Revolutionizing Recruitment: The Magic Is Intentional

When my sons, Benjamin and Caleb, were young, I took them to Disney to have fun and create memories together. At the time, I wasn’t thinking about customer experience, intentional design, or what Disney might teach me about enrollment and recruitment. I was simply a dad taking my boys to the parks.

Over the years, I kept going. My wife, Janine, and I love to visit the parks. Eventually, those visits numbered more than 400, and somewhere along the way I stopped simply enjoying Disney and started studying it.

I began noticing things I had overlooked before: the landscaping, music, queues, smells, sight lines, cast member interactions, and countless small details that shape the way a guest experiences the parks. What felt effortless was anything but accidental. Someone had thought about those moments. Someone had designed them.

That is when I began to understand something that has influenced much of the way I think about schools and enrollment:

The magic isn’t really magic. It’s intentional.

The same idea sits at the heart of this entire Revolutionizing Recruitment series.

Nine articles ago, I began with another simple question: Where will my child flourish? That is still the question parents are trying to answer.

The tools they use have changed. The amount of information available to them has changed. The way they search, compare, research, and evaluate schools has changed. But the heart of the decision has not. Parents are still trying to determine where their child will be known, challenged, supported, and given the opportunity to thrive.

Over the past several weeks, I have explored eight rules for recruitment in this new environment. Each rule looks at a different part of the enrollment journey, but they are all connected by the lesson I eventually learned from Disney.

Great experiences rarely happen by accident. They happen because someone was intentional.

The Rules Are New, but the Principles Are Timeless

Relationships have always mattered. Experience has always mattered. Stories, personalization, retention, simplicity, design, and good judgment have always mattered too.

So why call them the “new rules”?

Because the environment surrounding the school-choice decision has changed dramatically.

Parents have more choices and more information than ever before. They can research your school before anyone in your admissions office knows they exist. They can read reviews, compare tuition, explore social media, ask AI tools for recommendations, and hear directly from other parents before they ever submit an inquiry.

At the same time, families are busy, distracted, and often cautious about major decisions. They are processing more information while trying to make a deeply personal choice about their child.

In that environment, the timeless things matter even more.

The new rules are not really about inventing an entirely different approach to recruitment. They are about becoming more intentional with the things that have always mattered most.

That is the common thread running through all eight rules.

Intentionality Changes the Experience

Every school already has relationships. Every school creates experiences. Every school tells stories, communicates with families, retains some parents, uses processes, makes design choices, and increasingly relies on technology.

The question is whether those things are happening by default or by design.

Are relationships being built intentionally, or are we simply hoping they happen? Is the family experience thoughtfully shaped, or is it the result of whatever happens on a particular day? Are stories being collected and shared, or are we relying on prospective parents to discover them on their own?

The same questions apply throughout the enrollment journey. Does personalization come from genuine listening, or is it just a first-name field in an email? Are we building parent confidence throughout the year, or only thinking about retention when re-enrollment opens? Are we simplifying the process for families, or asking them to work around systems that were built primarily for our convenience?

And as AI becomes part of the work, are we using it to understand families better, sharpen our thinking, and give our teams more time for relationships? Or are we simply using it to produce more content faster?

These are not simply admissions questions. They are leadership questions.

The difference between an ordinary recruitment experience and a remarkable one often comes down to how intentional we are about the moments that matter.

The Most Important Decision May Happen When You Are Not in the Room

Eventually, everything you do in recruitment leads to a moment you may never see.

A family is sitting together at the kitchen table. Maybe it is late at night after the children have gone to bed. Maybe they have visited several schools and are trying to sort through everything they have seen, heard, and felt. They may be comparing tuition, programs, commute times, academic opportunities, and other practical considerations.

But underneath all of that is a much more personal question:

Is this our school?

When that moment comes, parents are not only comparing programs and facilities. They are remembering how they felt throughout the experience.

Did someone really listen to us? Did our child feel comfortable? Could we picture our family there? Did we trust the people we met? Did the school feel warm, organized, and authentic? Did the experience match what the school promised?

That is why recruitment is much bigger than marketing.

Marketing can create awareness. A website can generate interest. A campus visit can provide information. But the family’s decision is shaped by the accumulation of experiences that either build confidence or create doubt.

And that confidence is rarely created by one dramatic moment. It is usually built through dozens of smaller ones.

The Eight Rules Work Together

The eight rules were never meant to operate independently.

Relationships build trust. Experience helps families feel the difference. Stories help them understand what is possible. Personalization helps them believe the experience could be for their child.

