Offer letter format: what an employer must decide before the letter goes out
Written for the person issuing it. Designation, reporting line, CTC with its split, joining date, probation, notice, conditions and a deadline to accept — every decision in an Indian offer letter, worked through on a real one.
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What an offer letter is for, and who is actually reading it
An offer letter is the employer’s written proposal: we would like you to work for us in this role, in this team, from this date, for this much, on these conditions, and you have until this date to say yes. It is written by whoever is hiring — an HR executive in a company of a few hundred, or the founder personally in a company of four — and it is read by a candidate who is about to make a decision that affects their household. In practice it is also read by the candidate’s parents or spouse, by the manager they are about to resign to, and later by a background-verification agency and possibly a bank, so it has to be complete enough to survive a room of sceptical readers without anybody having to ring you.
The letter has two jobs that pull in different directions. It has to persuade, because at this stage the candidate has probably not resigned yet and may be holding another offer; and it has to be exact, because every figure and date in it will be quoted back to you, and once it is accepted it is commonly treated as the basis of the employment contract. Most badly written offer letters fail the second job while trying too hard at the first: two warm paragraphs about the culture, and a compensation line that gives only a total.
This page is written for the person issuing the letter. It walks through the Trilok Systems offer to Aarav Nair block by block and explains the decision behind each line, shows how the letter changes for an intern, a campus hire, a consultant, a negotiated revision and a part-time role, and marks where the offer letter stops and the appointment letter begins. The rendered letter below is the one the maker opens on, so what is explained here is what you will be editing.
The letter this page explains
A permanent, full-time offer from a mid-sized private company to an experienced candidate relocating from another city — the case that needs every block, so none is skipped.
14/2, Panampilly Nagar
Kochi, Kerala 682036
Further to your interviews on 1 and 3 September 2026, we are pleased to offer you the position of Data Analyst in the Platform Analytics team at Trilok Systems Pvt. Ltd., reporting to the Analytics Manager, at our Gurugram office.
Compensation. Your annual cost to company will be ₹7,20,000 (Rupees seven lakh twenty thousand only), of which ₹6,48,000 is fixed and ₹72,000 is a performance-linked variable paid annually. The detailed salary structure is enclosed as Annexure A.
Joining. Your date of joining will be Monday, 5 October 2026. You will be on probation for six months, after which your employment will be confirmed in writing subject to satisfactory performance. During probation the notice period is 30 days; on confirmation it becomes 60 days.
Conditions. This offer is subject to verification of your educational certificates, a relieving letter from your current employer, and a satisfactory background check. Please bring the originals of the documents listed in Annexure B on your first day.
Kindly confirm your acceptance by signing and returning a copy of this letter by 14 September 2026. We look forward to having you on the team.
Yours sincerely,
Meera Krishnan
Head of Human Resources
Trilok Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Accepted: ______________________ Date: ____________
The offer letter, block by block
Top to bottom, in the order the reader meets it. Each block says what belongs there and what the Trilok Systems letter decided, so that you can decide differently on purpose rather than by omission.
- 01
The letterhead
The company’s legal name, the department issuing the letter, a postal address, and a working email and phone. It is the first thing that tells the candidate the offer is real.
Use the legal name as it appears on the certificate of incorporation, with its suffix — Pvt. Ltd., LLP, or the trade name of a sole proprietorship — rather than the brand or the product. The name on the letterhead is the party making the offer, and if the candidate ever needs to rely on the letter, that is the name that matters. The Trilok Systems letter names Human Resources as the issuing department, which quietly tells the candidate whom to reply to and whom to ring.
A founder hiring the first employees often has no letterhead. Make one: the company name, the registered or principal office address, a company email and a phone number, set at the top of the page. It does not need a logo. It does need to be the same letterhead on the offer, the appointment letter and every letter after it, because a candidate who receives two different letterheads from the same company starts checking whether the company exists.
- 02
The date, and optionally a reference
The date the letter is issued, written out in full. Larger companies add an offer or requisition number; a small company does not need one.
