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
"The trick is the conversation – bringing finance, sales, and product people together to make your assumptions more believable."
Giff ConstableFinancial fluency for product leaders: AMA with Giff Constable
April 11, 2024
"It's not about hitting a specific NPS target but about improving from where we are now and tracking the trend."
Jack MoffettUX Metrics That Matter and The Future of our Design at Scale Conference: A Community Conversation
September 22, 2022
"By summer, there had been zero cases of COVID on farms employing temporary foreign workers in BC."
Gordon Ross12 Months of COVID-19 Design and Digital Response with the British Columbia Government
December 8, 2021
"DP&M tools pull together necessary reference materials and design deliverables, showing how they relate to each other."
Jon Fukuda Ellie KryslDesign Planning and Management Support
October 3, 2023
"How do we train AI models to prevent bias and preserve privacy, especially considering disability data is often seen as medical data?"
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
November 18, 2022
"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
Tutti TaygerlyMake Space to Lead
June 12, 2021
"We should advocate together, not just for ourselves; if you want to go far, go together."
Jon Fukuda Jake Burghardt Jose Coronado Natalie Dunbar Denise TillesAll the Ops: Successful cross-functional collaboration
September 10, 2025
"Put yourself in the hiring manager’s shoes; they scan quickly and want to see a fit fast."
Dave Hoffer Joanne WeaverUX Job Search AMA #2 with Joanne Weaver and Dave Hoffer
April 3, 2025
"MBA programs teach a lot of networking and collaboration but not always the realities of day-to-day decisions."
Ryan RumseyBusiness Influence Without Losing Your Soul
January 14, 2021
