User Research Leader, Keynote Speaker, Educator, Founder, UX Coach + Mentor
PLEASE READ: Three #userresearch students in my current Ask Like A Pro cohort had their survey/screeners picked up by professional hustlers. They created a series of fake names and email addresses that correlate to actual people on LinkedIn (yes, they were impersonating people on this platform) who match their target audiences. They took the screeners dozens of times until they figured out the “right” criteria to participate in the paid studies. They also passed the Calendly scheduling links around and filled their calendars. They used all typical American names, like William Jones, Annie Bernard, etc with simple gmail addresses like WilliamJones1080@gmail, or bernarda123@gmail, etc. They definitely did their homework in so far as learning key terms related to the topics and even changing their time zones when scheduling via Calendly! They are all of the same ethnicity and had the same non-American English accent. One provided feedback on a feature that was not revealed yet. Another said she was in New York and it was dark out. (The student is in NY too and the session was at 12noon. It was daylight. The clocks on their computers were 5 and 7 hours ahead of NY time). One student went back to ask for identity verification and received two fake driver's licenses from “Anytown, CA”. One height was listed as 6’6” and weight as 120 lbs. I've NEVER seen anything like this!! We’ve made all sorts of changes to how we vet and recruit for this cohort. After posting in a #ux research group I belong to I am now understanding A) how fortunate I have been in past recruits and B) how this type of fraud is really increasing in our #uxr industry. I hope this situation raises your spidey senses in your own work and helps save you some time. Yes, this has been an excellent learning experience for the entire cohort and will contribute to some great case study reflections! On the other hand, it's also been a colossal waste of time which will affect our client sponsors and our timelines! Going forward I will require my students to create a separate email address to use for their studies. We do discuss safety and email addresses specifically. I do recommend it but not everyone creates one. In this instance, one of them created a separate email address without their full name and two did not. Please be careful out there! Looking forward to hearing multiple perspectives on this one. -Michele #curiositytank #productdesign #uxresearch
Jeez!
Thanks for sharing your experience—I've encountered these issues too and it's terribly frustrating
Sophie Rochette how crazy is this!
Wow this is bizarre. One thing we do in our studies is a manual step between having people fill out a study and giving them a calendar scheduling link. That way, we can check the responses, see which ones look like they might not be real (or fit our participant profile), and invite people (or ask follow up questions if we're not sure). We also try to find balance across genders, age groups, ethnicities, user types, etc. We're not looking for the first X people who make it through the survey. We're looking for the *right* people. That doesn't stop people from filling out the survey until they think they said what we wanted to hear, but it's harder for them to tell what that is if the end of the survey is "we'll contact you if we select you." Is there a reason why they weren't recruiting more in that style? Might future cohorts switch their technique or tactics to add a manual step in the recruiting? Good luck!
Really good to know, thanks for sharing Michele Ronsen. What other vetting and recruiting changes have you made? In a recent usertesting.com study I ran, I found that about half the participants didn't actually use the device I screened them for. Knowing this makes the usertesting data I get much less reliable.
Unfortunately I have been there. It was extremely irritating and it has only happened to me when recruiting in the US. One additional thing we noticed is that these scammers did not switch on the camera during the interview. We complained to the recruiting platform and we didn’t have to pay them, but it was a waste of time and energy.
I'm sorry your students had to go through that! As others have mentioned, this is a common tactic from professional scammers. I have dealt with this a lot in my work, and you run into people who are impersonating very technical, very niche roles and still, it can take some time to suss them out as they are good at providing answers that "sound good", but are very vague. I see that you've already done a lot to combat this, but I'd like to share a few recommendations for others: - trust your gut, if something doesn't feel right about the context the participant is in (wrong environent, time of day, weather, etc.), I politely wrap up the interview, exclude it from my data set, and move on. If there are stakeholders attending the session as well, I explain the situation to them and tell them that this is part of qualitative research and the rigour in our work in making sure our data is reliable. - I politely press candidates for specifics if I am suspicious - I ask them questions about industry regulations, standard deployments, recommended configurations, etc. It's not meant so much as a test, but I'm trying to see if they are a genuine professional who uses the common terms & references of that field, or someone who is faking it.
What you're sharing is unfortunately nothing new. Market research has always had its organised crime unit...we call them "groupies". I have been formerly recruiting, facilitating and moderating since Jan 2016 and I promise you the things I've witnessed. What it has done is make the verification process much much longer and more tedious because as a small business I don't want to lose client because it seems like due diligence wasn't done. Sadly like on social media, catphishing is an epidemic that won't be ending soon. I'm sorry you and your students had to experience such. There's no wasted lesson. Also I'm eager to see what Matt Gershner has to share.
This is crazy. Where were the screeners posted? That’s so awful 😢
User Research Leader, Keynote Speaker, Educator, Founder, UX Coach + Mentor
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