The date matters more on an offer letter than on most letters because the acceptance deadline is counted from it, and because the candidate will be measuring how long they have been sitting on the decision. Write it as the letter above does — 7 September 2026 — rather than 07/09/2026, which reads as 9 July in the American convention, and the candidate may well be comparing your letter with one from a company that uses it.
Date the letter on the day you actually send it. A letter dated Monday and emailed on Thursday has silently taken three days off a deadline that was already short, and the candidate will notice, because the deadline is the one line in the letter everybody reads twice.
- 03
The candidate’s name and address
The full name as it appears on their identity documents, with a courtesy title, and their current postal address — not the office they are about to leave.
The letter is addressed to Aarav Nair at his home in Kochi although he will work in Gurugram, because an offer letter goes to the person and not to a place of work that does not yet exist for them. Take the address from the application form or ask for it outright rather than lifting it from the resume; a candidate who has already moved cities for interviews often has a resume carrying the old one.
Spell the name exactly as it is on the PAN card or passport, since the same spelling has to travel through the appointment letter, the PF registration and the salary account. Getting it wrong here is a small thing that produces a correction email on the candidate’s first day and a vague feeling that the company does not look closely at paperwork.
- 04
The subject line
One line that says this is an offer of employment and names the designation. The reader should know what the letter is before reaching the salutation.
The subject in the letter above is the type of letter followed by the role, and that is the whole pattern. Do not put the CTC in the subject line, and do not put the team, the grade or the location; those belong in the body, where they can be qualified. The subject is what the candidate’s email client shows in the list and what a family member sees over their shoulder, so it should say offer and it should say the role, and nothing else.
Use the designation exactly as it will appear on the appointment letter and, years later, on the experience letter. A candidate offered a Data Analyst role, appointed as Analyst I and relieved as Associate Analyst holds three documents that disagree about what they did, and it is the employer who created that problem for them.
- 05
The opening and the offer sentence
A salutation by first name, a reference to the interviews, and then a single sentence that makes the offer: designation, team, reporting line, location, company.
The offer sentence in the Trilok Systems letter carries five facts — the role, the team it sits in, whom it reports to, the office, the company — and nothing else. That is deliberate. Everything a candidate wants to know first is in one sentence they can read aloud to somebody, and everything that needs qualifying — money, dates, conditions — is pushed below into headed paragraphs of its own. Do not let the first sentence run on into salary.
Name the reporting line by designation rather than by person: reporting to the Analytics Manager, not to a named individual. Managers leave, and the letter should not need reissuing when one does. Name the location as the office the candidate will actually sit in; if the role is remote or hybrid, say so in this sentence, because it is a term of the offer and not a detail for the onboarding call.
Opening with the interview dates does a quiet job: it ties the offer to a process the candidate remembers and signals that the letter was written for them rather than mail-merged. First-name salutation is right once you have interviewed someone twice, unless your company is formal enough that everyone is Mr. and Ms. in writing — in which case be formal everywhere, including the email the letter goes out in.
- 06
Compensation
The annual cost to company in numerals and in words, the split between fixed and variable pay, how and when the variable is paid, and a pointer to an annexure carrying the full structure.
The most common failure in Indian offer letters is a CTC figure with nothing behind it. The letter above gives the total, the fixed component, the variable component, and says the variable is performance-linked and paid annually. That is the minimum. A candidate who reads only a total assumes all of it is monthly salary; when the first payslip shows the employer’s PF contribution, a gratuity accrual and an insurance premium sitting inside the CTC, they feel misled, and the person who signed the letter is the one they feel misled by.
Put the full structure in an annexure — basic, HRA, other allowances, employer PF, gratuity, any insurance, the variable — and keep the letter itself to the headline numbers, as the Trilok Systems letter does with its Annexure A. The annexure can be a one-page table signed alongside the letter. Writing the figure in words as well as numerals is a convention borrowed from cheques for the same reason: it stops a misplaced comma from becoming a dispute.
