Draft and approve an offer

What this achieves

An offer is drafted against a candidate’s application, carrying the job details and the compensation you intend to pay. It goes through approval before it can be sent, so the terms are checked while they are still internal.

Required role: Administrator.

Steps

Go to Recruiting → Offers and select New offer.
Under Application, choose the Requisition, then the Application the offer is for.
Under Job, check the Job title, Department, Grade, and Employment type, and set the Start date.
Under Compensation, set the Base salary, Currency, and Pay frequency, plus any Signing bonus or equity.
Under Template, choose the Offer template and set Expiration (days).
Check the Preview — this is the letter the candidate will read.
Select Create draft offer.
On the draft, select Submit for Approval.
The approver opens the offer and selects Approve.

Example: HC Corp drafts an offer for its Senior Software Engineer vacancy at £72,000 base, paid monthly in GBP, starting 1 October 2026, with a 14-day expiry.

The offer is tied to an application

You choose a requisition first, then one of its applications. That is what connects the offer to the candidate, the role, and the requisition it is filling.

An offer therefore cannot be made to someone who has not applied. If you are hiring somebody you sourced yourself, they need an application against the requisition before an offer can be drafted for them.

Compensation

Option	Description
Base salary	The salary being offered.
Currency	The currency it is paid in.
Pay frequency	Annual, monthly, or hourly. This is what the base salary figure means.
Signing bonus	A one-off payment on joining, where you are offering one.
Equity shares and equity type	Where equity forms part of the offer.

Set the pay frequency deliberately. The base salary figure is read against it, and a monthly figure entered as annual is the kind of mistake that reaches a candidate in writing.

These figures follow the person into their employment record when the offer is accepted and converted, so they are not only a negotiating position — they become what the company pays.

Approval

An offer moves through defined states, and it cannot be sent until it has been approved.

Option	Description
Draft	Being written. Nothing is visible to the candidate.
Pending approval	Submitted, waiting for a decision.
Approved	Cleared to be sent.
Sent	With the candidate.
Accepted	The candidate accepted.
Declined	The candidate declined.
Withdrawn	Pulled back by you.
Expired	The offer period ran out.

The offer keeps an Approval history, so who cleared which terms is on the record rather than in somebody’s memory.

Example: at HC Corp the recruiter drafts the offer and Daniel Okonkwo in Finance approves it, because the base salary sits at the top of the advertised range.

An offer can be withdrawn while it is pending approval, approved, or already sent. Withdrawing an offer a candidate has already read is a conversation as well as a status change.

What happens next

An approved offer is ready to send. Sending produces the link the candidate uses to read and respond to it, and the offer’s status then tracks their answer.