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Revolutionizing Recruitment: Design Is the New Default
After more than 400 visits to Walt Disney World, I have learned to pay attention to things I probably never noticed during my first visits.
I still enjoy the attractions, restaurants, and experiences. But somewhere along the way, I stopped simply visiting Disney and started studying it. I became interested in understanding why the experience works so well and why families continue returning year after year.
The more I studied it, the more something became clear: the magic isn’t really magic. It’s intentional.
Someone thought about the landscaping. Someone selected the music. Someone considered the sight lines. Someone planned the queue. Someone decided how a cast member should interact with a guest. Even the smells you encounter in certain places are intentional.
Those details did not simply happen. They were designed.
I believe the same principle should apply to recruitment in our schools. Great recruitment does not happen simply because we have good people who work hard and hope families have a positive experience. It requires leaders to step back, look at the entire journey, and intentionally decide what they want families to experience along the way.
That leads to Rule #7 in my Revolutionizing Recruitment framework:
Design Is the New Default
Design has always mattered. Like the other rules in this series, it is not really new. What is different is the level of intentionality today’s recruitment environment requires.
Parents are moving through a longer and more complicated journey than they once did. They may hear about your school from a friend, search Google, read reviews, ask an AI tool for recommendations, visit your website, follow you on social media, submit an inquiry, exchange emails, visit campus, complete an application, receive an acceptance decision, enroll, and eventually transition into your school community.
Every one of those interactions is part of their experience.
The challenge is that many schools have never actually designed that experience from beginning to end. Pieces of it have accumulated over the years. The website belongs to marketing. The inquiry form lives inside an enrollment system. Admissions manages the tour. The business office handles tuition payments. Someone else takes over onboarding.
Each person may do their job well, but who is looking at the entire journey through the eyes of the family?
That is the challenge behind Rule #7.
Every stage of recruitment should be designed with intention.
Disney Designs What You Feel
One of the things Disney does especially well is shape the environment before anyone ever explains it.
Walk down Main Street, U.S.A., and you may encounter the aroma of freshly baked cookies, vanilla, or candy near the shops. Visit EPCOT during the Flower and Garden Festival and notice the landscaping, music, visual details, smells, and sight lines throughout the park.
None of that is random.
My wife, Janine, and I especially enjoy EPCOT, and one of our favorite places is the San Angel Inn inside the Mexico Pavilion. When you walk inside, you are transported into another environment. You are eating beside a river, under what feels like a nighttime sky, with a volcano in the distance. Disney could have simply created a Mexican restaurant and served good food. Instead, someone thought about how the entire environment should feel.
That is design.
Schools obviously do not need to turn their campuses into theme parks, but there is an important lesson here: the environment communicates before anyone explains it.
The same thing happens in recruitment. Before a family talks with your admissions director, your website has already communicated something. When they drive onto campus, your signage communicates something. When they walk into the front office, the greeting communicates something. When they receive an email, attend an event, complete an application, or open an acceptance message, each experience is sending signals about who you are.
The question is whether those signals are happening by accident or whether you have thoughtfully designed them.
Design Begins Before the Campus Visit
It is easy to think about experience design primarily in terms of the campus tour. The visit is certainly important, but the experience begins much earlier.
Your website may be the first experience you intentionally control. What does a prospective parent encounter there? Is the site warm and engaging? Can they quickly understand who you are and why your school might matter for their child? Is it easy to find the information they need and take the next step?
Then comes the inquiry experience. Rule #6 focused on simplicity and removing unnecessary friction, but simplicity is also a design decision. Someone decided how many fields are on that form, what happens after a parent submits it, and what the first response sounds like.
Then there is the initial connection. Does a family receive an automated message that sounds like it came from a system, or communication that feels like the beginning of a relationship? Does someone follow up in a timely way? Is the communication generic, or does it reflect something the family has already shared?
None of those interactions are insignificant. They are the early chapters of the family’s experience with your school.
That is why I believe schools should think about the entire recruitment journey, from website and first contact through follow-up, campus visit, relationship building, application, acceptance, enrollment, and onboarding.
