Finding participants for user research isn’t the hard part. It’s finding the right participants that separates useful insights from misleading noise. If you’re building for B2B SaaS users, talking to your cousin’s roommate who once clicked on a competitor’s pricing page won’t help you make smarter product decisions. You need users who reflect on your actual ideal customer profile (ICP). When your research pool is off, you risk prioritizing the wrong features, chasing false signals, or worse, shipping something no one needs.
This is especially critical if you’re working on early product-market fit, refining onboarding, or testing messaging. A handful of mismatched participants can skew your data just enough to waste your next sprint. In this blog, I’ll go through how to recruit participants for your user research.
Define Your Research Objective and ICP
Before you even think about sending out invites or writing screening questions, pause. Ask yourself: What do I need to learn, and who exactly do I need to learn it from? That’s where defining your research objective and Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) becomes non-negotiable.
Start with your learning goal. Are you trying to explore a problem and discover unmet needs? Or are you testing something you’ve already built, like a prototype, a feature concept, or a workflow? Once you’ve got your research type nailed down, the next step is getting laser-specific about who you need to talk to. That’s where your ICP comes in. This isn’t a fluffy persona exercise. This is about defining real attributes that filter in the right people and filter out the noise. Think job titles, behaviors, tools they use daily, team size, decision-making power, industry vertical, and even emotional drivers.
For example, say you’re testing a new feature in your SaaS analytics dashboard. You might want to talk specifically to mid-level product managers at B2B companies who use Mixpanel weekly, not just “any PM.” That clarity keeps your research focused and your insights sharp.
If you haven’t already identified your top user pain points, consider this breakdown on how to prioritize customer problems for growth. That kind of work directly improves your recruitment rate. Clarity of research objectives and ICP pays off massively later, especially when you start building screeners or assessing responses. It also helps your team stay aligned on why these participants matter. You’re not just looking for users. You’re looking for the right users to answer the right questions.
Where to Find Research Participants?
1. Use Tap into Your Existing User Base
If you already have a product live, your CRM, analytics tools, or customer success team are goldmines for finding relevant participants. These are the people actively using (or churning from) your product, exactly the kind of insights you want.
What I usually recommend is segmenting based on behavior. For example, pull out a list of users who recently dropped off during onboarding, or those who’ve adopted a new feature. This way, you’re not guessing, but you’re targeting people whose actions align with your research questions. The big win here is speed. You already have the data and (hopefully) permission to contact these users. With a quick email or in-app message, you can recruit participants without relying on external tools. As UX Studio points out, this approach often yields higher participation rates because these users already have a relationship with your brand.
But there’s a catch. If you only recruit from your current users, you might miss out on perspectives from non-users, churned users, or those in your target audience who haven’t discovered your product yet. Just be mindful not to over-rely on your most vocal power users; they’re helpful, but they don’t always represent the broader market.
Start with the people already around you: your users, your customer success team. Ask them directly: “Do you know someone who fits this profile?” Referrals work because they come with context and trust. If someone already uses your product or understands your ICP, they’re more likely to refer to people who actually fit. This can be a goldmine for reaching niche roles or harder-to-access segments, like technical buyers or decision-makers in B2B SaaS.
And yes, ensure to incentivize the referral, not just the participant. If you’re building out a consistent referral pipeline, you might want to set up lightweight tracking or a form to keep it organized. Referrals can also help reduce bias compared to only recruiting from your own product database. That’s especially useful when you’re testing ideas that aren’t live yet, or targeting prospective users, not just current ones. Leveraging networks expands your reach beyond your core user base while keeping the relevance high.
3. Professional Communities and Social Channels
If you’re building a niche user segment, you can source participants by tapping into LinkedIn, Slack groups, and Reddit forums. These aren’t just recruitment channels, but they’re insight goldmines, too.
- LinkedIn is especially useful if you’re targeting B2B users. You can filter by role, company size, or even specific technologies. Send a thoughtful message that clearly states what you’re researching, why you’re reaching out, and how their input will help shape the product. People are more likely to respond if you’re respectful, transparent, and offer a small incentive.
- If you’re looking for tight-knit, role-specific communities, Slack groups are where things get interesting. You’ll usually need to join first, contribute some value, and then ask for help once you’ve built a little trust.
- Reddit is another underrated gem. Find the relevant subreddits where you see discussions from people in your ICP. You can recruit participants from there by engaging in threads and following up respectfully in DMs or comments.
That said, you’ll want to screen carefully; these spaces aren’t pre-qualified like paid panels. But if you put in the effort to ask the right questions up front, the participants you get from these communities are often incredibly relevant and thoughtful.
4. Use Participant Recruitment Platforms
When you’re running research on a tight timeline or targeting users with very specific roles, seek out participant recruitment platforms. They take care of the heavy lifting: finding, screening, scheduling, and incentivizing the right users so you can focus on asking the right questions.
