Create an offer template

What this achieves

An offer template is the letter your offers are written from, with the candidate-specific details filled in for you. Writing it once means every offer says the same thing and nobody retypes terms under time pressure.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Recruiting → Templates.
Stay on the Offer Templates tab.
Select New Template.
Enter the Name.
Write the letter in Body HTML, using variables where each candidate’s details belong.
Set the Default expiration (days).
Turn on Default template if this is the letter to use when no other is chosen.
Save.

Variables

The letter fills in each candidate’s details where you place a variable. The panel lists the ones available, including the candidate’s name, the job title, the base salary, and the start date.

Write the letter as a letter and let the variables carry the specifics. A template with the salary typed into it is a template that will one day go out with the wrong number.

Example: HC Corp’s standard letter opens with the candidate’s name, states the job title and base salary from the offer, and gives the start date, so drafting an offer for a Senior Software Engineer at £72,000 needs no editing of the body at all.

Expiration

Default expiration (days) sets how long an offer written from this template stays open. It can be changed on an individual offer.

Choose a period that is fair to think about and short enough to be a decision. Two weeks is a considered answer; two days is pressure, and a month is a role held open while other candidates go elsewhere.

The default template

One template can be marked as the default, and it is used when no template is chosen on a new offer. The list shows which one that is.

Keep the default as your ordinary, most-used letter. Anything unusual — a fixed-term contract, an internship — is better as a separate template chosen deliberately than as an edit to the one everyone gets by default.

Editing and deleting

Templates can be edited, and deleting one asks you to confirm by name.

Editing a template changes what future offers say. Offers already drafted or sent keep the letter they were written with, so correcting a template does not correct a letter already in a candidate’s hands.

What happens next

The template becomes available when drafting an offer, and its expiration period is applied unless you override it. The letter is shown in a preview as you fill in the offer, so you see what the candidate will see before anything is sent.