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
"No matter how good I am at my job, it doesn’t make me a good parent. What makes a good parent is time, love, compassion, and a sense of humor."
Dan WillisEnterprise Storytelling Sessions
June 3, 2019
"Dimensionality reduction algorithms take data points in high dimensional space and put them close together in 2D if they're similar."
Ian JohnsonLatent Scope: Finding structure in unstructured data
June 11, 2025
"The bot doesn’t summarize books because we’re a publisher and don’t want to cannibalize book sales—it points users to the original sources."
Peter Van Dijck Louis RosenfeldCoffee with Lou #4: Taking a Peek Under the Rosenbot's Hood
June 14, 2024
"Gaming is where the graphical user interface once was—still largely inaccessible, with assistive tech as third-party add-ons."
Sam ProulxTo Boldly Go: The New Frontiers of Accessibility
September 9, 2022
"I stay motivated because my assignment is to get human-centered design products shipped into people’s hands to improve their lives."
Ovetta SampsonTurning UX Passion into Real Product Influence
June 7, 2023
"People fall into two groups: some want to see what the system is thinking and why, others just want to see the final output."
Luke WroblewskiDesigning AI Applications
March 5, 2026
"More design feedback now happens in real time on Slack instead of waiting a whole week."
Melissa TsangFrom Insights to Action: Driving Business Values through DesignOps
January 8, 2024
"The future belongs to designers who ask questions worth answering, not just answering questions already asked."
Changying (Z) ZhengPractical DesignOps: From Ideas to Tools That Teams Actually Use
September 25, 2025
"Slow and intentional communication allows you to be fully present rather than distracted by constant notifications."
Marc Fonteijn Ru ButlerIncrease your confidence, influence, and impact (through a Professional Community)
December 3, 2024
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What are the limitations of AI-generated hardware design solutions regarding real-world user testing?
Why is the absence of self-governing professional institutions a challenge for the design field?
Why do current capitalist incentives make systemic and community-focused tech solutions difficult to implement?