Article initially published by the AMSR. Interview by Judith Wardle.
When Lynne went along to her local hotel a few years ago to hostess a group for the magazine Woman’s Realm, no-one was more surprised than her to see the fake wall hiding a camera crew. When the group was finishing, the crew burst through the wall and invited all the respondents to star in a TV ad. It could never happen today, with the strictures of GDPR but they were delighted. Then there was the hide constructed by a recruiter’s porch hiding Danny Baker, also bursting into the room to invite respondents to star in a Daz commercial. You may have seen it! Only two of many memorable events in Lynne’s career as a qualitative recruiter.
A recruiter’s life was nothing if not varied: one day private health insurance, next day fishermen. My interview with Lynne in her sunny yellow kitchen in Nottingham recalled the ups and downs of qualitative life but also reminded me of how our industry treated these women (and they were nearly all women) so poorly. Lynne was not alone in finding life as a qualitative recruiter frustrating and difficult.
She was persuaded to take up the job by a neighbour in Mill Hill, alongside nine other jobs! Her motivation was keeping the family afloat and she knew little about research. An initial training course at QRS led to a lucky meeting with Marilyn, and the two of them got together to tackle the jobs that came their way. She puts down the longevity of their careers in research – over 45 years – to that partnership. Recruitment is a lonely job and having someone to share the burdens and successes made all the difference.
Of all the jobs in qual research, as a moderator myself, I have long since believed that the job of the recruiter is the most difficult but having heard from Lynne, I am doubly certain. Think of the qualities and skills they need: resilience and perseverance to keep going when potential respondents say ‘no, thank you’, warmth and charm to reassure, intelligence and ingenuity to work out how to find those ‘needles in haystacks’. They were the bedrock of the industry; without them, there would be no respondents and no research and yet they were the first people to be criticised. Remember all the talk of ‘cheats’ back in the day? Remember those knee-jerk complaints from clients who didn’t like the findings? Clearly we weren’t talking to the ‘right’ people and whose fault is that?
As an industry, we did not support our most important people, our recruiters. We failed to listen to them, when quotas were difficult; we paid them as little as we could get away with and we blamed them when things went wrong. In the power triangle, clients had the power and the recruiters at the bottom of the triangle too little. The advertising agencies, also Lynne and Marilyn’s clients, got it right. They rewarded them fairly, they entertained them lavishly and they felt valued.
Lynne was taught that the only correct way to recruit respondents was on the street, stopping people who could have fitted the quota. Well – that method didn’t last long. Even with the relatively simple quotas of the 80s, it was difficult to find people who fitted and once found, even more difficult to persuade them to spend an evening in a stranger’s house. Lynne and Marilyn quickly resorted to a card index system (she trained as a librarian!), bearing the details of individuals, when they had been interviewed and other relevant information. They relied on snowballing, not just them but respondents too were willing to help.
So it was, and is, a lonely job, with sleepless nights worrying about how they were going to find those ‘needles’, whether they were going to turn up and even if they were going to be ‘good’ respondents, ie chatty and informative. (Not the recruiter’s job – Ed.) Then there was the disruption to the family, eating their evening meal before the respondents arrived and then shooed out of the TV room. The stains on the carpet, the respondent who wee-ed on the sofa, the imperious moderators moving the furniture and forbidding crisps (too noisy for the tape) all added to the acute anxiety of an evening of groups at home.
Having said all that, recruitment definitely had its joys. Lynne has enjoyed having a role in her local community; she knows lots of her neighbours and they know her.
The incentives play their part! When things went well, evenings ended on a high. She has always been hugely enthusiastic about the research process generally and the chance it gives for people to have a say. On one memorable occasion, she was chatting to a young Asian woman who was waiting in her kitchen when the woman burst into tears. She said it had been the only time she had been asked for her opinion; her father, brother and husband always spoke for her. ‘I have never been asked what I think’, she said. ‘That’s the power of research’, responded Lynne.
How things have changed; Lynne puts the sudden change down to the pandemic. All of a sudden people were not able to meet in person and the advent of Zoom opened up new possibilities and cheaper ways of gathering respondents. Things have just got more difficult since. Recruitment has moved from being a community task to one that is done online and much of the joy has gone, too. Algorithms have replaced ingenuity and judgement; location as a factor in recruitment and analysis is disappearing as groups comprise individuals from all over the country. Lynne bemoans the changes but soldiers on, accommodating the changes, and took time to comment that some face-to-face work has come back.
What a superstar!
Lynne Chapman is an ICG member.