Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
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
"Narrative shapes identity and inspires action. Amazon’s Day One narrative shows how overarching stories guide hiring, projects, and failure mindset."
Maish NichaniSparking a Service Excellence Mindset at a Government Agency
December 9, 2021
"In impact work, you have to get on the field and understand the reality, not stay distant."
Dolly ParikhExit Interview #7: Journey of a Social Entrepreneur
May 21, 2026
"Without trust, no relationship can prosper, yet many companies still install tracking software that employees try to circumvent."
Ana FerreiraDesigning Distributed: Leading Doist’s Fully Remote Design Team in Six Countries
January 8, 2024
"In agencies, you are deployed on projects with finite timelines that can end quickly, whereas in enterprise, people might be doing the same work for five, ten, or fifteen years."
Melinda BelcherInsider preview of Enterprise Experience 2020
May 28, 2020
"Being nimble means sometimes you have to throw out academic rigor and just do what’s practical at the moment."
Renee BouwensLanding Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
December 15, 2023
"The prompt becomes part design spec, part requirement doc, and part programming language."
Josh Clark Veronika KindredSentient Scenes and Radically Adaptive Experiences
June 11, 2025
"If the phone dies, Bigfoot’s insulin pump continues working independently, but without new data input."
Daniel J. RosenbergDigital Medicine Design
September 26, 2019
"A lot of people think about design systems as a project, but they’re really about how an organization gets work done."
Dan Mall“Ask Me Anything” with Dan Mall, Author of Upcoming Rosenfeld Title, Design that Scales
October 2, 2023
"You have to keep the fight, keep looking back at where you started."
JD Buckley Margot Dear Jim Kalbach Janaki KumarCOMMUNICATE: Discussion
June 14, 2018