Making an offer

Send an offer from a candidate's profile, check what the candidate will receive, and withdraw it if plans change.

Offers are made from the Offers tab on a candidate's profile. You fill in the terms, choose the documents and email that go with them, and select Send Offer. The candidate gets an email with a link to a page where they read the offer and accept or decline it.

Who can send an offer

Only System Admin and HR users can create, send or withdraw offers. Other roles cannot make or withdraw offers.

Some setup comes first. The offer letter and contract templates, offer types, custom offer fields and offer emails are all managed in Settings > Offers > Offer Setup. See "Setting up offer types and offer fields" and "Writing offer letters and contracts" for those. The candidate also needs a submitted, active application, because every offer is tied to a job the candidate has applied for.

Choose the application

A candidate's profile shows one application at a time, and an offer is made on the application you have selected. If the candidate has applied to more than one job, use Switch application at the top of the profile first, and check that the bar beside it shows the job you mean. The Send Offer form has no job field. Its title names the candidate, followed by the job title and reference, so you can confirm you are on the right one.

To make an offer on a different application once the form is open, close the form, use Switch application, then select New Offer again. If you have already entered details in the form, Recruit asks you to confirm before it discards them.

Open the offer form

Open the candidate's profile, choose the application, and select the Offers tab. Select New Offer. If the candidate has no offers yet on that application, the button is called Create Offer.

If the selected application is a draft the candidate has not submitted, or it is no longer active, the button is not shown and the tab says "Offers can only be made on a submitted, active application." Switch to a different application or wait until the candidate submits.

Fill in the Send Offer form

The form title is Send Offer to followed by the candidate's name, then the job title and reference. Fields appear in this order.

Offer template and Contract template: the letter and the contract are chosen separately, and each list only shows templates of its own kind. Leave either on None and that document is not created. The offer still goes out, and the candidate sees the terms without it. A template marked as your default shows "(Default)" beside its name, but nothing is chosen for you.
Offer email template: the email the candidate receives. It starts on the first offer email in the list and you can change it. If your organisation has no offer email, a built-in one is sent instead.
Offer type: only shown once your organisation has offer types. Choosing one fills in that type's default letter and contract, switches on automatic onboarding if the type asks for it, and selects its onboarding template. Anything you had already picked by hand is kept unless the type has its own default for that field.
Auto-start onboarding on acceptance: only shown when onboarding is switched on for your organisation. Turn it on and an Onboarding template list appears. You must choose one before you can send. The candidate's application must also be at an offer or hired stage, otherwise the offer is refused.
Salary (required, greater than zero) and Period (Annual, Monthly or Hourly).
Start Date: required, and it cannot be in the past ("Start date must be today or later"). For an offer type marked as provisional it is optional. An offer with no offer type counts as final and needs a start date.
Signing Bonus: leave blank for none.
Holiday Days: starts at 25. Enter whole days from 0 to 366.
Hours per Week: from 0 to 168 with up to two decimal places. If you type a value outside that range or with too many decimals, it is corrected when you leave the field and a short hint shows what changed, for example "Adjusted to maximum (168 hours/week)".
Expires In (days): starts at 7. Enter whole days from 1 to 365. The count starts when you send the offer, not when you open the form.
Custom fields: any offer fields your organisation has added. They are always optional. Text fields take free text, and dropdown fields offer the options you set up.
Attachments: see below.

The Send Offer button stays greyed out until the salary is entered, a start date is set where one is required, an onboarding template is chosen if automatic onboarding is on, and the offer email contains the Offer Link merge field (see "Send the offer").

Review and edit before sending

Once you have chosen a template, a Review & edit button appears under it. For the offer letter and the contract it stays greyed out until you enter a salary, because the preview needs the figures. The offer email has its own button and needs no salary.

Each button opens a window with an Edit tab and a Preview tab. Make your changes, check the preview, then select Apply to this send. The button then shows Edited so you can see the text differs from the template. In the letter and contract windows a text colour list offers Black, Blue, Green, Red and Purple. Your changes apply to this offer only and the saved template is not touched. If you choose a different template afterwards, your edits for that document are discarded.

Merge fields in edited text are checked when you send, and an unrecognised one stops the send and names the field.

Attach files

Select Add attachment to attach PDF, Word, Excel, PNG or JPG files, up to 25 MB each and 5 files in total. Use Remove attachment beside a file to take it off. Attachments travel with the offer email only. They are not part of the letter or contract and do not appear on the candidate's offer page.

You will see one of these messages if a file is not accepted: "You can attach up to 5 files.", "[file name] is too large. Maximum is 25 MB." or "[file name] is not a supported file type. Allowed: PDF, Word, Excel, PNG, JPG."

