Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
Summary
Onboarding new employees to your team is all too often treated as an afterthought, or best case, as an at-the-moment-thought. Employees deserve a well-thought out experience that includes them from the very beginning–from the creation of the position description—to that time after they’ve become integrated into our teams and organizations. We can trace some of these imperfect scenarios all the way back to the creation our performance profiles or position descriptions, and how they were created. When we understand the entire journey from candidate to employee we see the value of treating onboarding as an ending of a particular process instead of a solitary event in time.
Key Insights
-
•
Traditional job descriptions focus on tasks rather than measurable performance outcomes, limiting effective hiring.
-
•
Performance profiles clarify what success looks like and help teams agree on hiring criteria, leading to better candidate matches.
-
•
Structured interview guides aligned with performance profiles ensure consistent, fair, and relevant candidate assessments.
-
•
Unpaid design exercises or take-home tasks can exclude qualified candidates with caregiving or other external responsibilities.
-
•
The candidate experience after the interview and before the start date is often neglected, causing anxiety and disengagement.
-
•
Maintaining personal contact with candidates post-offer fosters comfort and commitment before they begin.
-
•
First day onboarding should be treated as a commencement event, not a paperwork marathon, reducing overwhelm.
-
•
Buddy systems provide critical social and informational support, improving new hire adjustment and retention.
-
•
Assigning safe internal projects early helps new hires gain practical familiarity without pressure.
-
•
Onboarding should be considered a multi-touch ecosystem involving ongoing feedback, communication, and adaptation.
Notable Quotes
"If you really care about success, you define it first and hire against performance, not just experience."
"Manhole cover questions belong in the past. Focus on real skills and relevant experience instead."
"Unpaid design exercises are unfair because they don’t take into account people's real-life constraints."
"Waiting and vague communication during hiring is a painful guessing game for candidates."
"The post-offer period isn’t HR’s alone; hiring teams must stay in touch and keep the candidate engaged."
"Day one is a commencement, a graduation from candidate to employee, not a paperwork slog."
"Buddy systems create leadership opportunities and a support network without changing org charts."
"Internal projects give new hires a safe place to learn how the organization functions without fear of breaking things."
"Hiring managers should facilitate hiring decisions but truly rely on the team members who work daily with the candidate."
"Onboarding isn’t a single event or process, it’s an ecosystem with many touchpoints impacting the new employee experience."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"If you think about things this way, that’s when you actually become the CEO of the experience."
How to Identify and Increase your "Experience Quotient"
June 15, 2018
"We want you to feel a very strong invitation from us to participate."
Uday Gajendar Louis RosenfeldDay 1 Welcome
June 4, 2024
"You don’t build in Figma or Photoshop and handoff anymore, you build in code alongside AI agents that generate working components."
Erika FlowersThe Handoff is Dead: Design-Led Engineering with AI Agents
March 4, 2026
"The tool is designed so you can just sit down, read the questions, and get started even if you don’t have much background knowledge."
Dave GrayGroup Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps
November 7, 2017
"User experience is everyone’s responsibility. It’s not just UXs."
Jemma AhmedTheme 2 Intro
January 8, 2024
"Building Windows is like ordering pizza for a billion people—everyone is your user."
Sam LadnerData Exhaust and Personal Data: Learning from Consumer Products to Enhance Enterprise UX
June 8, 2016
"The estuary is highly resilient but also very sensitive to industrial waste—creative collaboration areas in organizations are similar."
John CutlerOxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)
December 3, 2024
"We adapt, we innovate, or we no longer exist."
Jemma AhmedResearch at an inflection point: Adapting to a new era of collaboration, equity, and innovation
March 11, 2025
"We built a career path to make evaluations as fair and consistent as possible across roles."
Ignacio MartinezFair and Effective Designer Evaluation
September 25, 2024
