One of the most critical parts of the recruiting process is the job offer. You could do an excellent job finding and attracting your perfect candidate, but if your job offer isn’t airtight, all your hard work up to that point could be for naught.

This article examines the basics of creating a compelling offer that will positively impact your targets so that both you and your candidate get more of what you want.

Today, experienced professionals are literally in short supply. So if you manage to make them interested and get them for an interview, try not to fail at this last decisive stage.

A good job offer must cover the following points in full: 

• Indicate the future employment type: full-time, part-time, or project work.
• Clarify the future employee's roles and responsibilities. Provide a clear understanding of who their manager will be and their powers.
• Briefly describe the working hours and communication policy (essential for remote teams that heavily rely on Teams or Slack).
• Describe the terms of compensation in as much detail as possible - salary, bonuses, insurance, stock option contract, etc. Essentially, everything has been leading up to this point.
• If you are hiring at a startup, be sure to add a clause for overtime work. You can stipulate separately that crunching is not part of your culture. However, different things happen in startups and it is better if the candidate is prepared for it.
• Taxes are regulated differently for different countries, so it is essential to clarify what tax policy is in your office. This is especially important if you are hiring from overseas.
• It also makes sense to briefly describe the team with which the candidate will work in order to remove the fear of the unknown.

Fundamental recommendations

Pay attention to salary expectations

Salary is the main factor when deciding on a job.

Keep in mind the unpredictability of the salary market when hiring IT specialists. In 2020-2021, a shortage of qualified developers led companies to inflate compensation for programmers.

Your task at this stage - once again, transparently and clearly describe the compensation terms, and all the benefits. It helps candidates to think about these conditions in a calm atmosphere (without the stress of the job interview).

Also, include in the offer how often your organization revisits compensation and what they can look forward to in the future.

Provide the right benefits

In addition to salaries, most companies offer various benefits, bonuses, and social packages for employees.

Again, even before you start communicating with a candidate, you should hypothesize about what might be important and valuable to the candidate, and what benefits he would be interested in. In the interview process, you have a good opportunity of figuring this out. If you have done this, summarize the suggestions clearly and succinctly.

Articulate career opportunities upfront, then write it down in the offer

Many job seekers are interested in finding employers genuinely interested in their career growth. 

Junior and middle developers will appreciate it if you attach a senior mentor to them, offer a company career development plan, and reimburse professional courses. Senior developers must know whether they are evolving into architects or management — you must make their options known.

Always try balancing salary and position promises with a clear description of a career plan for this candidate.

Clearly define what is needed to start work

Here, it's important to define the KPIs, length of the onboarding / probationary period, what is expected from the candidate upfront, and everything else up to the most convenient way to get to the office (if it's not a remote job).

A call to action

Candidates should understand how much time they have to think about your offer. Therefore, gently write a desirable deadline for a response. In addition, this may encourage the candidate not just to read it and put it aside, but think and prepare his final response.

Always be honest when signing an employment contract

Be honest about your terms. Do not exaggerate, do not embellish, do not understate.

You will lose the candidate if you do not fulfill what you initially stated or suggested in the conditions during negotiation. This is one of the main places where companies tend to fail new employees during their probation period. The company's reputation then comes under fire. And you will have to start your search over. 

Four tips to make your offer even more attractive

How do you make your Job Offer more interesting so that the candidate will cast aside doubts, accept it, and start preparing for onboarding right away?

The following 4 tips will help you to convey your company's values and positive atmosphere, especially if the applicant has never been to your office. To do so, you can: 

• Give your candidates a spark of emotion. When creating a Job Offer, try not to be another vanilla company with cold clerical wording. Try to add emotion, vitality, and creativity. Try to be a little more interactive, open-minded, and empathetic when creating a job offer for an IT techie
• Add a short video where the hiring manager, and possibly the CEO themselves (especially if you are a startup), expresses the importance of inviting this particular candidate to the workplace.
• You can add a useful video, made with soul. If the job isn't remote, it may be a small tour of the office from the series "here's where you will work", a greeting and a short introduction to the team (it disposes to yourself). A creative addition to your job offer will be taking and sending a photo of a personalized desk for this candidate
• Whether your offer is video or text, make it clear to the candidate that their values and personality are in demand at your company. Hint at the connection between their values and the values of your company.
• Be sure to reflect the specifics of your team's informal activities in the offer. For IT people, most of whom today are Millennials and Generation Z, this is particularly important.

All these little things can help candidates form a generally favorable opinion about your company.

Such offers can play the role of pre-boarding — they allow a person to familiarize themselves with your company’s atmosphere before accepting an offer.

Job offers are hard

While there is no single secret to creating a compelling offer, candidates respond positively when they feel important to your organization. 

Let the candidate see that they are making the right choice by accepting your offer. Show the candidate that working in your company will ensure their future growth and that working in your team is enjoyable for everyone.

If you do not want to do everything alone or are simply tired of wading through the scarce IT workforce market, reach out for help. Make it in Ukraine is always ready to provide you with a credible list of high-quality techies ready for hire. 

Besides, if you need help composing and polishing your Job Offer, we are always happy to make a quick call with you.