All-In-One Recruitment CRM
Redesigning the student enrollment marketing experience, from disconnected tools to a unified, insight-driven platform:
Recruitment is a new CRM module built directly inside SchoolMint's enrollment product, designed to bring lead tracking, attribution, enrollment, and analytics into the same place. Recruitment creates a single unified experience, from the first parent inquiry all the way to an enrolled student.
The Problem
SchoolMint had built or acquired a broad suite of products covering every stage of the enrollment funnel, from digital advertising and lead nurturing to enrollment and analytics (Engage, Connect, Enroll, Insights). But despite this breadth, the products were siloed, and schools were struggling to connect the dots. Low usage, high churn, and declining revenue all traced back to the same structural problem: A disconnected funnel.
Objectives
The Recruitment initiative was anchored around three strategic pillars that aligned product thinking with business goals:
Migrate
Build the features that are required to migrate existing Connect customers to our unified Student Enrollment Management (SEM) Suite.
Create Delight
Build on functionality we already have in Enroll to add features that users and potential users have been asking for.
Grow Revenue
Boost competitive advantage and expand our Ideal Customer Profile by adding functionality to make our unified solution viable for enterprise orgs and districts.
My Role
As the Senior Product Designer, I led the design and user experience from early strategy through release, working closely with the VP of Product, engineering, and key customer-facing stakeholders.
During this project, I introduced AI vibe code prototyping and ideation into SchoolMint's design process, which made exploration and feedback much faster.
Recruitment v1.0 and the integrated funnel launched in mid-2025, and we have continued to ship improvements through February 2026.
Before any design work began, the team invested significant time in understanding both the business context and users needs. This phase was critical because Recruitment was not a simple feature addition, it was a strategic repositioning of how SchoolMint delivered value to schools.
Where Are We Against the Competition?
We mapped SchoolMint against its two primary competitors in the SEM space. The analysis revealed that SchoolMint was missing several features that users expected, most notably texting capability, funnel reporting, and workflow automation.
User Research & Persona Development
Qualitative research, including interviews with current customers, win/loss analysis, and customer support ticket review, painted a consistent picture of our primary user. School administrators and enrollment coordinators are not marketing professionals. They are generalists managing a wide range of operational responsibilities, and recruitment is one item on a long list.
A Deep Look as Usage and Retention Data
The story data told was consistent, the products were too manual, too fragmented, and too hard to derive value from quickly. That gap between top-of-funnel activity and bottom-of-funnel outcomes wasn't just an inconvenience, it was the primary driver of churn.
- Low Usage: 40% of Connect (CRM) have not been active in at least 30 days. The product requires too much manual work for a job they’re not already doing.
- High Churn: 50% of Engage clients didn't renew after year one, as it is not integrated with the rest of the enrollment pipeline.
- Declining Ads Revenue: Down 14% YoY as schools have no clear ROI visibility from ad spend.
With research grounding in place, the team and I developed a design strategy structured around two interdependent principles: reduce work and add value. Every decision in the product, from architecture to the design of the dashboard, was evaluated against these principles.
Reduce the Work
The core persona was overwhelmed and not a marketing expert, so the primary imperative was minimizing effort. This meant automatic lead/guardian/student record creation, smart defaults, workflow automation, and guided prompts that tell schools what to do next.
The dashboard was particularly important: it was designed to show funnel progress, top initiatives, lead status, and ROI at a glance, while also surfacing specific next actions to boost conversion if needed, such as “Get more leads” or “Convert more leads.”
Add Value and Create Delight
The most structurally significant design decision was building Recruitment as a module inside SchoolMint Enroll. This integration approach was deliberate and it meant that:
- Leads from any source (ads, forms, events) flow directly into the same system where schools manage applications, lotteries and registrations, eliminating the data gap entirely.
- Schools only need one login, one permission structure, and one interface to manage both marketing and enrollment.
- ROI attribution becomes native: with a shared data model, the system can calculate exactly how many applications were generated from each lead source.
- Fewer things, better: Recruitment is a natural extension of a product users already know, dramatically lowering the adoption barrier. And also, fewer products for CX to learn and support.
- Recruitment + Enroll could do something no competitor could: show the full journey from ad click to enrolled student in one place.
How do we get there?
Connect the Funnel
Lead attribution (UTM), lead capturing (ads, forms, automatic record creation), and basic reporting (lead list, static reports, CSV export).
Close Competitive Gaps
Event & tour management, communications (email/SMS, automated responses), advanced reporting (dynamic charts, funnels, email/text stats).
Serve Enterprise Clients
Marketing automation (workflow builder, targeted communications), ROI analysis, org-Level features (multi-school dashboards, custom filters & views, permissions).
03 Design: From Concept to Interface
With strategy defined and research in hand, the design process moved through progressive levels of fidelity. The goal at each stage was to validate decisions as early as possible.
User Flows
The main challenge was adding a new module to an already mature product without making it feel more complex. I mapped the core flows, including permissions, lead management, data filtering, and workflow automation. Each flow was designed to be linear and low-friction, with minimal branching to keep the experience manageable.
Wireframes and AI Prototypes
The goal was to clarify needs, layout, and hierarchy, not polish. Key decisions included prioritizing three KPIs (Unique Leads, Enrollment Target, and ROI), clear CTAs, and surfacing actionable lead data in the table.
Iterate & High-Fidelity Design
The wireframe stage revealed that users preferred more detail in the dashboard funnel view and real numbers instead of percentages. This led to changes in the initial design ideas to better support user needs. The funnel view now includes Total Leads, Applicants, Registrants, and ROI, along with the best performers and enrollment status.
High-Fidelity AI Prototypes
Interactive prototypes were created for alignment and usability testing. I used Figma Make to vibe code the workflow automation builder and the main dashboard functionality. These prototypes also proved essential for business goals. The Sales team was able to use them in conversations with enterprise clients to build excitement and support sales efforts.
Testing was embedded throughout the design process rather than treated as a final gate before release.
Design Reviews
Early wireframes and mockups were reviewed in weekly design critiques with the cross-functional team. These surface edge cases and technical constraints, such as handling leads from multiple sources or how to approach editing a live automation.
Usability Testing
Moderated sessions were conducted with enrollment professionals at single charter and enterprise school districts. We focused on several tasks, including: taking action on a lead, finding lead source, and automations.
Across all cycles, I applied three principles: address confusion before adding capability, make the UI as simple as possible, and never ask users for data the system already knows.
Results
Recruitment was released in mid-2025. Early feedback suggests the unified interface significantly reduced time-to-first-value. Features like lead attribution and ROI reporting give us a clear advantage over competitors.
What We're Watching
As the product matures, key metrics include weekly active users, renewal rates, ads retention, and time to first value for schools. Full impact will be measured over the upcoming enrollment season.
Recruitment was a strategically complex product to work on. The challenge was to bring fragmented products together into one coherent experience while also meeting the company’s business goals.
This project gave me the opportunity to introduce vibe coding into our design process, a meaningful step forward in the company’s product development workflow that also proved essential in meeting deadlines.
Overall, this was the most strategically coordinated project I worked on at SchoolMint. Collaboration with the VP of Product, Engineering, Architecture, and key stakeholders helped shape a unified vision and enabled smooth execution.