If any part of the pay is discretionary, or depends on the company’s performance as well as the individual’s, say so in the letter and not only in the annexure. Variable pay that turns out to be discretionary is another reliable way to make a new joiner decide the offer letter was not honest with them.
- 07
Joining date, probation and notice
The date the candidate is expected to report, how long they will be on probation and what happens at its end, and the notice period on each side of confirmation.
A joining date is a real date with a day of the week, as in the letter above — not to be mutually agreed. The candidate needs it to resign, and their current employer needs it to compute their notice. If you are hiring somebody serving a long notice period, set the date after it ends; a candidate asked to join before their notice is complete is being asked to leave their employer badly, and they will remember who asked.
Six months’ probation with confirmation in writing, which the Trilok Systems letter uses, is common in Indian private companies; three months is common for junior roles and in start-ups. Whatever you choose, state it here and repeat it unchanged in the appointment letter. Say explicitly that confirmation will be communicated in writing, because otherwise the end of probation becomes an argument about whether silence meant yes.
Notice is the term candidates negotiate hardest after salary, so state both figures: during probation and after confirmation. Thirty and sixty days, as here, is a common pairing for mid-level roles; ninety days after confirmation is common in larger IT services companies and is one reason candidates coming from them ask for later joining dates. Keep the notice symmetrical — the same for either side — unless you have a specific reason not to, because a one-sided notice clause is the first thing a candidate’s friend in HR will point at.
- 08
Conditions of the offer
What the offer depends on: verification of certificates, a relieving letter from the current employer, a background check, sometimes a medical — and the list of documents to bring on day one.
Every condition you might later rely on has to be in this paragraph. The Trilok Systems letter names three — educational certificates, a relieving letter, a satisfactory background check — and points to Annexure B for the document list. If you would withdraw the offer over a failed reference or an undisclosed gap, the letter has to say the offer is subject to that check. An unstated condition is not a condition; to the candidate it is a change of mind.
Ask only for what you will actually check. A list of eleven documents, half of which nobody at your company will ever open, tells the candidate the letter was copied from somewhere. For a first hire at a small company, the degree certificate, the previous employer’s relieving letter and one identity proof are usually enough, and the letter should say when they are wanted — on the first day, as here, rather than before acceptance, when the candidate may not yet have the relieving letter to give.
If a service bond, a minimum tenure or a non-compete is part of the deal, it belongs here in plain words, not surfacing for the first time in the appointment letter three weeks later. Candidates who discover a bond after resigning from their previous job do not stay long. In practice, courts in India have generally enforced service bonds only to the extent of real training costs the employer can show, so a bond the letter does not explain is a bond that will be tested.
- 09
Acceptance, close and signature
How the candidate accepts, by when, who has signed for the company, and a line for the candidate’s countersignature and date.
The letter above gives a week and asks for a signed copy returned. Both are decisions worth making deliberately. Seven days is the common courtesy for an experienced hire; three to five working days is common for campus offers, where the institute’s timetable governs; anything under forty-eight hours reads as pressure, and good candidates walk. Say what acceptance looks like — a signed scan by email is the norm — so that a reply that just says happy to accept is not left ambiguous.
The letter is signed by the Head of Human Resources, with her name, designation and the company name under the signature. In a company without an HR head, the founder or a director signs, under a designation that plainly carries the authority to hire. Whoever signs should be somebody the candidate can reach; an offer signed by a name that never answers email is an offer the candidate has to take on faith.
The Accepted and Date line at the foot turns the letter into a two-party document the moment the candidate signs it. Leave room for it. The returned copy with that line filled is the record that the offer was accepted on a particular day, and it is what the appointment letter will refer back to in its first sentence.
The same letter for six other situations
The blocks stay; what changes is which of them carries the weight. Six cases an Indian employer meets regularly, and what moves in each.
