'I filled in your questionnaire, why wasn't I selected to take part in the discussion?'

That is a very fair question, and one we shall do our best to answer here.

There are two main reasons why this happens, the first being that you're not who we're after, and the second that there arent any places.

Eligibility

Every project that we recruit for comes with a set of eligibility criteria – sometimes wide open, sometimes very restricted. For example we might be asked for ‘Women aged 20-40 who drink tea’ – or our client, for whatever reason, might require ‘Women aged 20-40 who drink teabag tea brand X, who have tried brand Y but don’t buy it these days, not tried brand Z but open to trying it, agree or agree strongly with the following 10 statements about tea production, all to take milk with tea and 2 in each group to take one or more sugars..’ etc

When we get a specification like the latter, we have to ask open questions – e.g. about the brands, we ask ‘which of the following do you ever use?, NOT ‘do you ever use brand X?’ This helps to keep our selection process credible and robust. However it can mean that of the 5 brands listed, we are only able to recruit people ticking the one we are interested in - which may not even be the most popular. Or we may ask a question about whether there are any brands you reject or dislike – if you select our client’s brand we cannot usually recruit you to the group. (Unless they have specifically requested us to recruit a group of people who hate their product, which does occasionally happen!) 

With attitude statements we might be looking for a particular profile to recruit or not recruit, or sometimes for an overall score.  The point is, you cannot know what our client is looking for when you complete the form, as we simply have to obscure the 'right' answer, to recruit the project accurately

It’s also important to point out that all these criteria are specified by our clients in every case. Saros does not have the discretion to alter or amend them, even if it would make our lives a lot easier!  Our job is to recruit people who precisely meet the profile the client has given us.

Oversubscription

The other reason you might not get into a group is that the group simply fills too fast.

Obviously in an ideal world we aim to invite exactly the right number of people to apply for any given project – whether there are six groups or one. However, we have to make a judgement taking into account how many will be eligible, how quickly people will respond (when we are recruiting at very short notice we have to invite more people, as some people don’t read their email for days), and how easy it will be to ring people back and book them. And whilst we always try to keep disappointments to a minimum, we have to over rather than underestimate, to be sure of filling our groups. This does inevitably mean that a few perfectly eligible people get disappointed on every job, it’s something that we regret but can see no way of avoiding.

Unfortunately it can also mean you don't get the 'thanks but no thanks' message till the last minute, as we have to wait until the group is completed, and confirmed (with no-one dropping out on us) before we can tell everyone else they are not required.

Of course, if you haven't heard from us until a day or so before the group, you can probably assume you haven't been selected, and if we do have to make an emergency call-around due to cancellations we fully expect most people to have made other plans.  If this is the case for you it WON'T affect your likelihood of receiving future invitations (only no-showing a group does that), we quite understand that our members have lives and other commitments - another reason we always have to overestimate numbers for invites slightly.

“So when WILL I get picked?”

There is no straightforward answer to this question, however here are a few suggestions that might increase your chances...

• Respond as quickly as possible. The earliest responses are more likely to get booked, as we tend to start work on booking as early as possible. Sometimes if we have a large number of places to fill we will text or email people who have passed the pre-screening, again contact the interviewer fast to be sure of a place.

• Be easy to get hold of.  Even if you are first on the list, if we call you and can’t speak to you we can’t book you. If there are loads of eligible responses we won’t usually leave a message, we will simply work on and try to fill the group. And if we do leave a message, it doesn’t mean that we are able to hold a place in the group for you, so if you are still up for it get back to us fast!  If possible please give us more than one phone number, to increase the chance of our interviewer catching you on the first call.

• Answer the questions as fully as possible. Whilst we design the screening questionnaire to be quick to complete, to minimise disruption to your life, the more information you give us the better. For example if we ask what brands of soup you use, we are obviously looking for certain brands, so if you think about all the brands you use rather than just the first one you think of (unless you only really ever eat that one), you will lengthen your chances.

• Be yourself!  Please don’t try to second-guess what we’re after, or fit your answers to some ideal you have decided we are seeking… it usually shows, if not on the screen then later on the phone, or worse still in the group. And you really have no way of knowing what it is our client wants, so you give yourself the best chance of selection by answering the questions as honestly and spontaneously as possible

Please take heart if you haven’t yet been selected, we know it must be really frustrating, but we try very hard to keep our screeners to a single page and try to make it as quick to complete as possible… and we promise you that when the perfect group does come along you WILL be selected, and find it all the more interesting and enjoyable for being the right one for you.

 thanks, from all the team at Saros.