Reviewing and Approving Applicants

Reviewing applicants effectively is one of the most important steps in running a successful study—it shapes your sample quality, affects your fill rate, and has a direct impact on participant experience.

In this second lesson of Managing Live Projects, you’ll learn: 

• How to view and evaluate participant profiles
• How to make approval decisions confidently and efficiency
• How to update participant statuses

📹 Prefer watching to reading? This content is available as both an article and a video. Watch our Customer Success Manager, Kaylynn Knollmaier, take you through the content in the video below or keep reading to dive in!

How to view and evaluate participant profiles

Depending on how you invite participants, they’ll appear in different places in the Participant Management section of your project builder. 

• Not yet invited: When you add participants manually (via Hub or CSV), they first appear in Not Yet Invited.
• Invited: Once you send invitations, participants from the Not Yet Invited tab move to Invited, where they can apply by completing your screener. 
• Applied: If you share a project link publicly—such as in an email newsletter—participants will appear directly in your applied tab when they apply. Any participants from the Invited tab who submit the screener will move to this view as well. 
• Marked potential: If you want to make note of a potential participant, but would rather prioritize other applicants, you can mark them as potential and easily find them again in this tab. 

From the Applied tab, you’ll see match percentage, status, ratings, and tags at a glance. It’s common to sort by match percentage, but you may also filter by status or segment tags to manage quotas more efficiently.

Clicking on any participant name opens their slide-out profile, which gives you everything you need to make a decision without losing your place in the table. 

Tips for evaluating applicants

When evaluating applicants, go beyond match percentage. Consider things like: 

• Screener responses: Does their screener answers reflect real experience, thoughtful responses, and alignment with your research goals? 
• Fraud signals: Watch for signals of potential fraud or low-fit participation—such as AI-like generic responses, contradictions across questions, implausibly short screener completion times, or sparse demographic data. (Worried about fraud? Take our Preventing & Recognizing Fraud course to learn how to prevent fraudulent participants from affecting your research.)
• Past performance: Someone with multiple no-shows or repeated cancellations is generally not a good fit. 

When and why to approve 2x your desired participant number

Because availability varies and some participants will likely drop out, we recommend approving approximately twice as many participants as you ultimately want to speak with. 

This buffer ensures you maintain momentum even if some participants can’t schedule or cancel late. For example, if your goal is to conduct eight interviews, approving 16–20 applicants ensures a full schedule with room for inevitable drop-offs. 

In the unlikely event that all of your approved participants are willing and able to participate, the excess participants will be added to a participant waitlist. When the study is full, we automatically add new applicants to the waitlist for you—and if a time slot opens up due to another participant dropping out, participants on the waitlist are automatically notified. 

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