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
"Simplicity is the foundation of all complicated systems that work."
Daniel OrbachZero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
September 23, 2024
"I see design ops as deeply linked to how internal operations influence what our customers experience."
Bud Caddell Kristin Skinner Alana WashingtonDesignOps Community Sensing Session
May 13, 2021
"At the committed stage, executives start asking what design can do for business strategy."
JJ KercherA Roadmap for Maturing Design in the Enterprise
June 15, 2018
"You have to avoid speaking when the screen reader is speaking, which takes some training to get used to."
Samuel Proulx Laur BaekInclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started
March 12, 2025
"Storing enormous amounts of data requires energy and has a climate impact we rarely talk about."
Matteo GrattonCan Data and Ethics Live Together?
October 1, 2021
"Doing no harm is a core tenet of user experience research, whether or not you are trained in IRB processes."
Dr. Jamika D. BurgeBroad Strokes: Connecting Design, Research, and AI to the World Around Us
June 7, 2023
"Research with people with disabilities is about finding solutions with us, not for us."
Samuel ProulxDesigning for Disability, Innovating for Everyone
March 11, 2025
"I resist premature optimization of tagging and structure; I want to be 80% there rather than perfect and distracted."
Jorge ArangoThe Best of Both Worlds: How to Integrate Paper and Digital Notes (1st of 3 seminars)
April 5, 2024
"Owning your specificity and positionality makes you more open to diasporic experiences and deeper conversations."
Florence OkoyeAfroFuturism and UX Research
March 27, 2023
