Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
Gold
Tuesday, November 7, 2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Share the love for this talk
Onboarding: The Ecosystem, not the Afterthought
Speakers: Russ Unger
Link:

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."

Ask the Rosenbot
Etienne Fang
Power of Insights: Why sharing is better than silos with Uber’s Insights Platform
2019 • Advancing Research Community
Ross Smith
Breaking Barriers with Empathy
2017 • Enterprise Experience 2017
Gold
Stephanie Wade
Building and Sustaining Design in Government
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold
Kelly Goto
Emotion Economy: Ethnography as Corporate Strategy
2015 • Enterprise UX 2015
Gold
Bethany Brown
Rewiring operations with service design and AI
2025 • Advancing Service Design 2025
Gold
Uday Gajendar
From AI to Zeitgeist: Theory as the design antidote to AI hype
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Anna Avrekh
Diversity In and For Design: Building Conscious Diversity in Design and Research
2021 • Design at Scale 2021
Gold
Michele Wong
Helping Them Help Us
2024 • Enterprise Experience 2020
Gold
Josh Clark
Sentient Design: New Postures for AI-Mediated Experiences (2nd of 3 seminars)
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Sharon Banh
Reimagining research: What does the field need to grow? [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]
2024 • Advancing Research Community
Michael Land
Establishing Design Operations in Government
2021 • DesignOps Community
Bria Alexander
Day 1 Panel: Up to the Minute: The latest in AI’s impact on UX
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Frances Yllana
The Big Question about Impact: A Panel Discussion
2024 • DesignOps Summit 2024
Gold
Christian Bason
Expand—Rethinking Design for Public Challenges
2022 • Civic Design Community
Katie Johnson
Disrupting generative AI products with just-in-time consumer insights
2024 • Designing with AI 2024
Gold
Angy Peterson
More Than Technology: Personalized Public Sector Experiences
2021 • Civic Design 2021
Gold

More Videos

Sean Fitzell

"We started to reference something that became to call the triple D challenges: duplicated efforts, disjointed workflows, and distance from users."

Sean Fitzell Sarah Han Kayla Farrell

Craft of User Research: Building Out Jobs to be Done Maps

March 12, 2021

Jim Kalbach

"Forgiveness is not about forgetting or just getting over something, it’s about making a mission out of it."

Jim Kalbach

Peace is waged with sticky notes: Mapping Real-World Experiences

June 14, 2018

Cennydd Bowles

"Design fiction can bring potential futures into the present to stimulate moral imagination and public debate."

Cennydd Bowles

Responsible Design in Reality

June 9, 2021

Saara Kamppari-Miller

"The canary in the coal mine—that’s how we identify the fail points in the user experience we absolutely can’t miss."

Saara Kamppari-Miller Nicole Bergstrom Shashi Jain

Key Metrics: Comparing Three Letter Acronym Metrics That Include the Word “Key”

November 13, 2024

Uday Gajendar

"Manuel Herrera is creating sketch notes for every session; you’ll have access to those."

Uday Gajendar Louis Rosenfeld

Day 1 Welcome

June 4, 2024

Sara Conklin

"Climate change is bad. Probably worse than we all think."

Sara Conklin

Exit Interview: 20 Years of Tech, One Very Big Bet, and a Lot of Heat Pumps

April 10, 2026

Dr Chloe Sharp

"For bigger decisions, having documented meetings was critical for transparency and defending choices later on."

Dr Chloe Sharp

Using Evidence and Collaboration for Setting and Defending Priorities

November 29, 2023

Nathan Shedroff

"You wouldn’t use design thinking to optimize inventory—you use Six Sigma."

Nathan Shedroff

Redefining Value: Bridging the Innovation Culture Divide

May 14, 2015

Robert Fabricant

"Research doesn’t start and end with the researcher; it’s about continual learning and supporting communities to keep learning."

Robert Fabricant Sahibzada Mayed Nidhi Singh Rathore

Industry junctures: Paths forwards for UXR and the critical decisions that get us there [Advancing Research Community Workshop Series]

October 2, 2024