How to Send and Track Job Offers With Electronic Signature

To send and track job offers with an electronic signature, write the job offer letter from an approved template, get a named approver to sign it off, send a private link to the candidate, record when it was sent, opened and signed, and keep a copy of the exact text. Check that your country accepts the signature type.

Why offers need a workflow, not an email

Many small teams still send offers as a loose email or a PDF attached to a message. It works until it does not. Someone changes the salary in a late edit, nobody can say which version went out. The candidate replies yes in a chat message and the manager forgets to tell the team. The offer sits unanswered for two weeks and the next candidate on the list accepts another job. An offer is the highest stakes document in hiring, because it has real money, a real start date and a person who is about to resign. It deserves the same discipline you would give a purchase order. A workflow gives you four things: a single approved text, a clear send step, a record of the reply, and a way to see which offers are waiting. This guide walks through each step, shows a table for tracking offers and a checklist for choosing a tool, and describes honestly how Rezumz handles offer approval and signing. It also covers the limits of simple electronic signatures, because rules differ by country, so check local law. See /offer-letter-template for the letter itself and /recruitment-software for how tools in this area compare.

Step one: start from an approved template

The workflow begins before any candidate is chosen. Write one or two templates for your common situations, such as full time employee and part time employee, and have them reviewed by someone who understands employment law where you hire. The template should hold the parts that never change, such as the structure, the standard conditions, the relationship to the employment agreement and the reply by wording, with brackets for the parts that do, such as name, title, salary, start date and manager. Brackets make it easy to see what is still missing. A good template reduces mistakes, speeds up drafting and makes approvals quicker, because the approver only needs to check the variable details. Keep a note of who last reviewed the template and when. Avoid keeping many slightly different copies in personal folders, because the one that gets used will be the one someone found, not the one that was approved. If you need wording, the sample in /blog/job-offer-letter-template-and-what-to-include can be adapted, and the template should match your employment agreement.

Step two: draft and check the details

When a candidate is chosen, create the draft from the template and fill in every variable detail. Check each figure against the agreed offer: pay, currency, pay frequency, start date, working pattern, location, probation and notice. Read the whole text once as the candidate will, and once as someone looking for errors. Remove or replace every bracket. Check names and spellings, which matter more than people think. Confirm any bonus, commission or equity wording matches the plan documents. Add the conditions that apply and set a reply by date, usually between three and ten working days depending on your market. Do not send the draft yet. The most common offer mistakes are small ones, like a wrong start date or an old salary, and a second pair of eyes catches them. A habit of checking the amount against the notes from the final interview or the salary approval prevents most of the awkward corrections that follow when a letter has already gone out.

Step three: get the offer approved

Decide who must approve an offer, and make it a rule rather than a courtesy. In a small business it may be the owner. In a larger one it may be the hiring manager plus finance. The approver should see the exact text that will be sent, not a summary. Keep a record of who approved and when. In Rezumz, you ask for approval from the account owner or someone on your team, and they receive an email and decide on the Approvals page. Nobody except the owner can approve a letter they asked to have approved, so a recruiter cannot sign off their own draft. If anyone edits an approved letter, it goes back for approval, so what is sent is always exactly what was approved. Whatever tool you use, the principle is the same: approval should be tied to the specific text, and any change should reset it. That protects the business from a last minute edit and protects the recruiter from being blamed for a number they did not set.

Step four: send for signature

Once approved, send the offer to the candidate's email address. In Rezumz the candidate receives a private link where they read the letter and either accept by typing their full name and ticking a confirmation, or decline with an optional reason. The link works for up to 14 days, or until the reply by date if that is sooner. If you send again, a fresh link is created and the old one stops working. If you need to cancel, withdrawing closes the link. Whatever tool you use, tell the candidate by phone or message that the offer is coming, so it does not land in a spam folder and so that the first conversation about it is human. Send it at a sensible time, not late on a Friday, and make sure someone is available to answer questions. Check the email address with the candidate if there is any doubt, because an offer sent to a wrong address is both a delay and a privacy problem. Keep the covering message short and warm, and point to the reply by date.

Step five: track the offer

Once an offer is out, it needs to be watched. A simple table is enough. For each offer, record the candidate, role, approver, date sent, reply by date, status and next action. Review it every day or two while offers are open.

In Rezumz, when a candidate accepts, they are moved to the Offer stage, you are emailed, and an offer.accepted webhook fires. A decline sends offer.declined. The documentation does not describe automatic reminder emails to candidates, so plan to follow up yourself by phone or message, and use the reply by date as your cue.

