How to offer someone a job: A step-by-step guide for employers

You have run a good process, the panel agrees on the candidate and everyone assumes the hard part is over. Then the offer takes a week to get signed off, the email goes out with the wrong start date and the candidate, who has been interviewing elsewhere the whole time, accepts another role two days before your letter reaches them.

The offer stage is where more hires are lost than any other point in recruitment, and it is the stage most businesses put the least thought into.

In this blog, we explain what making a job offer involves, why the way you do it matters, how to offer someone a job step by step, what to include in the written offer and how to handle the two most common complications: a request for more money and a decline.

How do you offer someone a job?

To offer someone a job, you will need to carry out the following:

• Agree the package internally

• Call the candidate to make a verbal offer

• Send a written offer letter within 24 to 48 hours

This written offer letter will need to confirm the job title, salary, start date, hours, location, benefits, probation period and any conditions such as references or right-to-work checks. 

Set a clear response deadline, stay in touch while the candidate decides, and follow acceptance with the formal contract and onboarding plan.

Both the verbal offer and the candidate's verbal acceptance can be legally binding in the UK, so the details you give on the phone should be the details that appear in writing.

Why does the way you make a job offer matter?

An offer looks like a formality after the effort of interviewing. Candidates do not experience it that way, and neither does your hiring outcome.

The offer stage is where candidates are lost

Strong candidates are usually running more than one process. A slow or vague offer hands your competitors the time they need. We regularly see employers lose their preferred candidate not because the package was wrong but because agreeing it internally took a week, and someone else moved in the gap.

Read more: Why good candidates are dropping out of your hiring process

A verbal offer is a real offer

In the UK, a job offer accepted verbally can form a binding contract, and withdrawing it afterwards can carry legal risk. That cuts both ways. It means you should only make the call once the package is signed off, and it means what you say on the phone needs to match what follows in writing.

The offer sets the tone for onboarding

The candidate's experience of being offered the role is their first experience of being your employee. A warm, well-organised offer tells them they made the right choice. A confused one plants the first seed of doubt, and doubt is what counter-offers from their current employer grow in.

Read more: How to create an offer that gets accepted by top candidates

How to offer someone a job step by step

A good offer process can run from decision to signed acceptance inside a week. These are the steps.

Step 1: Agree the full package before you pick up the phone

Confirm the salary, any bonus or commission, holiday, pension, working pattern, location, benefits, probation length and start date window internally first, and get sign-off from whoever needs to approve it.

Making a verbal offer that is later revised downwards is one of the fastest ways to lose a candidate.

If you have salary bands in place, this step takes minutes. If every offer needs a fresh approval loop, that loop is where your speed disappears.

Read more: How to set salary bands for your business

Step 2: Move within 48 hours of the final interview

Decide quickly. Two working days from final interview to verbal offer is a strong target for most roles.

If you need longer, tell the candidate when they will hear from you and stick to it. Silence after a final interview is read as a no, and candidates move on.

Read more: Why a lengthy hiring process is costing you top talent

Step 3: Make the verbal offer by phone

Call the candidate personally, ideally the hiring manager rather than HR. Open with the news, then cover the essentials: job title, salary, start date and any conditions. Keep it warm and brief, and give them room to react.

Something like:

"I'm delighted to say we'd like to offer you the role of marketing manager. The salary is £48,000, with the benefits we discussed, and we'd be looking at a start in early November subject to your notice. The offer is conditional on references and right-to-work checks, which are standard. I'll get everything over to you in writing today. How does that sound?"

Ask if they have questions and whether there is anything else you should know, such as booked annual leave or another process they are in. Tell them exactly when the written offer will arrive.

Step 4: Send the written offer within 24 to 48 hours

The written offer confirms what you said and gives the candidate something they can review, compare with other offers and sign. Send it the same day if you can. Every day between the call and the letter is a day the offer feels less real.

Your written offer should include:

• Job title

• Reporting line

• Employment type

• Salary and pay frequency

• Bonus or commission terms

• Hours and working pattern

• Location and any hybrid working arrangement

• Holiday entitlement

• Pension and benefits

• Probation period and how it works

• Notice periods on both sides

• Proposed start date

• Any conditions the offer depends on

• A named contact for any questions

• A date by which you would like a response

Keep the language clear and straightforward. The contract that follows can carry the legal detail. The offer letter should be readable in two minutes and leave the candidate with no unanswered questions about what they are being offered.

Step 5: Make the offer conditional on the right checks

For most roles, the offer should be conditional on satisfactory references and evidence of the right to work in the UK, plus any role-specific checks such as qualifications or a DBS check where the position requires one. State the conditions clearly in the letter.

One point employers sometimes miss: under the Equality Act 2010 you cannot ask about a candidate's health or disability before making an offer, with limited exceptions. Any health questionnaire or occupational health referral belongs after the conditional offer, not before it.

Step 6: Set a response deadline and stay in touch

Give the candidate a reasonable window to decide, usually three to five working days, and make it clear you are available for questions at that time. Then check in once, part way through, rather than going quiet.

A short "just checking you have everything you need" message keeps the relationship warm without applying pressure.

If they ask for a little more time, grant it once. Candidates weighing two offers often just need a day or two, and pressuring them rarely produces a yes you can rely on.

Step 7: Handle any negotiation calmly

Some candidates will come back asking for more, on salary or something else. This is normal and not a sign of a problem. Ask what sits behind the request, check it against your band and your internal pay, and respond within a day or two with a clear answer, whether that is yes, a revised figure or a firm no with reasons.

Read more: What to do when a candidate asks for more money

Step 8: Confirm acceptance and start onboarding

Once the candidate accepts, acknowledge it the same day, send the contract and start the onboarding process immediately. Confirm the start date in writing, agree what happens in the first week and keep in touch through their notice period. The gap between acceptance and day one is where counter-offers land, and regular contact is your best defence.

What if the candidate declines the offer?

A decline is disappointing, but how you handle it shapes your reputation and sometimes your next hire.

Ask why, and listen

Thank them, ask what drove the decision and take the answer seriously. If it was salary, that is data for your next offer. If it was process speed, culture or something they saw during interviews, that is information you cannot get any other way.

Leave the door open

Candidates who decline for a competing offer sometimes find the other role is not what they expected. A gracious response and a message to keep in touch costs nothing and occasionally brings the person back within six months.

Close the loop with everyone else

Once your chosen candidate has accepted, tell the unsuccessful finalists promptly and with useful feedback. They talk about your business too, and a good rejection experience is one of the cheapest employer brand investments available.

Read more: How to give better candidate feedback

How a recruitment partner helps at offer stage

The offer is where a specialist recruiter earns much of their fee. They know what the candidate is thinking, what else they are considering and what would make them say yes, because they have been talking to them throughout. They can pre-close an offer before you make it, manage any negotiation without it becoming personal and hold the candidate's interest between acceptance and start date.

At Digital Waffle, we manage the offer stage for every role we work on, from benchmarking the package to the final signed contract. Our clients make offers that are already very likely to be accepted, because we have done the work to make sure the number, the timing and the message all land.

Making a job offer well is not complicated, but it does need to be deliberate. Agree the package first, move fast, make the call personally, follow it in writing within a day and stay close to the candidate until they walk through the door. Each step is small. Skipping any of them is how good candidates end up working for someone else.

The employers who secure the people they want are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. They are the ones who treated the offer as the most important conversation in the process and prepared for it properly.

Need support finding and securing top talent? Submit your vacancy and one of our consultants will be in touch to talk through what you need.