Requesting offer approval

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Available for Roles Super Admin, Admin, Team Member, Limited Team Member
Permissions • Manage profiles and view associated postings
Packages LeverTRM for Enterprise, Advanced HR add-on

Lever's offer approval functionality allows you to efficiently generate offers while attaining stakeholder alignment before sending the offer to a candidate. Customizable workflows enable you to tailor the approval process to accommodate any unique processes and circumstances your recruitment team contends with when extending offers to candidates. Before diving in, we recommend reading help article on building offer approval workflows to get context on how offer approval workflows operate.


How to request offer approval

To generate an offer for a candidate, their opportunity must have reached the offer stage in your pipeline. Once in the offer stage, a Create Offer button will appear at the top of their opportunity profile. Clicking this button will initiate the offer generation process.

Close-up of opportunity profile with Create Offer call to action button at the top.

Once you have filled in the required details on the offer form, click the Next Step to proceed to the approvals step.

Offer generation modal with completed details fields and arrow pointing to Next Step button.

If the offer is subject to approval, you will see a summary of the approvers in the approval chain and will be prompted to submit an approval request. If the approval chain contains a custom approver, you must select an approver to which to submit the request. To learn how custom approvers are added to approval chains, check out our help article on building offer approval workflows.

Live image of a user being selected to populate a custom approver field.

Before submitting the request note that you have the ability to attach a message and/or file to your request. You can also include interview feedback and relevant files attached to the candidate profile so approvers have everything they need to make an informed decision.

Fields on the offer approval modal with a message typed about the candidate, an attached file, and the interview feedback toggle in the on position.

You will be unable to proceed past this step in the offer generation process until the offer has been approved by each approver in the chain. If an offer requires approval from multiple approvers, you can monitor how far down the approval chain the offer has advanced in the offer generation modal. If you wish to make changes to the offer if approval has been denied, while it is pending, or has received approval, click the Modify Offer button in the status banner of the offer generation modal.

Multi-step offer approval chain shown in offer approval modal with one approval granted and one approval pending. Banner is shown at top of the modal containing a Modify Offer button.

If an offer approval request has stalled due to the absence of an approver or needs to be expedited to quickly close a candidate, users with proxy approval capabilities can approve or deny a request on another approver's behalf (for full details, refer to our help article on approving by proxy):

  • The proxy approver must open the offer details and click Make decision next to the name of the approver they wish to override.

Close up of Approval page in editor with banner reading that the user can make a decision on behalf of the approvers listed below. A pop over extends from the words 'Make decision' beside of of the approvers names, with options to approve on behalf or don't approve on behalf.

  • The proxy approver will be required to input a reason for their action in order to proceed to complete the override.
  • The original approver will be notified via email if a proxy approver makes a decision on their behalf and the action will be reflected in the approval history on the candidate's profile story.

Offer approval block on candididate profile story with reason for proxy approval listed approval history.

Once the offer has been approved by all approvers in the chain, you can click the Next Step button in the offer generation modal to proceed to the next step in the offer generation process (i.e. drafting the offer letter).

Offer approval modal with all approvals granted. Next Step button is live in lower right corner of modal.

Which offers are subject to approval?

If you have a default offer approval workflow enabled in your Lever environment, all offers generated in Lever will be subject that workflow provided they meet the conditions defined in the steps of the workflow. Steps and conditions are defined when an offer approval workflow is constructed.

Lever also supports the ability to create custom offer approval workflows. If an offer meets both the conditions for the default approval workflow and the criteria for a custom approval workflow, the custom approval workflow will take precedence. If an offer meets the criteria for more than one custom approval workflow, the highest-listed workflow in the list of custom approval workflows will take precedence.

Approvals section of Lever Settings, Offers tab selected

For full details on offer approval workflow creation, included defining steps, conditions, and criteria, refer to our help article on building offer approval workflows.

 

Offers associated with confidential postings bypass approval requirements in all cases.

Approving and rejecting offer approval requests

There are two ways to approve or reject an offer approval request:

1. Email

Each individual in the approval chain will receive an email prompting them to approve or reject the drafted offer. Below is close-up of what an approval request email looks like. Note that, although not shown in the image, the email also contains all relevant offer details.

Offer approval email with buttons to approve offer, deny approval request, or ask a question.

2. In-App

If the approver has the necessary level of access in Lever, they will have the ability to approve or reject the offer by opening it via the candidate profile.

Close up of candidate profile with arrow pointing to 'See offer details' button.

Approval section of offer details modal showing two approvers in the approval chain. The second approver has options to approve or reject the offer approval request next to their name.

Approvers that deny an approval request will be required to provide a reason in order to submit the rejection. The user that drafted the offer will see the reason provided by the rejecting approver and can make the necessary revisions to the offer details. To learn more, refer to our help article on revising offers.

Approval section of offer details modal. One of two approvers has rejected the request. The reason for rejection appears in a banner at the top of the modal with a button reading 'Go back and revise offer'

 

Analytics related to offer approval and revision data on the Offers dashboard in Visual Insights (Advanced Analytics add-on required). To learn more, refer to our Offers dashboard help article.
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