Generate offers for candidates

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External

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Article

When you’re ready to extend an offer to a candidate you can use Gem to automatically generate an offer letter, which you can then send to the candidate for e-signature using our Docusign integration. This article covers how to generate, replace and revoke offers, and how to understand the various offer statuses.

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See Gem ATS: Send offers to candidates for details of how to send e-signature requests via Docusign once offers have been created.

Requirements

Your team uses Gem ATS.
You’re set as a Hiring Manager or Recruiter on the job, or are an Admin in your Gem account. See our Gem ATS permissions article for more details.

NOTE: If you’re under our Free For Startups program, you will be limited to sending 10 e-signature requests per year.

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This article assumes that you already have an offer template created (in .docx format). If you haven’t yet created an offer template, see our Gem ATS: Configure offer admin settings article for details of how to do that.

Move a candidate to the Offer stage

To generate an offer, you first need to ensure the candidate is in the Offer stage. There are two ways to do this:

Find the candidate in a job’s Talent pipeline, then drag and drop their card into the Offer stage.

A job’s ‘Talent pipeline’, showing a candidate being moved from the ‘Onsite’ stage into the ‘Offer’ stage.

Go to the candidate’s profile, then use the → Move to Offer stage selector within the application section.

A candidate’s application, with the ‘Move to offer’ button highlighted.

Once you’ve moved the candidate into the Offer stage you’ll see that their status changes to Needs offer creation. See the Offer statuses section below for more information about statuses.

Additionally, the Needs offer creation SLA begins at the point that you move the candidate into the Offer stage. If you don’t create an offer within the SLA time frame, the candidate’s status will turn red to show that the SLA has been missed, and you will receive an email notification confirming that the candidate is past SLA.

Generate an offer

Once the candidate is in the Offer stage, the next step is to generate an offer.

With the candidate’s profile open, go to the Offer stage of their application and select the + Generate offer button

The ‘Offer’ stage of a candidate’s application, with the ‘+ Generate offer’ button highlighted.

This opens a Create offer pop-up where you can choose which offer template you want to use for this offer from the Template drop-down. If you set a default offer template when creating the job, that will apply here automatically.

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We recommend always using offer templates, but it’s not required.

Any fields which will require re-approval if edited at a later date will display on this pop-up with a circular arrow icon (⟳) against them.
After selecting a template, any fields which appear in the offer template will display on this pop-up with a token icon ({ }) against them. This is to show that whatever is entered into these fields will be populated in the offer letter. Fields marked with either a token icon or an asterisk are required fields that need completing before you can create the offer.

Field	Description
Candidate start date	The date on which the candidate will start this job.
Offer expiration date	The date by which this offer will expire.
Compensation fields	Select each field to add or update compensation details for this offer. The list of fields available in this section, along with their required status, varies depending on your Jobs Admin settings. Fields which may be included in this section: • Base pay • Bonus pay • Equity • Signing bonus NOTE: The currency field is automatically set based on the location(s) selected for this job. You can update the currency by selecting the currency drop-down next to the numerical payment field.
Company signatories	Adding a signatory inserts a Name, Email address and Job title field, to be populated with the details of an authorized representative of your company empowered to legally sign this offer. You can add multiple signatories. If an offer template includes one or more company signatories, these fields will be automatically inserted, otherwise you can insert them manually.
Custom fields	Any custom fields added by your admins in your Offers Admin settings are listed here, along with their required status.

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If an offer approval process has been set up for this job, you can select the Save & close button at any time to save a draft of the offer. This closes the Edit offer pop-up and allows you to do other work in Gem and then return to the offer at a later date. Use the Revise offer button to continue working on the offer.

If no offer approval processes apply for this job, select the Save & close button to attach the completed offer to the candidate’s profile in Gem.
If an offer approval process has been set up for this job, select the Next → button to proceed to the Edit offer section of the pop-up.

From here you can see the details of the approval process, and all of the offer details - including any custom fields that you populated on the previous step.
Add a note to the approver(s) if needed, then select the Send for approval button.

With that done, the offer will now display under the Offer stage of the candidate’s application.

The ‘Offer’ stage of a candidate’s application, showing a newly-created offer.

From here you can see all of the details of the offer letter, and you also have the option to download either the offer letter or - if you need to be able to send information about the candidate to teams who don’t use Gem - the entire offer packet. Note that if you have an offer approval set up, you won’t be able to download the offer letter until the approval process has been completed. See our Gem ATS: Offer approvals article for more details.

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If you’re using our Docusign integration, the next step is to send an e-signature request. For details of how to do this, see Gem ATS: Send offers to candidates.

With the offer generated, the candidate’s status will change to either Offer needs to be sent or, if you have any offer approvals set up, to Needs offer approval.

In addition, the Offer needs to be sent SLA begins at the point that you create the offer. If you haven’t sent an e-signature request within the SLA time frame, the candidate’s status will turn red to show that the SLA has been missed, and you will receive an email notification confirming that the candidate is past SLA.

Revise an offer

Once you’ve created an offer, if you need to update it and replace the existing offer letter you can use the Revise offer function. Depending on your approval settings, revising an offer may require re-approval.

You can revise an offer if it has been created but an e-signature request hasn’t yet been sent. including if the original offer has expired. For example, if an offer has expired and you want to generate a new version that’s functionally the same except for a later start date, you can revise the offer and just update the Offer expiration date field.

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If you have already sent an offer via an e-signature request, the Revise offer function will no longer be available. Instead, you can either generate a replacement offer or revoke the offer entirely. See Gem ATS: Send offers to candidates for details of how to use those functions.

Here are the steps to follow in order to revise an offer:

Navigate to the Offer stage in the candidate’s application.
Select the Revise offer button (next to the Download offer packet and Send e-signature request buttons).

The ‘Offer’ section of a candidate’s application, with the ‘Revise offer’ button highlighted.

This will open the Edit offer pop-up, where you can amend any of the original offer’s fields, or select a different template to use.
When you’re ready, select the Save & close button to generate the revised offer.

The offer letter will now display against the Offer stage in the same way as when it was originally created, and you can proceed to send an e-signature request when ready.

Offer statuses

You can track the status of an offer in various places, including the Candidates page, a candidate’s application details page, and the Talent pipeline view in a job’s dashboard.

The potential statuses are as follows.

Status	Description
Needs offer creation	The candidate has been moved to the Offer stage but does not yet have an offer letter.
Offer needs to be sent	An offer letter has been uploaded to Gem but has not yet been sent for e-signature.
Offer sent	The e-signature request has been sent to the candidate.
Offer viewed	The candidate has opened the Docusign link and viewed the offer PDF.
Offer expires soon	The offer will expire in less than 48 hours.
Offer expired	The offer was sent but has since expired (based on the expiration date set when it was sent).
Offer accepted	The candidate has accepted the offer by completing the e-signature request in Docusign.

The background colour of the offer status is determined by its place within the SLA timeframe:

Green: Within target.
Yellow: Approaching target (i.e. has passed the ‘Show warning after’ time frame for the SLA).
Red: Missed target.

See Talent pipeline status and SLA indicators for more information about SLAs in Gem.

Next steps

Once you have generated an offer, the next step is to send the offer to the candidate for e-signature, via Gem’s integration with Docusign. Head over to our Gem ATS: Send offers to candidates article for details of:

Sending e-signature requests;
Generating replacement offers;
Revoking offers.