If the candidate already has an offer for this job

Recruit checks for an offer on the same job that has been sent and is still waiting for a reply. If there is one, an Active offer already exists window opens with three choices.

Send additional offer: the new offer goes out and the earlier one stays open. The candidate now has two live offers.
Supersede existing offer: the new offer goes out and the earlier one is marked Superseded. Its link then shows the candidate "This offer is no longer available".
Cancel: nothing is sent and the draft offer created a moment ago is deleted.

Attachments are only included on the first attempt. If you choose either send option in this window, the offer goes out without them. To send attachments with a replacement, withdraw the earlier offer first and then send the new one.

Send the offer

Select Send Offer. A confirmation, Offer Sent, appears and the form closes. Sending does the following.

The offer letter and contract are filled in with the candidate's details and saved with the offer.
The candidate is emailed the offer, with any attachments. If your organisation has the SMS add-on and the candidate has a valid mobile number, they also get a text message with the link.
The candidate moves to the Offer stage of the job's pipeline, if the pipeline has one. If it has none, the candidate stays where they are.

The email must contain the Offer Link merge field. If the offer email, or your edited version of it, leaves the field out, Send Offer is greyed out and "Add the Offer Link merge field to this email before sending." appears under the email. A web address pasted into the text does not count. It has to be the Offer Link merge field. If the check is somehow bypassed, you see "Offer not sent" with an explanation that the email has no working link. Nothing is created, emailed or moved.

If your account is not live yet, you first see This account is not live yet. Select Send anyway to send a real message to the candidate. Cancel to send nothing.

If something else goes wrong you see Failed to Send, sometimes with a reason such as an out of range value. An unrecognised merge field in an edited letter, contract or email, or a document too large to turn into a PDF, is refused before anything is saved, so no offer is left behind. Fix the problem and send again from the form. If a failure happens after the offer has been created, for example while it is being sent, a Draft can stay in Offer History. A draft is never sent to the candidate. Send again from the form, which creates a fresh offer.

What the candidate receives

The email comes from your offer email template. Its subject is the one you set on the template, or "Offer of Employment" followed by the job title if the built-in email is used ("Provisional Offer" for provisional types). The link opens the offer page, which shows the position, compensation, key dates, and the letter and contract if you attached them. The candidate accepts with a signature or declines, optionally giving a reason. "Writing offer letters and contracts" covers this page in detail.

In the last 24 hours before the offer expires, the candidate is sent an Offer Expiring Reminder email, unless that reminder automation has been switched off for your organisation.

If the email does not reach the candidate

The offer still counts as sent and the candidate still moves stage, even when the email is not delivered. Offer emails are not delivered to an address that has hard bounced or complained, or to a candidate who has unsubscribed.

Open the candidate's Communications tab. The offer email shows a status of Failed. Hover over the status to see the reason, such as "Recipient address is suppressed (bounced or complained)" or "Recipient had unsubscribed".

For a mistyped address, select Resend on that row, correct the address under Recipient and select Resend again. When the corrected email goes out, the address on the candidate's record is updated. For an address blocked after a bounce that is now working, go to Settings > Email Suppressions and select Lift on the address. System Admin and HR users can open this page. A candidate who withdrew consent cannot be lifted here.

Withdraw an offer

You can withdraw an offer while its status is Sent. Accepted, declined and expired offers cannot be withdrawn.

On the candidate's Offers tab, find the offer and select Withdraw offer.
Edit the Subject (up to 200 characters) and the Message (up to 10,000 characters). They start as "Your offer has been withdrawn" and a standard note. Neither can be empty.
Select Withdraw offer to confirm.

The candidate is emailed your message and the offer shows Withdrawn with the date and your message. Their link stops working as an offer and shows "This offer has been withdrawn." This cannot be undone. To make a new offer, send one from the form again.

Where to see the result

The Offers tab lists the offers for the application you have selected as cards, each with a status badge: Draft, Sent, Accepted, Declined, Expired, Superseded or Withdrawn. A card shows the salary, offer type, start date, bonus, holiday, hours, custom field values and, while the offer is sent, the expiry date. If the candidate has other applications, switch to them to see their offers.

Accepted: the date and the candidate's signature show on the card, and Download signed contract PDF appears. If the download fails, the message tells you why. The person who created the offer and the job's hiring managers are emailed, unless they have turned that notification off.
Declined: the date and any reason the candidate gave show on the card. Nobody is emailed, so check the tab.
Expired: an offer past its expiry date keeps showing Sent until the candidate next opens the link. At that point they see "Offer Expired" and the status changes.

The offer email and the withdrawal email both appear on the Communications tab.