The goal is simple: design every important moment with intention.
Sometimes the Smallest Details Make the Biggest Difference
I once worked with a school where someone had thought very intentionally about the campus visit.
The kitchen staff baked chocolate chip cookies during the time prospective families were touring campus. The tour route intentionally passed near the kitchen so families encountered the smell of freshly baked cookies.
Now, I am not suggesting that every school leader reading this article should immediately call the food service director and schedule cookies for tomorrow’s tour.
The cookie is not the strategy. The intentionality is.
Someone at that school had asked a different kind of question. Instead of simply asking, “What route should we take on the tour?” they were thinking about the experience they wanted to create for the family.
That is the mindset behind design.
Some of the best moments do not require a large budget or a major facility investment. A personalized parking space, a student who knows the visiting child’s name, a teacher who pauses to engage with the family, a thoughtful story shared at the right moment, or a follow-up message that references something important from the conversation can create a meaningful emotional impact.
Great experiences are often built from small moments that someone decided mattered.
Design the Campus Visit, but Don’t Stop There
The campus visit remains one of the most important conversion opportunities in recruitment, and it deserves intentional design.
I have written earlier in this series about Story Stops, personalized welcomes, student ambassadors, and helping parents picture their child inside the school. Those ideas become even more powerful when we begin thinking about the visit as a series of intentionally choreographed moments rather than simply a route through campus.
Where should the family begin? Who should they meet? What should they see? Which stories should they hear? Where should the child become engaged? When should you stop talking and allow them to experience the school? How should the visit end, and what should happen next?
I like to think of the tour as a series of choreographed moments of discovery. The goal is not to stage something artificial. The goal is to make sure families discover the authentic strengths of the school through thoughtfully planned experiences.
But design cannot end when the family walks back to their car. What happens next matters just as much.
Design What Happens After the Tour
This is an area where I think schools have a tremendous opportunity.
A family may have an excellent campus visit and then receive the same generic follow-up email everyone else receives. They may leave excited but have no idea what to do next. They may submit an application and enter a process that suddenly feels administrative and impersonal.
The experience has changed.
Good design creates continuity.
If the family told you during the tour that their daughter loves theater, perhaps the follow-up includes something connected to the performing arts. If the parents had an important question about academic support, make sure the next communication helps answer it. If their child connected with a student ambassador, perhaps there is an opportunity to reinforce that relationship.
Then consider the application itself. Is the process simply a series of tasks for the family to complete, or have you intentionally designed it to provide clarity and reassurance? Do parents know what has been received, what is still needed, and what happens next?
Rule #7 is not asking schools to manufacture “wow” moments at every stage. It is asking us to pay attention.
Acceptance Should Feel Like More Than a Status Change
The acceptance moment deserves special attention.
Think about what a family may have invested by this point. They have researched schools, talked with people they trust, visited campus, asked questions, completed an application, gathered records, perhaps participated in interviews or assessments, and spent weeks or months thinking about whether this could be the right place for their child.
Then the decision arrives.
For the school, acceptance may mean changing a status inside the enrollment system. For the family, it can be an emotional milestone.
Those are two very different experiences.
I believe acceptance should feel like a celebration that begins to build belonging. How could the experience communicate, “We want your family here”? Could it recognize the student personally? Could the school celebrate something it learned about the child? Could a student, teacher, coach, or administrator play a role?
The specific tactic will be different for every school. The point is to recognize the significance of the moment and design accordingly.
Enrollment Is Not the Finish Line
The same principle applies when the family finally says yes.
Schools understandably celebrate enrollment. The contract is signed, the deposit is paid, and the student appears in next year’s enrollment count.
But the parent’s emotional journey has not ended. In some ways, a new set of questions begins.
Did we make the right decision? Will my child make friends? What do we need to do before school starts? Who can answer our questions? How will my child find their way into the community?
That makes onboarding part of recruitment experience design too.
A family should not go from receiving tremendous attention while being recruited to radio silence after enrolling. The transition from prospective family to enrolled family should be intentional. Introduce them to people. Help them understand what comes next. Connect their child with other students. Make the first day less intimidating. Continue the sense of belonging that began during recruitment.