An internship offer
Stipend replaces CTC — call it a stipend, not a salary, and give the monthly figure rather than an annual one. The two things an intern offer must state that a permanent offer does not are the duration, with a start and an end date, and whether the internship carries any commitment to a full-time role afterwards, which it usually should not promise. Drop probation and confirmation; state instead the notice either side gives to end the internship early, commonly a week or two. If the intern needs a completion certificate for their institute, say the company will issue one on completion, because that certificate is often the intern’s real reason for taking the position.
A campus offer to a final-year student
The joining date is the awkward block. The student cannot join until results are declared, and results slip, so the letter gives a tentative month and says the exact date will be confirmed once the degree is awarded — with the offer itself conditional on graduating, and often on a minimum aggregate. The acceptance deadline is usually the placement cell’s rather than yours, and the cell will want a copy. Because campus offers are made months before joining, say plainly whether the company reserves the right to defer the joining date and by how much. A deferred batch with no such clause in its letters is a breach of trust that the batch, and the next one, will talk about.
A contract or consultant engagement
This is not employment, and the letter must not read as if it were. Call it an engagement letter or a consulting agreement, state the fee — per month, per day or per deliverable — and that the consultant is responsible for their own taxes, with the company deducting tax at source as the law requires. There is no CTC, no probation, no PF and no leave; there is a term, a scope of work, deliverables, an exit clause and confidentiality. Do not describe reporting lines, working hours or attendance in the language of employment, because in practice that language is what turns a consultant into an employee when a dispute arises, whatever the heading of the letter says.
An offer with a joining bonus or relocation support
State the amount, when it is paid, and what triggers repayment. A joining bonus paid with the first salary and repayable in full if the employee leaves within twelve months is a common structure; say exactly that, including whether repayment is pro-rated. Relocation support is either a reimbursement up to a cap against bills or a fixed allowance, and the letter should say which. The Trilok Systems letter has neither. If Aarav had negotiated relocation from Kochi, it would sit as its own headed paragraph after Compensation, not inside the CTC figure, because it is a one-time payment and not part of his annual pay — and folding it into the CTC is how a candidate ends up believing their salary is higher than it is.
A revised offer after negotiation
Issue a fresh letter with a new date, and say in its first paragraph that it supersedes the offer dated such-and-such. Do not send an email saying the CTC is now a different figure and leave the original letter standing, because the candidate then holds two documents that disagree and the older one is the one that is signed. Everything that did not change is repeated in full: the revised letter is the complete offer, not a delta. If the negotiation moved the designation or the notice period as well as the money, this is where those changes are recorded, and the acceptance deadline is reset from the new date. A candidate who negotiated in good faith should get at least as long to accept the revision as they had for the original.
An offer for a part-time role
State the days or hours per week and the pay for that schedule — a monthly figure for the agreed hours, not a full-time CTC the candidate is left to pro-rate in their head. Say whether the role carries PF and other statutory benefits, which depends on the company’s coverage and the terms of the engagement, and whether leave accrues and how. Probation and notice still apply and are usually shorter. The reason to be exact is that part-time roles drift: the person is asked in for a fourth day, then a fifth, and without a letter that states the schedule nobody can point to what was agreed. If the arrangement may become full-time, say that a fresh letter will be issued when it does.
Offer letter versus appointment letter: where one stops
An offer letter is a proposal. It says what the company would like to do and asks the candidate to accept. An appointment letter is issued after acceptance, usually on or just before the joining date, and sets out the terms of employment in full — working hours, leave entitlement, transfer, confidentiality, termination, the code of conduct — often as numbered clauses. In practice the appointment letter is the employment contract; the offer letter is the summary that got the candidate to resign.
The two must agree. The appointment letter that follows the Trilok Systems offer repeats the designation, the CTC, the joining date, the probation and both notice periods word for word, then adds working hours, leave and confidentiality. If a term in the appointment letter is worse than the offer said — a longer notice, a smaller fixed component — the candidate has left their previous job on the strength of a document the company has now moved away from, and most will say so on their first day. Write the offer letter knowing every number in it will be copied into the appointment letter unchanged.
