Digital recruitment system built for nationwide deployment.
Modern Woodmen of America needed to transform a traditionally in-person, paper-heavy recruitment model into a modern, digital system that could support regional growth and eventually scale across the country. Their process varied significantly from region to region, creating inconsistent candidate experiences and making it difficult for prospective representatives to understand the role, assess their fit, or navigate the early stages with confidence.
At the same time, the organization wanted to preserve the warmth, trust, and personal connection that define the Modern Woodmen culture. The challenge was to build a cohesive digital recruitment and onboarding experience that served both experienced financial professionals and newcomers exploring a career path for the first time, starting with a regional pilot and ultimately preparing the system for nationwide rollout.
Role
Product design lead
Marketing lead
Scope
Design system
Operations design
Software UX/UI
Recruitment web & dev
As lead product designer, I guided the end-to-end effort, working closely with strategy, HR, regional leadership, and engineering. My role spanned product design, service design, and systems thinking: shaping the recruitment journey, designing the digital onboarding experience, piloting concepts in a controlled region, and turning early learnings into a scalable national framework.
This work included defining the acquisition strategy that would support regional recruitment, creating the underlying design system and infrastructure needed to operationalize it, and producing process documentation so that regional teams could confidently implement the program as it expanded across the country.
The engagement began by mapping the full recruitment lifecycle — from the first moment a candidate discovered Modern Woodmen to their first 90 days in the role. Through research with candidates and regional recruiters, we uncovered recurring pain points: expectations were often unclear, early steps required substantial cognitive load, and communication across channels felt inconsistent. Understanding these gaps allowed us to identify where clarity, guidance, and structure would matter most.
We launched a pilot program within a single region to test early design hypotheses. This pilot included a digital recruitment flow with pathways tailored to both new and experienced candidates, as well as an onboarding dashboard that consolidated progress tracking, training resources, and next steps. Real feedback from candidates and recruiters helped us refine the experience, revealing what resonated, what introduced friction, and what needed to evolve before scaling.
From there, I explored several conceptual directions, prototyping alternative versions of the recruitment funnel and onboarding dashboard. Through iterative testing, we shaped a system that felt intuitive and supportive while still communicating the professionalism and rigor expected of a financial services role.
Cross-functional collaboration was essential throughout the process. Partnering with HR and recruiting leadership ensured that the experience reflected Modern Woodmen’s culture and long-term goals. Engineering helped us plan integrations with existing systems, while content and learning teams worked with us to embed training materials and compliance information directly into the flow in a way that felt helpful rather than overwhelming.
Behind the candidate experience, we developed a modular design system that included components for dashboards, messaging, task management, and progress visualization. This system provided the consistency and scalability needed for future regional expansion. In parallel, we created detailed process documentation — playbooks, operational workflows, and implementation guidance — to give regional teams a clear, repeatable framework for running digital recruitment efforts as the program rolled out nationally.
The result was a unified recruitment and onboarding system that fundamentally improved how Modern Woodmen attracts and develops new financial representatives. Candidates could now navigate their journey through a single, intuitive interface that clarified expectations, simplified training, and guided them through each step with confidence. Recruiters gained a structured, repeatable process that reduced variability between regions and improved communication with prospective reps.
As the pilot proved successful, the system’s underlying design infrastructure and documentation allowed Modern Woodmen to expand the approach beyond the initial region. With a scalable design system, operational playbooks, and a cohesive digital experience, the organization was equipped to deploy consistent, high-quality recruitment programs across the country.
The final product preserved Modern Woodmen’s human-centered culture while giving the organization a modern, digital foundation for long-term growth — a system capable of supporting recruitment at scale while deepening trust with every new candidate who enters the funnel.
© 2026 Pete Duncan