This is also where Rule #7 connects directly to Rule #5, Retention Is the New Recruitment. The experience you design after enrollment begins laying the foundation for the family’s confidence, loyalty, and eventual advocacy.
Experience Is Designed, Not Managed
There is a significant difference between managing an admissions process and intentionally designing an experience.
I think about that difference through four ideas: intentionality, care, consistency, and excellence.
Intentionality means every important touchpoint has a purpose. Care means families feel valued throughout the journey, not only when someone is trying to convince them to apply. Consistency means the warmth and quality of the experience do not disappear as the family moves from one department or stage to another. Excellence means ordinary interactions are handled with enough thought and attention that they become memorable.
Those principles apply whether the touchpoint is a homepage, a phone call, an email, a tour, an application, an acceptance package, or the first day of school.
This is why I think of the recruitment experience as your brand in motion.
Your brand is not merely the logo on the website or the words in your marketing materials. Families experience your brand through the way the school actually interacts with them.
Every stage of recruitment is your brand in motion.
Consistency Matters
One remarkable moment cannot compensate for an inconsistent journey.
You can create the most personalized campus tour in your market, but if it takes four days to respond to the initial inquiry, the family has experienced inconsistency. You can have a beautiful website, but if the application process is confusing, the experience breaks down. You can make acceptance incredibly special and then disappear for two months before the first day of school.
Families experience all of it as one journey.
That is why design cannot belong only to admissions or marketing. Multiple people and departments may own different pieces of the process, but someone needs to care about the entire experience.
Great design creates continuity between what the family sees, what the school promises, and what they actually experience.
Designed Experiences Become Stories
There is another reason this matters.
People talk about experiences that surprise them, move them, or make them feel something. That connects Rule #7 back to several earlier rules in this series.
Relationships build trust. Experiences differentiate. Stories give those experiences meaning. Personalization helps families feel known. Retention creates advocates.
Design helps make all of those things intentional.
When experiences are done exceptionally well, people naturally tell others about them. A parent may tell a friend about the way their child was welcomed during a visit, a thoughtful acceptance moment, or how someone from the school reached out before the first day. They may describe the teacher who remembered something important about their child.
Those stories become part of your reputation.
And reputation becomes recruitment.
Questions for School Leaders
As you consider Rule #7, I would encourage you to map your entire recruitment journey rather than focusing only on the campus visit.
What happens when a prospective parent first encounters your school online? What happens after they inquire? How personal is the first conversation and follow-up? Is the campus visit intentionally designed? What does the application experience feel like? How do you communicate acceptance? What happens between enrollment and the first day of school?
At each stage, ask three questions: What do we want the family to think? What do we want them to feel? What should they naturally want to do next?
Then look for the places where the experience changes. Where does it become generic? Where does the warmth disappear? Where is the family handed from one department to another without continuity? Where are you relying on a good employee to “make it work” rather than having an intentionally designed process?
And perhaps the most revealing question is this:
If you started from scratch today, would you design your recruitment experience the same way it currently works?
If the answer is no, you have identified an opportunity.
Nothing Remarkable Happens by Accident
When I first started taking Benjamin and Caleb to Disney, I was mostly enjoying the experience with them. They wanted to ride the rides, have fun, and create memories together.
Over time, I began seeing something else. I started noticing the intention behind the experience.
Someone had thought about the music. Someone designed the queue. Someone planned the landscaping and sight lines. Someone decided how guests would be welcomed and how different moments would feel.
That is what Disney has taught me after all these visits: the magic isn’t really magic. It’s intentional.
The same is true of recruitment.
Your website, inquiry process, first response, follow-up, campus visit, application, acceptance, enrollment, and onboarding will all create an experience whether you design them or not. The question is whether you are willing to leave that experience to chance.
Great recruitment requires leadership willing to look at the journey through the eyes of a family and intentionally shape the moments that matter.
That is the heart of Rule #7.
Nothing remarkable happens by accident. Great recruitment is designed.
