Can I revoke a job offer?

We have pointers on this topic from Dan Marzullo, Founder of Drafted Content. He shares some insight on how to go through this process and reduce the risk of it happening in the future.

The first thing you need to do is contact HR and let them know so that they can help you find a new candidate to replace them in that role that you’re looking to fill.

The next thing you do is notify the candidate. Explain why you’re revoking the offer. Be sure to be clear as to why this is happening, and let them respond after. It’s important to give them the chance to present their side of the story because it might be a misunderstanding, or they might be able to change or fix the scenario, which then ultimately lets them continue to work for the company and accept that role that you’ve offered. Give them a chance to correct those errors.

The next thing that you can do is offer to help them find a new role. Assist them in any way you can to just help ease that burden and make that candidate feel better.

And ultimately the final thing you want to do is review your hiring process to make sure that this doesn’t happen in the future. Identify why this happened and then see what you can put in place to prevent it.

Common practices to mitigate this risk is offering or conducting a background check.

Don’t offer the candidate a position or a formal offer letter until you’ve conducted that background check, just to ensure all of those things are clear and returned. The next thing you can do is send a letter of employment and be incredibly descriptive in breaking down what that entails with that role in your company. One of the great things you can do here is put some language in that offer letter that says this is at-will employment, meaning that this employment is not guaranteed, and you as the employer at any time, have the option to revoke that job offer.

The last thing we want to touch on here is why should you not revoke a job offer? There are certain scenarios, one of them being discrimination. Maybe you find out the candidate has a certain disability or something like that. You cannot revoke a job offer based on those circumstances. Scenarios like that are can open up opportunities for lawsuits and get you sued as an organization.

For more information, you can check out this video: