Rosenverse
Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought

Gold
Tuesday, November 7, 2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Share the love for this talk
Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
Speakers: Russ Unger
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sam Proulx
Designing For Screen Readers: Understanding the Mental Models and Techniques of Real Users
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
George Aye
Designing a New Social Contract
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Indi Young
Paying Better Attention to the Problem with Indi Young
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Shelby Switzer
Making Space for Community Knowledge-sharing in a Distributed World
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Lin Nie
When Thought-worlds Collide: Collaborating Between Research and Practice
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Caroline Vize
The State of UX: Five Lessons from 2021 to Accelerate Digital Experience in 2022
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
Bria Alexander
Opening Remarks
2024 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Dem Gerolemou
Climate technology fundamentals
2024 • Climate UX Interest Group
James Rampton
The Basics of Automotive UX & Why Phones Are a Part of That Future
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Dan Willis
Theme 3: Intro
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Roberta Dombrowski
5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Christian Crumlish
The Pygmalion Effect: In Which a Vibe Coding Experiment Becomes a Million Lines…
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Aras Bilgen
Who does the math: A designer’s journey in building an AI-based tutoring app
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Ned Dwyer
Right horses for the right courses – how and when to democratize research
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Caitlyn Hampton
Compass 101: Growing Your Career In A Startup World
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
David Conrad
The Feeling of Data
2023 • Enterprise Community

More Videos

Jake Burghardt

"Turning every study plan into a kind of report with new and existing insights is a mindset shift that can build a durable asset."

Jake Burghardt

Finding More Inroads into Research Impact

February 20, 2026

Jen Cardello

"Redesigning decision making means teams should have the autonomy to recommend pivot, shelve, or proceed earlier."

Jen Cardello

Standardizing Product Merits for Leaders, Designers, and Everyone

June 15, 2018

Erin Hoffman-John

"Changing low leverage points in a system produces fine tuning, but shifting high leverage points can cause radical disruption."

Erin Hoffman-John

This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World

November 6, 2017

Bria Alexander

"The pressure in design ops is often delivery-first mindset instead of quality and strategic impact - Dave Malu."

Bria Alexander Patrizia Bertini Peter Boersma Jon Fukuda Dave Malouf Theresa Slate Changying (Z) Zheng

Charting the future of DesignOps: A community workshop

April 18, 2024

Jerome “Axle” Brown

"Before sharing insights, I try to prime the room by acknowledging feelings and starting fresh."

Jerome “Axle” Brown

How to Use Self-Directed Learning to Ensure Your Research Insights are Heard and Acted Upon

March 11, 2021

Mitchell Bernstein

"Sketch made it possible to build a scalable library that millions of customers rely on with just a couple clicks."

Mitchell Bernstein

Organizing Chaos: How IBM is Defining Design Systems with Sketch for an Ever-Changing AI Landscape

September 29, 2021

JD Buckley

"Fight to communicate your passion in a way that is digestible for other people."

JD Buckley Margot Dear Jim Kalbach Janaki Kumar

COMMUNICATE: Discussion

June 14, 2018

Patrizia Bertini

"No VP or director has direct responsibility at board level. It’s the C-executives who ultimately decide."

Patrizia Bertini

The (r)evolution of designOps: It’s Time to Think (really) BIG

September 11, 2025

Alissa Briggs

"If we do X, then Y percent of people will do Z—that’s how you frame hypotheses to learn from both success and failure."

Alissa Briggs

How to Coach Enterprise Experimentation

May 14, 2015