01

Know your approvers, their order, and their role in the hiring process

Consensus decision-making increases hiring time when you have to get everyone on board with a hiring decision. By knowing exactly who’s involved in hiring approvals and asking them for specific inputs on their expertise, you can avoid conflicting opinions and speed up the approval process.

Mapping out the approvals process, and when they need to be involved in decisions might look something like this:

1. Contact the hiring manager for defining the roles and responsibilities.
2. Align with finance on the market rate and salary band.
3. Send final candidate approval to the head of department or CEO for sign-off on extending an offer.
   

When all your stakeholders, their signing order, and their specific role and input are mapped out, you can minimize objections and delays in the internal hiring process.

02

Create a system for changes and edits

By centralizing all internal offer letter reviews in a shared document storage system like Dropbox, Microsoft SharePoint, or Google Drive, instead of email exchanges, your documents and all of the feedback on them is stored one place so you don’t have to search for it every time.

What’s more, using centralized documents means you can track changes, so you have a trail of what’s changed and who has changed it if you need to revisit the details.

03

Set approval dates so candidates aren’t left waiting

By setting an internal deadline for all approvals, you let approvers know that hiring is a high priority. Sending reminders for unapproved documents before your deadline can also dramatically increase your chances of getting a new hire approved fast.

01

Build an offer letter checklist

Knowing exactly what needs to be in every offer letter not only ensures candidates know everything they need to, it also makes sure you’re legally covered. Here’s what every offer letter should include:

•  Details of position (job description, reporting structure, work schedule)
•  Salary (including any benefits or commission)
•  Employee benefits (including anything that’s pro-rated)
•  Privacy policies
•  Termination conditions
•  Date the offer expires
  

02

Templatize your offer letters

Once you know what information to include in your offer letters, you can speed up job offer preparation by turning your offer letters into templates. Using tools like Dropbox Sign, you can create variable templates that will automatically fill in details, saving you starting everything from scratch. See offer letter templates in action here.

03

Build a library of offer letter templates

If you hire across a wide range of functions or hire often, it’s worth templating offer letters for several scenarios, such as general job offers, part-time offers, informal offers, internal job offers, and more.

01

Know what you’re willing to negotiate on

Entering negotiations with a clear idea of what you’re willing to negotiate on and what your limit is can save you from negotiations stalling at the approvals stage.

Before you enter negotiations with an employee, get clear with internal stakeholders:

•  Latest start date
•  Maximum leave days
•  Any special benefits
•  Salary range
•  If a signing bonus would sweeten the deal
•  Additional benefits
•  Stock options or equity
  

When everyone is on the same page with what is and isn’t negotiable, the fewer sticking points you’ll run into in the approval process.  

02

Make edits fast

The faster you can agree upon negotiation terms and amend your offer letter to reflect them, the sooner you can get to work. With integrations like Dropbox Sign for Google Docs, you can edit and send documents out for signatures directly from Google Docs. So rather than making changes, exporting documents to PDFs, and then circulating them, you can quickly make negotiated edits and then send them out for approval.

03

Automate approvals and final sign-off

After changes have been made to your offer letter, it’ll need a final internal sign-off to authorize the newly negotiated terms, benefits, or salary in your offer letter. That means one final round of approvals.

With Dropbox Sign, you can automate much of the approval process. Setting up a custom signing order means you can dictate the signing order of internal approvals and once the first person has given approval, Dropbox Sign will automatically send it to the next signer.

01

Convert your PDFs into web forms that can be completed on any device

Using Dropbox Forms, you can create web forms from your existing PDFs using a simple drag-and-drop tool. That means candidates can sign offer letters from anywhere and on any device.

02

Make it easy for candidates to upload extra documentation

Giving candidates the option to digitally upload any required or optional documents, such as photo ID or certifications and accreditations, will save them the laborious task of manually emailing additional information back and forth.

03

Track candidate progress and send reminders

Rather than waiting and hoping candidates will sign, Dropbox Sign gives you visibility over the signing process. After you’ve sent an offer, you can see whether it was opened, when, or if it was signed. And if it’s yet to be signed, Dropbox Sign will send automatic reminders, so you don’t have to spend time chasing candidates.

01

Create a day-one onboarding packet

The majority of new-hire information and forms are generic. So rather than tracking down every form a new hire has to sign and every policy they have to read, you can make it simple by packaging all into one easy-to-consume first-day packet that includes:

•  A welcome note
•  Your employee handbook
•  A new employee information form
•  An emergency contacts form
•  Financial forms (tax and bank information)
•  Govenment forms
•  An NDA
•  Compensation and benefits details
  

And on your end, creating a generic first-day packet means you don’t have to find and collate everything every time there’s a new hire.

02

Make signing easy and reduce repetitive data input

Especially in a remote world, not everyone has access to a printer and scanner. To take the stress out of your new hires’ first days, make signing an easy process by letting them sign documents digitally. Using an eSignature tool like Dropbox Sign, new hires can sign all their onboarding paperwork directly in their web browser, without needing any hardware or third-party tools.

To make things even easier for candidates, Dropbox Sign can identify identical data inputs, such as name, address, or phone number, and duplicate them throughout the document in your hiring packet, so candidates are never be asked for the same information twice—making the onboarding processes much faster.

03

Custom-brand your signing experience

Starting a new job is full of new processes and uncertainty is often overwhelming. So the more you can make new hires feel like they’re in the right place or doing the right thing, the fewer distractions and hesitation they’ll have. And a big part of that is showing them a consistent brand. By custom-branding your onboarding experience with tools like the Dropbox Sign API, your onboarding experience can looks and feels exactly like your brand—adding fonts, colors, logos, and more—you can remove confusion, doubt, and distractions throughout the signing onboarding process, so new employees aren’t stressed and they can complete documentation fast.

01

Start with security

The security of your contracts should be your number one priority. That starts by ensuring you’re using secure tools to create, share, and send contracts. For instance, Dropbox Sign eSignatures use advanced encryption and store every document in a SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type I, and ISO 27001-certified data center.

02

Practice secure behavior

Practicing secure behavior, like making sure you have a process in place to do a quarterly sweep of the permissions on your contracts so that the right staff have access to the information they need, while keeping confidential data secure. Here’s a security checklist to help ensure you’re protecting your customers’ information with secure practices:

Your security checklist:

•  Convert paper documents to digital
•  Provide training for staff on best-practice security
•  Regularly review access permissions
•  Educate your team on secure passwords and phishing
•  Take advantage of encrypted storage
•  Prevent fraud with audit trails
  

Learn how to implement each of these steps in our blog, How to keep your documents and agreements secure.

03

Create a single source of truth

Start by creating a single source of truth where everyone in the hiring process can access the necessary documents. That way, every time you, an employee, or a new hire needs to review a contract or find a specific piece of information, you don’t have to go hunting through old email attachments or outdated document versions. This might be in a shared document like Google Docs or Dropbox paper or, if you’re managing larger multi-document hires, you can manage feedback directly in cloud storage tools like Dropbox.  

04

Integrate, integrate, integrate

Integrating your contract storage with other apps can multiply your productivity. For example, Dropbox Sign is available right within your Dropbox account, which means every time you send a document out for signature, it’s automatically synced and stored in your Dropbox folders.