Product Update: Introducing Offer Letters

We’re happy to announce applicant tracking in BambooHR is getting even better with the addition of Offer Letters.

Our applicant tracking system has already helped thousands of hiring teams cast their nets wider, speed up the hiring process, and improve communication with candidates in an increasingly competitive job market. When our clients combine it with our pre-boarding and employee self-onboarding tools, they can create unforgettable candidate experiences that attract top talent and build their organization’s brand.

While we’re proud of what our software can do, we realize there’s a gap between when a hiring decision is made and when a candidate accepts the offer. By adding Offer Letters, we’re bridging that gap and improving two of the most important aspects of any applicant tracking system: candidate experience and user experience.

The Candidate Experience

Candidates judge your organization’s brand and culture based on the experience they have during the hiring process. The quality of their experience can determine whether or not they want to work for your company. Often times the difference between a positive candidate experience and a negative one is communication between an employer and a prospective hire. In fact, 58 percent of candidates who’ve had a bad hiring experience cite the lack of regular updates on their application as a large, negative factor.

We focused on frequent communication from the beginning while designing our ATS. Candidates receive an automatic email notification when they apply and a follow-up email from BambooHR through each hiring phase. In the past, this is where Bamboo’s communication ended with the candidate. An offer letter would come from the hiring organization in whatever format they used. In some cases, the prospective employee was forced to print, sign, and fax or scan the offer letter to accept a job. The communication became jarring and inconvenient, and it turned off qualified candidates right at the end of the hiring process.

Until now.

With the introduction of Offer Letters, candidates will receive seamless communication from the moment they apply to their very first day on the job. Not only will the process be smoother, but our very own Esignatures feature will make it quicker. And that’s a vital improvement for today’s job market where 49 percent of candidates who declined a job offer did so because they’d already accepted an offer somewhere else. Getting those job offers out sooner will be a huge boon for your organization.

The User Experience

But we didn’t design our new feature for candidates alone. Your organization’s recruiters and hiring managers need technology that will support their efforts as well. A poor user experience can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction on their end. Our own recruiting team explained, “For a recruiter, having to hop back and forth between systems is bad enough. But losing a candidate to another employer because they couldn’t get an offer letter out fast enough—very discouraging.”

The Offer Letters tool makes it so that recruiters only need one system to accomplish their goals. They’ll be able to maintain seamless, end-to-end communication with candidates and send offer letters quick enough to beat out the competition. Our very own Head of Talent Acquisition, JD Conway, said “Offer Letters save me around 11 minutes per offer that I have to build. It’s not a step you can afford to mess up, and the custom workflows allows for better quality control and confidence on my part, plus a better experience for the candidate. I’m also able to see—in real time—whether someone has viewed the offer and how many times it has been viewed. It allows me to step in and answer questions during a very crucial time: while candidates are making life decisions and our company is trying to ensure an excellent experience for a new employee.” Our recruiting team loves Offer Letters in BambooHR. And once you try it, we’re sure you’ll love it too.

Offer Letters in BambooHR include:

• Offer letter templates – create offer letter templates for different positions, departments, locations and more
• Offer letter placeholders – populate job offers quickly with placeholders for things like name, title, and salary

• Offer letter attachments – attach files such as background check authorizations and drug screening authorizations
• Offer letter preview and offer letter email preview – preview the offer letter, including the notification email sent to applicants.
• A new “Offer” tab in applicant record – shows a timeline of when the offer was sent, if and when it was viewed, the number of times it was viewed, and when it was signed

If you’re a customer, click here, to learn more about Offer Letters now available in BambooHR. If you’re not a customer, request a demo here.

Happy Bambooing!