Offer lifecycle

What each offer status means, what moves an offer from one status to the next, who can trigger it, and what the candidate and your team see along the way.

Every offer in Recruit has one of seven statuses: Draft, Sent, Accepted, Declined, Expired, Withdrawn or Superseded. An offer starts as a draft, becomes Sent when you send it, and then ends in exactly one of the other five. Once it reaches one of those, it never changes again. To make a new offer you create a new one. This article covers each status, what triggers it, the emails that go out, and what happens to the candidate's application.

Who can do what

System Admin and HR users can send, withdraw and supersede offers. Other roles cannot make these changes. Candidates trigger the other transitions themselves from the link in their email: accepting, declining and, in one narrow case, expiry.

You manage offers on the Offers tab of a candidate's profile. The list there is called Offer History and shows one card per offer with a status badge. It lists the offers for the application you have selected at the top of the profile. If the candidate has applied to more than one job, use Switch application to see the others. When an application has no offers you see "No offers for this application yet."

The statuses at a glance

Only a Draft can be sent. Only a Sent offer can be accepted, declined, withdrawn, superseded or expire. Accepted, Declined, Expired, Withdrawn and Superseded are final.

Draft

A draft is an offer that has been saved but not sent. The Send Offer form creates the draft first and then sends it, so a draft normally lasts a fraction of a second.

If the offer is refused because of an unrecognised merge field in an edited document or an oversized document, nothing is saved. If a failure happens after the offer has been created, for example while it is being sent, the draft can stay behind and appears in Offer History with a Draft badge. Nothing is sent to the candidate for a draft and the card has no buttons. Fix the problem and start again with New Offer, which creates a fresh offer. If you cancel out of the Active offer already exists window (see below), the draft is deleted automatically.

Sent

Selecting Send Offer does the following, in this order.

1. The letter and contract are filled in with the candidate's details and saved on the offer. Later edits to the templates do not change them.
2. The offer becomes Sent, and the expiry time is set.
3. The candidate is moved to the Offer stage of the job's pipeline, if the pipeline has one.
4. The candidate is emailed the offer with a link to their offer page. Attachments you added travel with this email. 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.

Nobody else is emailed when an offer is sent. The offer email is recorded on the candidate's Communications tab. If the email does not reach the candidate, for example because the address has bounced, the offer still shows as Sent and the candidate is still moved to the Offer stage. Check the Communications tab for a failed status. "Making an offer" covers the form and delivery problems in full.

What the candidate sees

The link in the email opens an offer page that needs no login. What it shows depends on the status.

• Sent, not yet expired. A page titled Offer of Employment (or Provisional Offer for a provisional offer type) with the position, compensation and important dates, including Offer Expires. Below that are the Offer Letter and Contract if you attached them, each with a Download PDF button. To respond, the candidate draws or types a signature and then selects Accept Offer, which stays disabled until a signature is entered. Decline Offer opens a window with an optional reason.
• Accepted. On the moment of acceptance, Congratulations! and a short thank-you. When they return to the link later, Offer Accepted with the documents and their signature, and the PDFs stay available to download.
• Declined. Offer Declined, with no documents shown.
• Past the expiry time. The offer details stay visible with an Offer Expired banner reading "This offer expired on" followed by the date, and the Accept and Decline buttons are gone.
• Withdrawn. "This offer has been withdrawn." and a line saying the offer is no longer available.
• Superseded. "This offer is no longer available" and a line saying it has been replaced by a newer one.

A candidate cannot respond twice. A second attempt, from another browser tab for example, is refused with a message that the offer has already been responded to or has expired.

Accepted

Acceptance happens only through the candidate's link. You cannot mark an offer as accepted on their behalf. When the candidate accepts:

• The offer becomes Accepted and the response time and signature are saved.
• The signature is added to the contract PDF with the date and time signed. The offer letter PDF is not signed.
• The candidate is emailed a confirmation with a link back to their documents. Your Offer Accepted email template is used if you have one, and a built-in message is sent if not.
• The person who created the offer and the job's hiring managers are emailed that the candidate accepted, unless they have switched off the Offer accepted notification in their own notification settings. The email does not include a link, so open the candidate's Offers tab to see the offer. If the candidate's identity is hidden from someone, the email shows the masked name.
• If the offer was set to start onboarding automatically, onboarding starts (see below).

The offer card then shows Accepted with the date, and Download signed contract PDF appears. System Admin and HR users can use it. It works when the offer has a contract document. If the download fails, the message tells you why.

If an acceptance was not recorded

Occasionally a candidate signs an offer and the acceptance still fails to be recorded, for example when the signature upload and the status change collide. Offer History then shows a warning on that offer card: "The candidate signed this offer on (date), but the acceptance was not recorded." System Admin and HR users see two actions on the card.

• Complete acceptance records the acceptance as of the moment the candidate signed. The offer is marked Accepted from that date and the candidate is sent their confirmation email. If the offer is already Accepted, it only attaches the signature and sends no emails.
• Void attempt deletes the uploaded signature and leaves the offer unchanged. The candidate is not notified.

If the offer is now Declined, Withdrawn or Superseded, the acceptance cannot be completed and only Void attempt is offered. Each action asks you to confirm first.

Declined

When the candidate declines, the offer becomes Declined and any reason they gave (up to 2,000 characters) shows on the card under Decline reason with the date. Recruit sends no email or notification when an offer is declined, to the candidate or to your team. Check the Offers tab, or the Offers report, to find out.

