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
"Contextualizing sound bites or clips is crucial; otherwise, they risk losing meaning when separated from their original story."
Bas Raijmakers, PhD (RCA) Charley Scull Prabhas PokharelWhat Design Research can Learn from Documentary Filmmaking
March 11, 2022
"Awareness of positionality is the first step toward ethical change in research."
Bilan HashiThe Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
March 10, 2021
"By designing products through the lens of edge cases like disabilities first, they often become better products for everyone."
Saara Kamppari-MillerDesignOps for Inclusive Design and Accessibility
May 26, 2022
"Political capital is critical; good strategy without support will be crushed in large organizations."
Simon WardleyMaps and Topographical Intelligence
January 31, 2019
"We have to shift from mechanistic linear thinking to complex systems thinking."
Ariel KennanCivic Design in 2022
January 13, 2022
"A UX partner needs to develop a thick skin when engaging senior VPs and directors."
Vasileios XanthopoulosA Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approach to User-Centric Maturity at Scale
January 8, 2024
"We can no longer rely on interviews, surveys, and usability tests to answer the strategic, complex questions organizations face today."
Jemma Ahmed Megan Blocker Eduardo OrtizRedefining the research toolkit: Expanding methodologies for a changing world
March 12, 2025
"Super senior individual contributors can focus on strategic and creative work that design directors and VPs often don’t have time for."
Peter MerholzDesign at Scale is People!
June 11, 2021
"I like to think about individuals as cells, teams as organs, and organizations as organisms in an ecosystem."
Dave MaloufTheme 3: Introduction and Provocation
January 8, 2024