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
"Enterprise UX is really hard because, in addition to designing for products, we also design for our own change and the change our colleagues navigate."
Boon Yew ChewMaking Sense of Systems—and Using Systems to Make Sense of the Enterprise
June 6, 2023
"The Rose Bot has read everything—every piece of Rosenfeld’s knowledge—to help users access it."
Peter Van DijckBuilding the Rosenbot
June 4, 2024
"Iteration means don’t prepare your talk the night before. Start early, practice, and evolve your message over time."
Louis Rosenfeld Jemma Ahmed Christian Crumlish Uday Gajendar Chris GeisonCoffee with Lou #3: What Makes for a Successful UX Conference Presentation?
May 2, 2024
"Empathy is key to wanting to do this job — wanting users to do well."
Steve Krug Louis RosenfeldDon’t Make Me Think 3.0: What Endures and What Evolves in UX
March 11, 2026
"We had to charge not just project work but all the costs including vacation, rent, insurance, and bookkeeping."
Chelsea MauldinLet's Talk About Money
November 17, 2022
"Retention went up because designers had more time to do what they loved: design."
Brennan HartichCommunicating and Establishing DesignOps as a New Function
November 7, 2018
"Keeping something cloud-based accessible is the most complicated because of hundreds of releases per day in continuous integration."
Sheri Byrne-HaberAccessibility at Scale
June 9, 2021
"A society that is designed is better than one that is simply built."
Bob BaxleyTheme 4: Intro
January 8, 2024
"I believed we could do more — more for the company, customers, stakeholders, and ourselves if we had more agency."
Nalini KotamrajuResearch After UX
March 25, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
Why is assessing design students challenging, and what are the limitations of traditional grading systems?
How can barriers like childcare and internet access be addressed to promote equitable participation?
What practices help maintain continuous learning and feedback loops after initial research coaching?