Costco card or YMCA card or whatever.
As long as you’ve got a photo ID that matches your name, like we’re totally fine. But even that requiring that level of, okay. And again, we tell them we’re not, we don’t need a state ID, cover up whatever you don’t want to show us. We just want to make sure that you are who you say you are. That’s right. So we talked a little bit about weeding people out.
We talked about the referral, how do we do the referral program?
Rhonda: Yeah, so we’re always trying to get feedback to see how we can make it better for the participants and for the people that we’re running the focus group for. So after we [00:16:00] send them their money, we send a thank you email. And then the thank you email, it gives them a little survey, how’d you feel about this and this?
And we ask them about the focus group, which is good feedback from people. And we also tell them, Hey, we love referrals. So if you. give us a referral and it’s someone we use, then you get a gift card and it’s a small incentive, but it works.
Elizabeth Larrick: And they’re generally good referrals. They show up. That’s what I love about the referral system is like, these are people who 90 percent of the time are going to show up versus we don’t really have that same percentage, but just people who are responding to your eggs list or the Facebook and filling out the questionnaire.
That’s right. Fantastic. Okay. Okay. So we talked about email sequence and the templates, the questionnaires on Google Forms, which I think is really helpful. The only thing was with the referrals. The way that we also stair step this is someone will give me their name, they’ll refer somebody, and then [00:17:00] there’s an email sequence for that.
And then once they make it through that sequence, then we send them to a specific questionnaire. That way we can track it because I have a lot of times people will say, I was referred by so and so and I’m like, I don’t have that down. I’m like, I’m not sending you or randomly a gift card when I don’t track it.
Yeah. Awesome. Let me see. Is there anything else that we haven’t covered about the recruiting system or some of the things that you do in your role?
Rhonda: Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah. Yeah. I think for us, Being able to have the system down and having worked through it so many times to know this is what works.
And the other thing too is like internally we are obviously creating some documents. One of the things that we always make sure is we have a demographic table for every focus group that gets, Circulated. Rhonda creates it, circulates it over to me so I can circulate it on to lawyers. And then we create other internal documents.
And one of the things too that is what I think is really helpful is, and somewhat [00:18:00] tedious, is Rhonda maintains our master list. So I have a list in Excel. I guess it’s Excel, but now it’s in Google. Of every participant who’s ever been in one of my focus groups. And so with more data in there, we didn’t always, so RANA is very good about maintaining that so that we can ensure Because we’ve had people recently who slightly changed their name and showed up again at a focus group.
And sometimes I’ll go back and try to re recruit from that list, but I think that really helps us be able to track who’s coming, but also who needs to not attend for a couple weeks or maybe a year or be on the no list. So, what’s the no list?
Rhonda: The no list is someone that was either. Inappropriate in the middle of a focus group and they said inappropriate things, or they didn’t participate at all because that’s the whole purpose of a focus group.
We need for people to participate and give us their opinion. And if you won’t do that, we don’t [00:19:00] need you in a focus group. That’ll get you on the no list as well.
Elizabeth Larrick: And sometimes I don’t mean to. But there are people who will just badger, continue to badger us over the email. I’m just like, okay, you’re not attending.
It’s okay. And then so generally we’re on a red flag going over here. Let’s figure this out. Nobody has a perfect memory. So that’s what we keep our master list. And also our no list so that we can read through that. If somebody pops back up to know I’m not coming back.
Rhonda: That’s right. And it sounds. Super simple.
It’s not. There are a lot of steps behind the scenes, but because we have been doing it so long, it is a smooth process. Now we got it down. There are a lot of steps involved.
Elizabeth Larrick: And also, even if I’m here in Austin doing an in person, like you’re still handling all the recruiting and you’re doing the PayPal.
We just, some of the things become paper and I just sent it to you virtually so that you can get started processing everything. That’s right. Any other fun stories or things to share [00:20:00] with our audience about the focus group recruiting?
Rhonda: I don’t think so. Yeah, it’s just interesting. You can tell the people that really want to attend because they’ll fill out the questionnaire like 10 times.
Please see me, please. I really want to come. That’s always fun. When you, especially if you pick them, they’re so happy. They’re so appreciative. They’re like, Oh, thank you. I really wanted to do this focus group. So it works. It was fun.
Elizabeth Larrick: Yeah, it is. And most people do want to be there and there that don’t have any problems, but people who, again, we generally keep our eye out for people who are complaining, you know, saying negative on the Facebook page, but that’s one of the things too, that RUN has been so helpful because again, I have my perspective about the focus groups that I run, but I haven’t gotten to attend any.
I don’t think anyone would ever invite a lawyer on their focus group, but it’s been helpful because there are times where I just say, Do we need to pay people more? What’s happening? And Rhonda’s like, no, no, like here’s what people are telling me. And here’s what I’m hearing is we’re not asking people personal [00:21:00] questions about what laundry detergent they use or how much money they make.
Or so we started telling people like, Hey, we are priced. at a level for you just to be able to watch a presentation and get feedback. We’re not here to ask personal questions about you. Now, I don’t know if that’s made any difference. And that’s kind of one of those things to run as some people have to fill out like, yeah, you may make 150, but you’ve got to fill out.
100 page questionnaire.
Rhonda: It’s true. I think generally the feedback is really positive. And I think people feel like it’s fair compensation for what they do, especially once they’ve gone through it. They may be like, that’s a little low, but once they’ve done the focus group, they’re like, okay, get it. I understand.
Elizabeth Larrick: You don’t, yeah, there’s not a lot of heavy lifting on their side of things. Oh, then we do ask them to pay attention. And that’s one thing, one of the reasons, and this is just kind of trial and error. When I first was doing zoom focus groups was the instructions and like [00:22:00] setting their expectations clear.
From the very front and then in every email after that, so that they know when they show up on the cell phone, it’s not difficult for me to say, Hey, looks like you’re on a cell phone, gosh, we really need you to, and that’s one thing too, we’ve worked through like. How do you handle somebody like that? And how do you do it in a polite way?
Because everyone’s watching you interact with this person soon. And Rhonda does an excellent job. Customer service and being polite. And that’s, I feel like sometimes half the battle too is, cause I have done a focus group once where we all just were like staring at each other, the moderator wasn’t talking and we didn’t know what instructions we needed.
Having you on there. And that’s, Again, starting the zoom and doing all that, really being proactive with people when they’re on there. I think that really helps them immediately.
Rhonda: Yeah, I think so. Awesome.
Elizabeth Larrick: Rhonda, thank you so much for joining the podcast to talk about recruiting. You’re [00:23:00] welcome. I love it.
Okay, good. I hope so because I don’t want you to stick around for a long time. We need more focus groups. So Rhonda is the recruiter here with me in my office. Virtually, of course, and so if you want to learn more about Rhonda, we’re going to have a blog post. She’ll be on the website, but of course, if you have any recruiting questions, let us know.
I’ll put her contact information in the show notes. But if you have any other questions, let me know. Otherwise, thank you all for listening. Appreciate it. If you enjoyed today’s podcast, please, or follow it on your favorite podcast platform so that other people can find it. All right, until next time.
Thank you.