What to record and why

A good offer record answers questions months later. Who asked for approval, who approved and when. When the offer was sent and to whom. What the candidate typed, when they signed, and what exact text they saw. In Rezumz, the record includes who asked for approval and who approved with times, when it was sent and to whom, the name the candidate typed, the time they signed, a fingerprint of their network address and browser (never the address itself), and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact letter that was sent. The printable record checks the letter on file against that fingerprint and says if the text has changed. You can choose Print the record on the offer to open a page you can save as a PDF. Keep this record with the candidate file, store it securely, and delete it according to your retention policy, since rules on how long to keep hiring records differ by country. If a dispute ever arises about what was offered, a clean record is the best evidence you can have.

What a simple electronic signature is and is not

The signature in Rezumz is a simple electronic signature: a typed name and a confirmation, with a record of when and what. It does not verify who the person is. That is enough for many offer letters, but some countries and some contracts need a stronger kind, for example one that checks identity or uses a certified provider. Some documents, such as certain contracts or documents tied to specific regulated roles, may need a handwritten or advanced signature. We cannot tell you which applies to you. If you are unsure, ask your lawyer. Rezumz is not a legal adviser. A sensible approach is to use a simple signature for the offer letter, where the aim is a clear record of acceptance, and to handle the formal employment agreement according to your lawyer's advice. For more on this question, see /blog/are-electronic-signatures-valid-for-job-offers. Rules differ by country, so check local law and confirm what your candidates and your jurisdiction accept.

A worked example and a tool checklist

Here is an example with invented numbers. A twelve person consultancy makes three offers in a month. Before the workflow, two offers took an average of nine days to come back and one was lost because the email went to spam. After the workflow, the recruiter drafts from a template, the owner approves in a day, the recruiter phones the candidate before sending, and replies come back in an average of three days. The figures are only an example, but the pattern is realistic: approval and a phone call do more than any feature.

Use this table to judge any tool, scoring zero to two for each line, where two is clearly yes.

A total of 16 or more suggests the tool will serve a small hiring team well.

Common mistakes

The usual errors in offer workflows are simple. Skipping approval and sending drafts directly. Editing the letter after approval without telling the approver. Sending an offer to a wrong or unchecked email address. Sending without a phone call, so the candidate hears about it from a link in their inbox. Leaving the reply by date out, so nobody knows when an offer has expired. Not following up, which leaves strong candidates waiting and wondering. Treating a verbal yes as final and not collecting the signed acceptance. Failing to record the reason when a candidate declines, which loses useful insight about pay, speed or competing offers. Not telling the other finalists the outcome, which damages your reputation. Keeping records in personal inboxes and not in the candidate file. And assuming a simple signature is enough everywhere without checking local requirements. Fix them with a template, a named approver, a reply by date, a phone call, a tracking table and a regular review.

Where Rezumz fits

Rezumz is a hiring workspace for small and mid-size hiring teams. In Rezumz you open a candidate, choose Offer letter and signature, fill in the company, pay and dates, create a draft and edit the text. Anything still in [brackets] must be filled in before it can be sent. You ask for approval, and the approver decides on the Approvals page. After approval you send it to the candidate's email, and they accept by typing their full name and ticking a confirmation, or decline with an optional reason. Rezumz keeps the approval and signing record and a printable version. It does not send automatic candidate reminders according to its documentation, it does not verify identity, it does not run payroll, and it is not a legal adviser. It suits small and mid-size teams, and the Team plan is aimed at teams of four or more recruiters. It does not suit large enterprises needing deep HRIS or payroll connections, and it does not do one-click multiposting to job boards. Prices: a free plan with 2 free candidate analyses, $29 a month, $199 a year, or a limited $499 lifetime option. Team is $79 a month or $699 a year for up to 10 teammates. See /pricing, /applicant-tracking-system and the live demo at /demo.

Who this is not for

If your offers must be created from a payroll or HRIS system and flow straight into onboarding for thousands of employees, a lightweight offer workflow will not replace those systems. If your country or your contracts require a qualified or advanced electronic signature, a simple typed name signature is not enough on its own, and you should use a provider that meets the standard and take legal advice. If you only make one or two hires a year, a careful email with a reviewed PDF and a signed copy back may be enough. And if you want a tool to chase candidates automatically, check the features of each product, because not all do it. For the wider process, see /free-applicant-tracking-system and /compare to understand your options, and always check local law.