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
Nicole Aleong
Future Orientations to Everyday Life: Futures Anthropology as a Methodology
2024 • Advancing Research 2024
Gold
Uday Gajendar
Making the Invisible Visible: The most critical deliverable isn't always the design
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Dave Gray
Connection, Community, and the Future of Work
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Gillian Salerno-Rebic
From Insight to Impact: How JourneySpark Used WEVO Pulse + Pro to Drive a 50% Lift in Ad Engagement
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Sofia Quintero
Beyond Tools: The Messy Business of Implementing Research Repositories
2022 • Advancing Research 2022
Gold
The AI + Design wave has arrived: Making sense of the 2026 AI + Design Report
2026 • Rosenfeld Community
Deanna Smith
Leading Change with Confidence: Strategies for Optimizing Your Process
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Nova Wehman-Brown
We've Never Done This Before
2019 • Enterprise Experience 2019
Gold
Carl Turner
You Can Do This: Understand and Solve Organizational Problems to Jumpstart a Dead Project
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Steve Portigal
War Stories LIVE! Steve Portigal
2020 • Advancing Research 2020
Gold
David Eisner
From prototype to production: Vibe coding design for real engineering systems
2026 • Designing with AI 2026
Conference
Rachel Posman
"Ask Me Anything" with Rachel Posman and John Calhoun, Authors of the Upcoming Rosenfeld Book, The Design Conductors
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Davis Neable
How to Drive a Design Project When you Don’t Have a Design Team
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
JP Allen
Navigating the UX Tool Landscape
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Sarah Sgarlato Pierini
From Passion to Execution: A Story of Evolving Research Maturity at LinkedIn
2022 • DesignOps Summit 2022
Gold
Jorge Arango
AI as Thought Partner: How to Use LLMs to Transform Your Notes (3rd of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community

More Videos

Joerg Beringer

"Secondary research becomes a primary choice in user research in the age of AI."

Joerg Beringer Thomas Geis

Scaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes

September 10, 2025

Marc Rettig

"We rejected a studio model because designers should take business direction from the teams they’re embedded in."

Marc Rettig Julie Baher Phil Gilbert Nathan Shedroff

Discussion

May 14, 2015

Claire Dhoosche

"Alignment isn’t a one-time event. You build it, and then you maintain it."

Claire Dhoosche

Coordinating chaos: Preventing workflow fragmentation when everyone accelerates with AI

June 9, 2026

Phil Gilbert

"We could create a sustainable culture of design and use it as our leading edge weapon of transformation."

Phil Gilbert

A Consistent Culture of Design

May 14, 2015

Jilanna Wilson

"Nothing builds collaborative relationships better than being physically present, so we make annual off-sites a priority."

Jilanna Wilson

Distributed Design Operations Management

October 23, 2019

Rachel Garb

"Fluid intelligence peaks and then declines; that's when we should lean into crystallized intelligence—organizing, synthesizing, sharing."

Rachel Garb

Exit Interview #7: Facing a blank slate in retirement when constraints are all you’ve ever known

August 5, 2026

Sarah Fathallah

"Ways to reduce extraction in research is by embedding community-led practices rather than holding the keys to knowledge ourselves."

Sarah Fathallah

Lessening the Research Burden on Vulnerable Communities

March 30, 2020

John Calhoun

"Often, the best tool for everything in design ops is a spreadsheet."

John Calhoun Rachel Posman

Bring your DesignOps Story to Life! The Definitive DesignOps Book Jam

October 3, 2023

Uday Gajendar

"If you work with humans, you work with trauma; it’s inherent in human experience."

Uday Gajendar Rachael Dietkus, LCSW Dr. Dawn Emerick Dawn E. Shedrick, LCSW

Leading through the long tail of trauma

July 7, 2022