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
"Building rapport and rituals helped our remote team foster camaraderie and trust."
Asia HoePartnering with Product: A Journey from Junior to Senior Design
November 29, 2023
"There is no unbiased creation of machine learning or artificial intelligence; the idea of agnostic algorithms is a myth."
Ovetta SampsonManaging the Human Engagement Risks of AI
June 10, 2025
"I had a crisis of digital where I feared being stuck in a ghetto of marginal impact focused only on UI decisions."
Leah BuleyClosing Plenary: The Crisis of Digital
March 31, 2020
"Supporting different ways people prefer to engage—like asynchronous workshops or prep time—helps introverts and extroverts contribute equally."
Bria Alexander Laura Gatewood Corey Long Daniel Orbach Laine Prokay Deanna SmithThe Big Question about Resilience: A panel discussion
September 23, 2024
"There’s this kind of Collective unconscious within teams that formed over the pandemic which is deeper than any other team experience I’ve had."
DesignOps and The Great Talent War of 2021
August 19, 2021
"Most introverts are really good about cultivating personal relationships and listening."
Dorelle RabinowitzThe Magic Word is Trust
June 15, 2018
"Think of AI more like a junior associate, a really powerful one, not a replacement."
Louis Rosenfeld Billy Carlson Jon Fukuda Maria TaylorHow AI will Change DesignOps Tooling
October 3, 2023
"Lonely workers think about quitting their job twice as frequently as non-lonely workers."
Kat VellosOpener: The Other L Word
January 8, 2024
"When I first started, I felt like I had this little superpower that nobody else really knew about."
Janelle EstesUX Research Trends
January 28, 2021
