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
"Not every task has to be completed; if a participant can’t find a way, that means the experience can be improved."
Samuel Proulx Laur BaekInclusive Research: Debunking Myths and Getting Started
March 12, 2025
"The coffee chat bot pairs two people every two weeks with no agenda, just like a kitchen chat that wouldn’t happen in remote life."
Rusha SopariwalaRemote, Together: Craft and Collaboration Across Disciplines, Borders, Time Zones, and a Design Org of 170+
June 9, 2022
"We need to be mindful and sniff out whether the small data we’re using is still fresh or already expired."
Iulia CornigeanuQuantQual Book Club: Small Data
March 8, 2024
"There’s nothing aesthetic to grab onto, so you’re not gonna be focusing on type styles, fonts, colors, photos."
Billy CarlsonTips to Utilize Wireframes to Tell an Effective Product Story
June 6, 2023
"System fonts load faster, improve legibility, and outperform fancy brand fonts in conversion."
Erin WeigelUX Lessons from running more than 1,200 A/B Tests
July 10, 2024
"We can't track actual benefit uptake after users click through to official government sites, only clicks and visits."
Alan Williams Rose DeebDesigning essential financial services for those in need
February 10, 2022
"The job market is flooded with overqualified candidates competing for fewer roles, often below their experience level."
Corey LongHiring in DesignOps: A Critical Study on How to Hire and Get Hired
September 23, 2024
"Design the chair inside the room inside the house inside the city plan — see those as connected nested things."
Dan HillStrategic design, slowdown, and the infrastructures of everyday life
April 21, 2022
"To me, sweating the pixel means paying attention to the details of interactions and keeping our eye on quality as designers."
Joseph MeersmanSweating the Pixel: Scaling Quality through Critique
June 10, 2021