Retention matters because confident families are more likely to stay, and loyal families often become your strongest advocates. Simplicity removes unnecessary friction. Design helps ensure the experience is intentional rather than accidental. Intelligence allows us to understand families better, sharpen our thinking, and make stronger decisions.

Each rule strengthens the others.

A beautifully designed campus visit is weakened if it takes four days to respond to the initial inquiry. A powerful story loses impact if the admissions process feels impersonal. A great recruitment experience cannot compensate forever for a poor enrolled-family experience. And AI cannot fix a school that has stopped listening to its families.

The goal is not perfection in every area. The goal is to see the journey as a whole and become more intentional about how each part contributes to the family’s confidence and decision.

Recruitment Is Bigger Than Filling Seats

There is another reason intentionality matters so much.

We are not simply trying to fill seats.

We are helping families make one of the most important decisions they will make for their child. That decision can shape friendships, confidence, opportunities, faith, learning, belonging, and the direction of a child’s future.

That is significant work.

When a family chooses your school, you are not simply adding another student to the enrollment count. You are welcoming a child and a family into a community.

That perspective should influence the way we approach recruitment. It should cause us to care about the first response and the campus visit. It should make us listen more carefully, communicate more clearly, and remove unnecessary obstacles. It should make us think about whether the experience we are creating genuinely reflects the school we are inviting families to join.

Most importantly, it should remind us that the goal is not simply to persuade a family to choose us. The goal is to help them determine whether our school is the right place for their child.

That is a very different mindset.

Recruitment Is a Leadership Responsibility

Admissions professionals may lead the recruitment effort, but they cannot own the entire family experience.

A receptionist can influence it. A teacher can influence it. A coach can influence it. The business office can influence it. Division leaders and the Head of School can influence it. The condition of the campus, the speed of a response, the clarity of communication, and the way a difficult question is handled all contribute to how a family experiences the school.

That is why enrollment is not simply an admissions issue. It is a leadership issue.

If a school truly wants to grow, the Head of School and leadership team have to care about the experience families are having from the first moment they encounter the school through the years they remain enrolled.

Intentionality does not happen because one admissions director works harder. It happens when the organization decides that the family experience matters and creates a culture in which people understand their role in delivering it.

Recruitment may be led by admissions, but the experience belongs to the entire school.

You Don’t Have to Change Everything Tomorrow

One of the risks of reading a series like this is walking away with a long list of things that suddenly feel urgent.

That is not my recommendation.

Instead, identify where greater intentionality would make the biggest difference right now.

Maybe it is your inquiry response or campus visit. Maybe prospective families are struggling to understand tuition. Maybe your website no longer communicates your value clearly. Maybe your current parents need more confidence in the direction of the school.

You may need to collect better stories, rethink your acceptance experience, simplify part of the admissions process, or use AI to save your team time and improve the quality of the work.

Start somewhere meaningful, and then keep asking a simple question:

What could we do more intentionally?

That question can change a lot because it forces us to stop accepting the current experience simply because it is familiar.

What Will You Do Differently?

Over the course of this series, I have shared ideas, stories, examples, and questions drawn from my work with schools and from more than 400 visits to Disney.

But the value of the series will not come from reading it. It will come from what you decide to do differently because of it.

Perhaps there is a relationship you need to strengthen or an experience that needs to be redesigned. Maybe your school has stories that are not being told or unnecessary friction that needs to be removed. Perhaps there are current parents whose confidence needs to be strengthened or prospective families who could experience much more personalization.

Maybe the opportunity is better communication, a more intentional onboarding experience, or a smarter use of AI and the information you already have.

Or perhaps there is something in your recruitment process that everyone has simply accepted because “that is the way we have always done it.”

That may be exactly where you should start.

Intentionality does not always require a massive initiative. Often, it begins with noticing something that could be better and deciding not to leave it to chance anymore.

The Magic Is Intentional

After more than 400 visits to Disney, I still enjoy the rides, restaurants, and experiences. But I also see the parks differently than I did when I first took Benjamin and Caleb.

I notice the thought behind the experience.

I notice that someone considered what guests would see, hear, smell, and feel. Someone thought about the transitions, the waiting, the environment, and the interactions. Someone cared enough about the experience to design details most people will never consciously notice.

That may be one of the most important lessons Disney has taught me.

The same principle applies to our schools.

Your next email can be more intentional. Your next conversation with a parent can be more intentional. Your website, campus visit, follow-up, application process, acceptance experience, onboarding, retention strategy, and use of AI can all become more intentional.

You do not have to become Disney. But you do have to care enough about the family experience to shape it rather than leave it to chance.

That is what Revolutionizing Recruitment has really been about.

The magic isn’t magic. It’s intentional.

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