A Guide for Employers: How to Write a Job Offer

Written by EFP
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Recruitment can be one of the hardest parts of being an employer as you are never sure who is going to walk through the door. The person who looked perfect on paper is sometimes appalling in the interview and the one who barely scraped into the interview stage can end up stealing the show on the day and demonstrating great charisma and people skills that aren’t as apparent in their written communication.

Once the interview stage has concluded and you know who you want to bring on board, the next stage is writing a job offer to the preferred candidate. This can be quite difficult to know how to do but it is something that is an important part of being an employer. There are a few different ways to offer somebody a job and some essential details to remember, so we have put together this helpful guide to make it easier to know what it is appropriate to include.

What is a Job Offer? 

A job offer is a formal process of telling a candidate that you are selecting them for the role they have applied for. You may have already told this person informally at the end of their job interview that they have been successful, but it is imperative that you also send them a formal offer in the form of an email or letter with all the relevant information included in it.

A job offer doesn’t only tell the successful applicant that they have been offered the job, it also reminds them of the parameters of the role and stipulates the conditions under which you are offering them the position. Typically, employers will ask the applicant to respond formally in writing to the job offer within a certain period of time to say whether they accept or decline what has been proposed.

What to Include in a Job Offer?

As the person making the job offer, it is entirely for you to decide how formal or informal to make it as well as the level of additional information to supply about the role. There are, however, some things that you must include and this will help the candidate to appraise and assess whether they want to accept the role, as described.

These include:

  • Their name
  • Company name and location
  • Role offered
  • Job title
  • Job start date
  • Hours/work schedule (e.g. part-time)
  • Salary and when you will pay it (e.g. once a month)
  • Who they will be reporting to
  • A basic outline of the role, including responsibilities
  • If there are any conditions to the employment (e.g. accepting the terms, a qualification, satisfactory references etc.)
  • How the candidate can accept the role

5 Things to Remember When Offering Someone a Job:

1. Congratulate the Candidate

It is important to congratulate the successful candidate on managing to stand out from all of the other applicants and win the job. It would seem strange not to congratulate them and it is important to help to instill a sense of camaraderie in new work colleagues. 

Tell them that you are looking forward to working with them and welcome them to the company. Being warm and friendly costs nothing and will make a difference in what their first experience of the business is like. First impressions last so this gesture of friendliness may well set the tone of their entire experience at your company, never underestimate the importance of little things like this in determining the company culture going forward.  

2. Start Date

This will often be something that is covered during the interview process but if not, be sure to think about when would be the best time for your new recruit to start. Sometimes a business can need somebody to start straight away to offer assistance during a busy period, and this is especially true of those in delivery and logistics based businesses in the run up to Christmas every year. 

In other cases, you might want to wait until you are starting a new project so that they come in at the beginning of something and are easily integrated into the team at that point.

It is also important to speak to the new employee about when would work best for them as it is quite often necessary to work a three-week notice period if they already have a job.

3. Accepting the Offer

Do you need them to accept the offer by a specific date or in a certain period? If so, make sure that it is obvious to the candidate how they can accept the job offer, when they need to accept it, and what their next steps should be. This may take the form of informally responding to an email saying that they accept, or by sending in some formal documents that are needed by HR to get the process moving. 

4. Phone Calls

Some employers prefer to tell candidates they got the job over the phone, or even in person. If this is the kind of thing that you prefer doing, you should consider whether you will send an email or letter first, before calling them. Some people prefer to speak to the candidate again before making a formal offer, to be sure that it feels right, but the vast majority will send an email or letter and allow the next step of the recruitment process to take its course unimpeded.

5. Salary

By the time you have interviewed the candidate, they should be well aware of the salary and have been appraised of this either at the interview or in the initial job advert. The time for haggling over salary is not at the point of making a formal job offer so it is important to have this squared away early in order to avoid disappointment on either side. 

We hope this article helped you to know how to offer a job and gave you some useful tips. For more employer support and guidance, have a look at our news section.

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