Quick answer: A job offer letter needs eight things: job title, who they report to, start date, place of work, hours, pay and how often it is paid, any probation period, and a date to reply by. Most templates stop there. Add a second short block about the first day, because what time to show up and which door to use is what the person is actually worried about.
Here is the template, then the part almost nobody includes.
The job offer letter template
Copy this into your email client and fill in the brackets.
Subject: Your offer from [Company]
Hi [First name],
We would like to offer you the role of [Job title] at [Company].
THE ROLE
Job title: [Title]
Reports to: [Name, job title]
Start date: [Date]
Place of work: [Address, or remote, or hybrid and how many days on site]
Hours: [40 per week, Monday to Friday, 09:00 to 17:00]
PAY AND TERMS
Salary: [Amount] per [year, month or hour], paid [monthly] on [date]
Bonus or other: [Amount and how it is earned, or "none"]
Holiday: [Days per year]
Probation: [Length and notice during it, or "none"]
Notice period: [After probation]
TO ACCEPT
Reply to this email by [date] and I will send the contract.
Any questions before then, call me on [phone number].
[Your name]
[Your job title]That is the legal and commercial half, and it should stay about that short. Long offer letters do not protect you. The contract does that.
The part most offer letter templates skip
The thing candidates worry about after saying yes is not the notice period, it is the first morning. Almost every template on the internet leaves that out entirely, so the new hire spends two weeks wondering what time to arrive and whether everyone wears a suit.
Paste this under the offer, or send it as a second email once they accept.
YOUR FIRST DAY, [Date]
Arrive at: [Time]
Where: [Full address]
Which door: [Main entrance on X street, not the gate by the car park]
Meeting you: [Name] will be in reception from [time]
If lost: Call [name] on [phone number]
What to wear: [Jeans and a t-shirt is normal here, nobody wears a suit]
Bring: [ID, bank details, anything else you need from them]
Lunch: [We cover it, or here is where people go]
The day: [Laptop setup, a walk around, lunch with the team.
Nothing is due from you in week one.]It takes four minutes to write and it removes every small unknown at once. Starting a job is already the stressful part. You do not need to add a scavenger hunt for the right entrance on top of it.
There is evidence this end of the process is where things break. In Enboarder’s 2025 HR Leader Survey, the top reason new hires left inside 90 days was mismatched expectations at 30.3%, ahead of culture fit at 19.5% and the onboarding experience itself at 17.4%. Expectations get set by what you wrote down. If you wrote down nothing about the actual job and the actual first day, the new hire fills the gap with a guess.
What the law makes you put in writing
The rules differ by country, and the offer letter is not always the document that satisfies them.
| Where | What is required | When |
|---|---|---|
| European Union | Written information on the essential aspects of the job under Directive (EU) 2019/1152: place of work, nature of the work, pay, work schedule | Within one week of the first working day |
| European Union | Starting salary or pay range disclosed to the applicant, and no questions about their current pay, under Directive (EU) 2023/970 | In the vacancy notice or before the first interview |
| United Kingdom | Principal statement of employment particulars, including pay, hours, holiday, place of work and probation | On the first day of employment |
| United States | No federal requirement for an offer letter. Most include at will language and a start date | Not applicable |
Two things worth knowing. Directive (EU) 2019/1152 has applied since August 2022, so the written terms obligation in the European Union is old news and you are probably already doing it. Directive (EU) 2023/970 is the new one. Member states had until 7 June 2026 to transpose it and only a handful managed it on time, so the national rules where you are may still be landing. The safe move is to publish the range now anyway.
If you hire in more than one country, do not maintain one universal template. Keep one per country and have a local lawyer read each one once.
Does a better offer letter actually mean more people say yes?
A clearer offer letter helps at the margin, but it is not what decides the answer. Ashby’s 2026 Recruiting Operations Benchmarks, built on 54 million applications across 93,000 jobs from January 2021 through March 2026, puts offer stage conversion at 81%. Referrals accept at 89% for business roles and 84% for technical ones, while sourced candidates drop to 76% on technical roles.
Across Canvider customers, offer acceptance sits around 79%. That is normal. It is not evidence that the software closes candidates, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. What moves that number is pay that matches what you advertised, a process that did not take six weeks, and a hiring manager the candidate liked. The letter mostly just needs to avoid introducing a surprise.
The surprise is the real risk. If the salary in the letter is lower than the range in the job ad, or the hours are different, or a probation period appears that nobody mentioned, you have turned an accepted offer into a negotiation. Read the letter against your own job post before you send it.
Send the verbal offer first
Call them, make the offer out loud, and get a reaction before anything is written down. You learn things on that call that you will never learn from an email reply, including whether they are sitting on another process and what number they were actually hoping for.
Then send the letter the same day while the call is still fresh. If you cannot write it that day, send a two line email saying the full offer arrives tomorrow. Silence after a verbal offer is how good candidates start rereading the other company’s email.
A few more habits that are worth the small effort:
- Put a real date on the reply deadline, not “within a week”
- Name one person as the contact and give a phone number, not a shared inbox
- Say what happens next, so the contract does not arrive as a surprise
- Log the sent date and the deadline somewhere your team can see, so nobody has to ask
That last one is what an Applicant Tracking System is for. Canvider keeps the offer stage on the same board as everything else, so the letter, the deadline and the reply live with the rest of the candidate record instead of in one person’s sent folder. More on that in automating hiring after the offer stage.
If you are still deciding who gets the offer at all, how to decide who gets the offer covers the debrief. And once they accept, the new hire onboarding checklist picks up where this letter ends.
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Frequently asked questions
How do you write a simple job offer letter?
Put eight things in it: job title, who they report to, start date, place of work, hours, pay and how often it is paid, probation and notice, and a date to reply by. Then add a short second block covering the first day. Two screens total is enough for most small companies.
Is a job offer letter legally binding?
It depends where you are. In the United States an offer letter is usually not a contract and normally says the job is at will. Across the European Union, Directive (EU) 2019/1152 requires written terms within one week of the first working day, so what you write tends to become part of the deal. Have a local lawyer read your template once, then reuse it.
How long should I give a candidate to accept an offer?
Three to five working days for most roles, and say the date rather than saying a week. A deadline that never gets enforced teaches candidates that your dates are soft. If they ask for more time because another process is finishing, give it to them and put the new date in writing.
Do I have to put the salary in the job ad?
In the European Union, yes, or at least before the interview. Directive (EU) 2023/970 requires employers to tell applicants the starting salary or pay range in the vacancy notice or ahead of the first interview, and bans asking about their current pay. Member states had until 7 June 2026 to put it into national law, and several are still catching up.