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
"I can tell when something is real when multiple teams are talking about it and planning together."
Dr. Nikki SmithResearch Strategy: Connecting Insights to Outcomes
March 12, 2025
"We're not trying to cannibalize book sales but want to make the knowledge more accessible."
Louis RosenfeldGenAI for UXers: A Rosenbot Demo and Discussion
June 11, 2025
"The vast majority of what makes up meaningful human communication is harder for us to access screen to screen."
Laura Gatewood Laine ProkayBeyond Buzzwords: Adding Heart to Effective Slack Communication
September 23, 2024
"Will you become an advocate for the world’s most vulnerable voices muffled and unheard in complex systems?"
Liz EbengoThe Burden on Children: The Cost of Insufficient Post-Conflict Services and Pathways Forward
December 4, 2024
"Participants are usually very forgiving if you’re not a perfect screen reader as long as you explain what you’re doing."
Elana Chapman Li Wen Huang Divyen Sanganee Annabel WeinerGetting started with accessibility research
February 20, 2025
"We realized the real problem was a people problem, not just tooling complexity."
Luca RagerEmpowering Gaming at Scale: How Xbox Builds Powerful, Automated, and Distributed Design Systems with Sketch
September 30, 2021
"People are the plot twist in this journey — despite promising AI, only human connection reveals new problems and solutions."
Jennifer KongJourneying toward AI-assisted documentation in healthcare
June 5, 2024
"Sometimes organic culture pieces, like playing Wordle at the end of standup, shorten meetings and keep them tight."
Daniel OrbachZero to One: Co-Creating Operating Models with your Team
September 23, 2024
"Users with physical challenges often can see and interpret prototypes but may need help clicking through them because assistive tech may not support the prototype system."
Sam ProulxPrototype Reviews, People With Disabilities, and You
October 1, 2021
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
What lessons can service designers learn from electoral participation metrics about measuring engagement and errors?
What role should design industry groups play in setting ethical standards against manipulative design?
How can a repeatable market entry framework help reduce launch delays in multi-country B2B expansions?