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
"Creating internal champions in client organizations helps improve adoption and reduces churn."
Amy MarquezINVEST: Discussion
June 15, 2018
"Changing a biased design isn’t just changing features—it requires changing the entire design process and culture."
Sandra CamachoCreating More Bias-Proof Designs
January 22, 2025
"People who experience trauma often feel powerless; trauma-informed design should empower and give voice and choice instead."
Carol Scott Melissa EgglestonAvoid Harming Your Team and Users: Promoting Care and Brand Reputation with Trauma-Informed UX Practices
February 5, 2025
"Ambiguity is considered a problematic in design, but ambiguity can be a feature."
Lori Muszynski Peter MerholzKeeping Design Weird
October 2, 2023
"Please don’t delegate hiring to HR—hiring managers must set clear criteria and be personally involved to avoid bias."
Silke Bochat5 Antifragile Strategies for a DesignOps 2.0
September 23, 2024
"Design managers make things go; they’re the GPS of the design organization."
Kristin SkinnerOpening Keynote: Org Design for Design Orgs
November 6, 2017
"Great research doesn’t automatically have the intended impact because people may not want their minds changed."
Robin BeersBeyond Insights: Researchers as Organizational Change Catalysts
March 25, 2024
"AI-generated imagery feels too shiny and perfect — unlike the human-made objects that carry flaws and presence of the maker."
Uday Gajendar Adam RichardsonFrom AI to Zeitgeist: Theory as the design antidote to AI hype
March 27, 2025
"Our product simply sucks everything out of the open AI system and processes it with a knowledge graph based on ISO standards."
Joerg Beringer Thomas GeisScaling User Research with AI: Continuous Discovery of User Needs in Minutes
September 10, 2025