Expiry

Expires In (days) on the Send Offer form starts at 7 and accepts whole days from 1 to 365. The count starts when you send, not when you open the form. The expiry is exact to the minute: an offer sent at 3pm with 7 days expires at 3pm seven days later, although the candidate's page shows the date only.

Recruit does not switch offers to Expired on a schedule. An offer past its expiry time keeps the status Sent in Offer History, and the report still counts it as pending, until the candidate opens a page they loaded before expiry and tries to accept or decline it. At that point the response is refused with "This offer has expired" and the offer becomes Expired. A candidate who opens the link for the first time after expiry sees the expired banner and cannot respond, so the status in your Offer History stays Sent. In practice, treat any Sent offer whose date has passed as lapsed. Two things follow.

• The Expires date on a card only shows while the status is Sent.
• If you make a new offer for the same job, a lapsed Sent offer still counts as an active one and the Active offer already exists window appears. Choose Supersede existing offer to close it off. You can also withdraw it first.

There is no way to reopen or extend an expired offer. Send a new one, with a longer Expires In (days) if needed.

The expiry reminder

Every four hours Recruit looks for Sent offers due to expire within the next 24 hours and sends each one a reminder, once. The candidate gets the Offer Expiring Reminder email, and a text message as well if your organisation has the SMS add-on and the candidate has a valid mobile number. The text is recorded on the candidate's Communications tab with a status, like other text messages. The timing is fixed and cannot be changed.

Reminders stop for an offer as soon as it leaves Sent, so a candidate who has accepted, declined or been withdrawn gets none. System Admin and HR users can turn the reminder off under Settings, then Reminders, using the switch beside Offer Expiring Reminder. It is on by default. The reminder's text message content can be chosen under Settings, then Reminder Automations.

Withdrawing an offer

You can withdraw an offer only while its status is Sent, including a Sent offer that has lapsed. Accepted, declined, expired and superseded offers cannot be withdrawn.

1. Open the candidate's profile and select the Offers tab.
2. Find the Sent offer and select Withdraw offer.
3. Edit the Subject (up to 200 characters) and the Message (up to 10,000 characters) if you want to. They start as "Your offer has been withdrawn" and a standard note, and neither can be left empty.
4. Select Withdraw offer to confirm. The toast reads Offer withdrawn.

The candidate is emailed your subject and message, and the email is recorded on the Communications tab. No text message is sent. The offer card shows the withdrawal date and your message. The candidate's link now shows the withdrawn page and the PDF downloads stop working. Withdrawing cannot be undone, and it does not move the candidate to a different pipeline stage.

Sending a second offer for the same job

When you send an offer and the candidate already has a Sent offer for the same job, an Active offer already exists window opens with three choices.

• Send additional offer: the new offer goes out and the earlier one stays Sent. The candidate has two live offers, and accepting one does not close the other. Withdraw it yourself if it should not stay open.
• Supersede existing offer: the new offer goes out and every earlier Sent offer for that job becomes Superseded. Its link shows the candidate the "no longer available" page.
• Cancel: nothing is sent and the draft is deleted.

Recruit sends no email to the candidate about the superseded offer. They receive only the email for the new one. If you want to explain the change, withdraw the earlier offer first and edit the withdrawal message. Attachments are not included when you send from this window, so to send a replacement with attachments, withdraw the earlier offer first and then make the new one. Offers for different jobs never affect each other. Drafts, and offers that are already Accepted, Declined, Expired or Withdrawn, are not superseded.

What happens to the application

Only sending an offer touches the pipeline: it moves the candidate to the Offer stage, unless the pipeline has no Offer stage or the candidate is already there. Nothing else in the lifecycle moves the candidate or changes the application. Accepting does not move the candidate to Hired. Move them yourself. Declining, expiring, withdrawing and superseding do not reject the application, move it back a stage or send a rejection email. After a decline, expiry or withdrawal, decide what to do with the application and move or reject the candidate as you normally would.

Starting onboarding automatically

If Auto-start onboarding on acceptance was switched on when the offer was sent, onboarding begins the moment the candidate accepts. The template used is the copy taken when the offer was sent. The offer card shows "Auto-starts onboarding:" followed by the template name. Onboarding started this way records "Started onboarding (auto, on offer acceptance)" by System, and the candidate gets the onboarding welcome email with their link, as they would if onboarding were started by hand. The job's hiring manager is also notified.

Starting is skipped without any message if onboarding has been switched off for your organisation since the offer was sent, if the application is no longer at an Offer or Hired stage, or if an onboarding is already running for that application. If a candidate accepts and nothing starts, open the Onboarding tab and start it by hand. "Starting onboarding for a hired candidate" explains how.

Tracking offers

On a candidate's Offers tab, each card shows the salary, status, offer type, key terms, the dates sent, accepted or declined, any decline reason or withdrawal message, custom field values and the signature.

For offers across all your jobs, open Reports and select the Offers tab. System Admin, HR and Member users can open it, and Members only see jobs they have access to. You can filter by date range, which applies to when each offer was made. It shows:

• Total Offers: every offer in the range, whatever its status, including drafts.
• Accepted and Declined.
• Pending: offers with the status Sent, which includes lapsed offers that have not been marked Expired.
• Accept Rate: accepted divided by accepted, declined and pending, as a whole percentage. Drafts, expired, withdrawn and superseded offers are left out of this figure.

Below the figures are Offers by Job, with totals and average salary per job, and Recent Offers, the ten most recent. Because lapsed offers count as Pending, check Offer History for old Sent offers if the pending figure looks too high. "Sourcing and offers reports" covers the reports area more widely.