(This is an excerpt from one of our books 100,000 Successful Hires written, primarily for employers. But if you’re a job seeker, it certainly doesn’t hurt to know the best way for a job offer to be made.)

You would think that the event of making a job offer to a prospective candidate would be an easy, logical one. In fact, it might be a surprise to even think that we would have to address the whole idea. Wrong! Fact is that the actual process of making an offer, once a final candidate has been identified, can be one of the strangest, goofiest parts of the hiring process. One would think it should be the simplest part of the process, but it can mess up a smooth running process very easily.

The final step in the hiring process is making an offer. It can be traumatic for both candidate and employer. This is the time for people to make commitments. Up to this point, every interaction between candidate and employer is speculative. There is minimal risk on each person’s part. True, there has been a lot of effort on the part of both candidate and employer to interview each other, but there’s no commitment, therefore no risk, until an offer is made.

There is a final twinge of fear on the part of the employer and candidate when making an offer. Employers often become alarmingly fearful that their offer will be rejected, that the candidate they’ve courted for weeks and who was interviewed by everyone they could think of will refuse their offer. The candidate who has been trying to get an offer, but also evaluating as best he or she can the firm they are interviewing with, gets scared. They fear that they won’t get an offer and, if they do, they’re anxious about what it might be. This step in the process is difficult for everyone.

The offer step in the hiring process should be a simple and natural progression of the interviewing process, yet it gets confusing when people either lose sight of its importance or overreact to it. In fact, if the interviewing process is done correctly, the offer step should be easy.

The most successful hiring authorities have a pre-offer conversation with a candidate. This can be a face-to-face meeting or a telephone conversation. The hiring authority explains to the candidate that he or she would like to discuss what an offer would look like and also any details about the job that haven’t been discussed in the interviewing process.

If the hiring authority hasn’t done it already throughout the interviewing process, this is the time that he or she should be selling the candidate on the job and the opportunity. This conversation is the candidate’s opportunity to ask any questions he or she might have, but it also provides an opportunity to the hiring authority to find out the answers to any questions he or she may not have answered. It should be a friendly, calm, and open conversation.

In this conversation, the best hiring authorities get a real good indication as to whether or not the candidate will accept the job. In fact, the best hiring authorities actually qualify the candidate in this conversation. They discuss every aspect of the job offer. They answer all the candidate’s questions. Then, they simply ask the hard question of the candidate, “I’m ready to get together for a formal meeting to offer you the job. Can you see any reason that you wouldn’t accept it?”
If for some reason the candidate hesitates or gives noncommittal answers like “Well, when I see the offer in writing, I’ll know better,” or “I’d have to think about it,” or anything that isn’t a positive like “I would accept it,” then the best hiring authorities may rethink making the offer. If they get these kinds of answers, they simply ask a candidate what they’re thinking or what might stand in the way in order to find out why they are hesitant. It never hurts to be blunt and ask, “Why are you hesitating? I don’t want to make an offer unless I know it’s going to be accepted.”
It’s hard to give a blanket strategy for all things that can come up at this point of the process. The best hiring authorities are prepared for just about anything and they always have the salvation of backup candidates. They always have several other people in the queue in case their #1 candidate falters.
The formal offer

If the conversation goes well, the best hiring authorities meet with candidates as soon as possible. They know that any candidate they might want will be wanted by others. Most importantly, the longer they put off this meeting after the above conversation the more indecisive they appear.
We can’t tell you the number of opportunities to hire a good candidate that have been lost because the hiring authority felt the job offer was simply a formality and the candidate was going to accept the job and postpone the formal meeting because regular business got in the way. They assumed a done deal, prolonged the time to formally meet, made it appear that the meeting wasn’t all that important, and lost the candidate. (We once had a hiring authority who postponed the offer meeting for two weeks so she could go on vacation. Lots of love, huh?)

The best hiring authorities have a formal offer written for the candidate. When they meet to discuss the offer in detail, they assume the candidate is going to have lots of questions and have prepared the answers to the questions the candidate had in the pre-offer phone call. The best hiring authorities take as much time in this meeting as they need to and are patient with any questions or discussions the candidate may have. They realize how important this meeting is to both of them.

Discussing a formal offer over the phone is nowhere near as effective as meeting face-to-face. It simply doesn’t have the same emotional camaraderie and the “we care about you” feeling. If a company’s HR department has to issue the offer letter, the best hiring authorities will still meet with the candidate and discuss the offer in detail. The best hiring authorities do not let anyone in the company discuss the offer with the candidate except themselves. They leave nothing to chance.

If everything has been done correctly 75 percent of the time, the best hiring authorities will get the candidate to execute an offer letter and set a start date during this meeting. However, if the candidate asks, “When do I need to let you know?” the best hiring authorities will explain to a candidate that they need to hear from them within 24 hours about their decision. Maybe under extenuating circumstances they may offer a little more time, such as if the candidate is traveling and needs to discuss it with their spouse, but 99 percent of the time the best hiring authorities tell the candidate they need to know within one day.

The best hiring authorities already have a feel for what the candidate is going to do. The best hiring authorities know that a decisive candidate is going to be able to decide quickly. Anything beyond 24 hours usually indicates that the candidate is going to use the offer to leverage another one, and the best hiring authorities don’t seem to tolerate much of this.
If the candidate insists on more than 24-hours, the best hiring authorities explain that they can’t do that, that they have other candidates they are going to pursue. They reinterate that they need to know within 24 hours. If a candidate cannot do that, the best hiring authorities explain to the candidate that they will therefore pursue the next candidate. End of story! The candidate is either in or out. It’s that simple.

By the way, if the formal offer is written after this meeting, the best hiring authorities review it to be sure that it’s consistent with what was discussed. 15 percent of the time, when offer letters are sent after a formal offer discussion, especially when they are written by the HR department in some far-off city, they aren’t the same as what was discussed in the offer meeting. It’s a quick and easy way to lose an excellent candidate

The best hiring authorities set a start date as soon as possible. They know that the further out the start date is from when the offer is accepted, the more things can happen that are adverse to the situation.

The best hiring authorities never assume anything in the offer meetings. If the candidate accepts the job and sets the start date, they simply prepare themselves for that. If the candidate, for some reason, turns the job down or claims that they can’t decide within the 24-hour time limit, the best hiring authorities are gracious and unemotional about it. Getting upset or angry with a candidate who turns the job down is unwise. The best hiring authorities know that they may try to recruit a candidate again somewhere down the line. They know that it pays to always be nice.

No matter what level of position, from the CEO on down, 15 percent of the time a candidate who has accepted an offer is going to call and renege. Sometimes they will do it with grace and style long before the start date. Unfortunately, they sometimes just plain don’t show up with no notice at all. (We agree that’s totally pathetic!)

The best hiring authorities know this kind of thing might happen. One of the ways they prepare themselves for this possibility is to explain to the #2 and maybe the #3 candidates, “We’ve offered the position to another candidate and it’s been accepted. It was a very close decision and you were certainly an extremely good candidate. We did what we thought was best for our organization. The new hire is supposed to start on (date). We expect everything to go well, but if, for some reason, something happens that he or she does not start, I’d like to give you a call. If we might still be a consideration for you, we can pick up the conversation again, if we need to.”

The best hiring authorities hope they won’t need this contingency plan. But just in case, they’ve prepared themselves for it. The #2 and #3 candidates may not be available should this happen, but at least a hiring authority may not have to start all over if it does. We can’t tell you the number of phenomenally successful employees we’ve placed who got hired this way.