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
"Being trauma-informed means caring for yourself, forgiving your mistakes, and moving forward with humility."
Matt Bernius Sarah Fathallah Hera Hussain Jessica Zéroual-KaraTrauma-informed Research: A Panel Discussion
October 7, 2021
"Federal funding does not provide food for participants, so we had to plan accordingly to make participation irresistible."
Alexia Cohen Adriane AckermanIncreasing Health Equity and Improving the Service Experience for Under-Served Latine Communities in Arizona
December 4, 2024
"Since we started this presentation, enough data has been collected to fill everyone’s hard drive about 500,000 times, and fewer than 1% is ever used for insights."
Chris ChapoData Science and Design: A Tale of Two Tribes
May 13, 2015
"Design thinking is for everybody. It’s collaborative, inclusive, and cross-disciplinary."
Doug PowellClosing Keynote: Design at Scale
November 8, 2018
"Benchmarking has nearly doubled in two years, showing growing maturity in UX measurement across industries."
Dana Bishop2022: The Year UX Demonstrates its Business Impact
March 11, 2022
"Corporations are already largely self-driving often in a bad way, operating on autopilot by policies, which requires human intervention."
Hugh DubberlyProblems with Problems: Reconsidering the Frame of Designing as Problem-Solving
June 19, 2019
"If users have to look things up, they often won’t, so policies must be easy and fast to respond to."
Heidi TrostTo Protect People, You Have to Protect Information: A Human-Centered Design Approach to Cybersecurity
January 23, 2025
"When you get a best in class tool, you are able to execute more rigorous research and show clearer ROI."
Benjamin Wiedmaier Annie MayfieldRedefining Toolkits: Unbundling to Create a Perfect Match
March 11, 2025
"Trauma should not be reduced to a right of passage that justifies participation in research."
Sahibzada MayedThe Politics of Radical Research: A Manifesto
March 27, 2023