Tools like Great Question and Lyssna have solid infrastructure for fast B2C and niche B2B recruitment. But if you need both B2B and B2C participants and you care about quality, speed, and role accuracy, Qualz.ai is worth looking into. Qualz.ai helps you recruit verified consumers and hard-to-reach business decision-makers for interviews, surveys, and concept tests.
- B2C participants: From general consumers to niche groups like gamers, parents, travelers, or users of specific products across demographics and behaviors
- B2B participants: Founders, executives, and decision-makers across SaaS, Fintech, HR, IT, and more, whether you’re looking for Heads of Product or Finance leads in mid-market e-commerce
- U.S.-first coverage, with international feasibility on request
What sets it apart is the panel quality controls. You get:
- Tailored screeners built around your ICP
- Identity and role verification (with optional LinkedIn/website checks)
- Traps for speeding, straight-lining, and low-effort answers
- Real-time updates on progress
- Incentives handled for you, plus no-show replacements
You can even bring your own list of customers or prospects, and qualz.ai will handle everything else: screening, scheduling, reminders, and even incentive fulfillment. If you’re experimenting with early concepts or running overnight message tests, there’s also the option to use AI Participants inside Qualz.ai. Think of these like sandbox personas to pressure-test edge cases, not a replacement for human insight, but a complement when speed is critical.
How to Screen Participants the Right Way?
Before you run a single user research session, build a screener that filters based on behavior, not just demographics or job titles. Ensure you know what someone actually does, not what they say they’re interested in. For example, instead of asking, “Would you use a team collaboration tool?” (a vanity qualifier), ask, “What tool did you use to manage your last project?” That one shift alone helps me find real users, not just polite participants.
Include at least one disqualifier, something like, “If you work in IT or engineering, you’re not a fit for this study.” That keeps my participant pool clean and focused. And don’t skip the open-ended questions. Always include one that gives a window into how clearly someone thinks or communicates. Something like, “Walk me through how you typically decide what software to try in your team.” If their answer feels vague, misaligned, or templated, it’s probably not the right fit. A strong screener saves your team time, improves your research ROI, and protects your product from being steered by the wrong voices. It’s not just about getting “users.” It’s about getting the right one.
Incentivize (Smartly) to Maximize Response Rate
Most people aren’t signing up for user research out of pure goodwill. You’re asking for their time and attention, so it’s only fair to offer something in return. But incentives aren’t just about being polite; they directly impact your recruitment speed and the quality of participation. Incentives also play a big role in reducing no-shows, especially live sessions.
Here are some of the incentive options:
- Digital gift cards are the go-to because they’re fast, flexible, and easy to automate
- Exclusive access to a beta feature or roadmap preview works well with early adopters or existing power users
- And for certain audiences, a donation to a cause in their name
The key is matching the value of the incentive to the value of the insight. Talking to a senior B2B buyer about enterprise onboarding? That’s worth more than a five-minute feedback poll.
Whatever you choose, transparency is critical. Be upfront about:
- How long will the session take
- Whether it will be recorded
- When and how the incentive will be delivered
- How you’ll handle their data
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Even with a solid plan, participant recruitment can go sideways fast if you’re not careful. Here are a few mistakes I see product teams (and let’s be honest, I’ve made myself) fall into and how to avoid them:
Recruiting users who are similar or far from your ICP
If everyone you talk to looks, thinks, and behaves the same, your insights are going to be shallow or skewed. On the flip side, if you’re pulling in users who barely resemble your real customers just to fill out quotas, you’re going to waste your team’s time on noise. The sweet spot is clear: recruit users who reflect the attributes, behaviors, and context of your ideal customer profile (ICP), not just whoever replies first.
Under-screening
There’s nothing worse than hopping on a call and realizing five minutes in that the person on the other end isn’t even remotely relevant. Avoid that trap with a well-crafted screener. Ask behavior-based questions, include disqualifiers, and test it on internal teammates first.
Over-incentivizing just to hit your quota
Offering a reward to participants is smart. But throwing cash at the problem of filling up your calendar quickly? That’s a red flag. You’ll attract the “professional respondents” who are great at sounding insightful but often lack real product context. Instead, match your incentives to effort and relevance, not urgency.
Not testing your screener before launching recruitment
It’s tempting to skip this, especially when timelines are tight. Share it with your team or a few known users and see how they interpret the questions. If people are confused or disqualify themselves, fix it before you start outreach.
Conclusion
Great user research doesn’t start with interviews; it starts with who you choose to interview. The right participants don’t just help you validate assumptions; they help you uncover what you didn’t know to ask in the first place. That kind of clarity is hard to come by when your recruitment strategy is rushed, random, or built on convenience.
If you take the time to define your goals, get specific about your ICP, build strong screeners, and choose recruitment channels that actually reflect your users, the quality of your research improves dramatically.
Whether you’re running discovery sprints, validating messaging, or refining onboarding, your recruitment process is the gatekeeper to insight. And if you’re stuck deciding who to talk to next, ask yourself this: If I build based on what these people tell me, will it make the product better for my actual users? If the answer isn’t confident, yes, it’s time to rethink your pool. Recruiting is where good research begins.