I'm a new lone product designer in a tech start-up that's a B2B2C which does not seem to have a process in place to recruit users.
Any advice on how to recruit to end users?
Also, how often should I be researching the business clients and the end users?
Do you keep tapping on the same pool of users?
For the business side, assuming that your company has customers, I would look to your customer support team for recommendations of insightful customers. If you don't have a lot of time you probably want to start with articulate, reflective customers who can introspect and tell you about their needs rather than the ones who think they know what they want and yell out feature requests.
For the consumer side, you can do hallway testing, where you just stand next to the coffee machine in your office or building and ask random people for their thoughts, and giving them a gift card for their time.
That's the cheap effective way I'd do research at a small scale, before being able to resource this more properly.
That's a great question to ask and I am placed in a similar role at a B2B2C start-up! I had to find answers quickly to move work along for my team. Here are a few things I researched on and the steps I took towards a solution. They worked pretty well for me.
I agree with qoba's suggestion and talk to people in the organization who aren't directly involved in product development.
I was suggested to get an ad out on craigslist if all else fails. (I haven't had the need to do that yet and not sure if I recommend it even.)
