United States Marine Corps

The existing marines.com site wasn’t providing the depth of information potential candidates and their communities were looking for. So we rebuilt it.

  • With the highest cost of entry for any brand, and the complexity of a major decision being made by teenagers, Marines.com serves a critical piece of the recruiting process for potential candidates and their support systems. For the Marines, their site was a way to connect with potential candidates.

    Marines.com had been overhauled in 2016 with a focus on the brand story. Unfortunately, this didn’t serve the purpose visitors were looking for. Candidates and their families were going to unofficial sources to get the information they needed, which isn’t ideal. They wanted to be able to dive into the details, have questions answered, and see what was laying ahead of them once they joined the Marines.

    The team came up with a way to drive deeper content based on the path the visitor took. We were able to focus the conversation and discovery across different key areas of interest with current stories, as well as critical evergreen information they were looking for. And for the Marines, they were able to connect more directly with candidates, all with ethical data.

  • The focus of the team was on the brand and content for over 90 years. The digital experiences were a manifestation of the brand, rather than a critical touchpoint along the journey. My role was to reimagine and up-skill the teams, introduce new roles such as product and service, and align creative, data, and technical teams.

    In a case like this, it’s critical to adjust the approach and mindsets of all teams. I shifted from a gant-chart mindset with teams focused on their swim-lane to an outcome-based process where all teams had to work together to achieve the goal.

  • We were able to deliver a fully re-imagined and re-built the website within 6 months. (The team said, “We are usually 6 months behind schedule, how did you do that??”) This way of working expanded across all USMC work, as well as the entire Atlanta studio. A number of folks were able to shift into more experience focused roles helping to deliver across all products.

    RFI submissions and time on site grew significantly.

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Benefit Tags

A critical part of the recruiting process is understanding what is motivating the candidate to join USMC. We re-create this experience as a digital tool which helps candidates select their top reasons for joining.

“In the course of a career, you meet many leaders that teach you what not to do. You meet few that lead by example and teach you what to aspire to. Caitlyn is just that - a leader of leaders.

On the United States Marine Corps project, I deepened my understanding of Design Ops under Caitlyn as well as observing her successfully lead an egalitarian team - letting the team thrive, and stepping in with encouragement or coaching as appropriate. Caitlyn builds healthy teams in environments that are challenging, where design is politically charged or underestimated. I felt how much every team member’s work was valued.

I also appreciated seeing Caitlyn build up newer talent and help team members develop skills to switch roles or start a UX design, research, or writing career from adjacent fields. Caitlyn takes calculated risks and trusts the team to make things happen. She delegated skill-sharing to me which prepared me for the position I hold now managing my own team.

Caitlyn was juggling multiple teams across clients and was on the lookout for any opportunity to create a good business relationship and set the client up for success. When I joined the project and flagged some accessibility issues, she followed through on adding them to the roadmap and worked with the client to help them understand the issues. She was constantly looking at the priorities the client considered, but led the team to make expert recommendations based on best practices and feedback from users of the client’s products.

I always saw Caitlyn take personal responsibility for finished work, sharing praise and kudos for individual efforts. There are no small jobs in client-facing UX work, and Caitlyn embodied that, making sure that everything was buttoned up.

With high emotional literacy, empathy, and an infectiously effervescent personality, Caitlyn is a leader on the short list of people I would not hesitate to work with again. The time I spent with Caitlyn and her team left a lasting impression and impact on my career.”

— Soren Hamby, Accessibility & Design Ops Leader