Small companies sometimes issue one combined document, an offer-cum-appointment letter, to save a step. It works if the candidate signs it before joining and if it carries the full terms; it fails when it is really an offer letter wearing an appointment letter’s heading, because then the terms that matter later — leave, termination, confidentiality — were never written down at all. If you are only ever going to write one letter, write the appointment letter and send it as the offer.
Issuing it: letterhead, PDF, signature
An offer letter is issued as a signed PDF attached to an email, and the email says two things: that the letter is attached, and how and by when to accept. Not as an editable document; not as text in the body of the email; not as a photograph of a printed page. A PDF with real text can be read on a phone, searched, printed by the candidate for their own file, and cannot be altered before it comes back signed. The candidate returns a signed scan or a clear photograph of the signed page, and the company acknowledges receipt by return email so that the acceptance date is fixed in writing on both sides.
It goes on the company letterhead, signed in ink or with a clear scanned signature by somebody with the authority to hire — the HR head, a director, the founder — with name and designation under the signature. A company seal or rubber stamp beside the signature is customary in some older companies and in public-sector bodies, and it is optional in a private company; its absence does not weaken the letter. Do not have it signed by the hiring manager alone unless the hiring manager is also the person authorised to commit the company to the salary, because a candidate who later negotiates will go to the signatory.
Keep together a copy of what was sent, the email it went in, and the signed copy that came back. This is the file the appointment letter is written from, and it is the file somebody will need if a term is disputed a year later. In a company of four, that file is a folder on the shared drive named after the candidate; it does not need to be anything more.
How much to write, and in what tone
One page, or one page and an annexure. The Trilok Systems letter fits on a single page with room for the signature block and the acceptance line, and it covers everything a candidate needs to resign with confidence. Anything longer than a page is usually an appointment letter that has wandered in; anything much shorter is usually missing the split, the probation or the conditions. Headed paragraphs — Compensation, Joining, Conditions — let the candidate find the figure they want to check without rereading the whole letter, and let the reader over their shoulder do the same.
The tone is warm at the two ends and exact in the middle. Pleased to offer at the start and looking forward to having you on the team at the end are sufficient warmth; the candidate has already met your people and does not need the letter to sell them the culture. In between, every sentence should state a fact the candidate could quote back. Adjectives are the enemy: a competitive salary is not a term, a reasonable notice period is not a term, and a candidate reading either will ask what it means and remember that you did not say.
Write it in English unless your company genuinely works in another language. The letter will be read by the candidate’s next employer during background verification, by a bank if they borrow on the strength of it, and possibly by a visa officer, and English is the one language all of those readers share. If the candidate would be more comfortable with a translation, send one alongside, marked as a translation, with the English letter as the letter.
Before it goes out
Check the numbers against the negotiation. The corrections HR executives most often have to send are revised letters because the CTC in the letter was the previous candidate’s, or the fixed and variable did not add up to the total, or the joining date was the one discussed before the candidate mentioned their notice period. Read the letter once as the candidate will: does every figure match what was said on the phone, and is there anything said on the phone that is not in the letter? A joining bonus, a laptop, a later start or a work-from-home day promised in conversation is not promised until it is in this letter.
Get the internal approval before, not after. In a company with an approval matrix, the letter is issued only once the requisition and the salary are signed off, because an offer withdrawn for lack of budget is the worst outcome for everybody, including the company’s standing on campus and in the candidate’s network. In a company of four, the approval is the founder deciding, and the discipline is simply not sending the letter the same evening as the final interview. Sleep on the number, then send it in the morning with the deadline counted from that day.
How offer letters go wrong
A CTC figure with nothing behind it
A total with no fixed and variable split and no annexure. The candidate assumes it is all monthly salary, the first payslip proves otherwise, and the offer letter is remembered as the document that misled them.
No deadline to accept
Without a date the offer is open indefinitely, the candidate uses it to negotiate elsewhere, and the company cannot in good conscience move to the next person. Give a date; a week is the common courtesy.
Joining date to be mutually decided
The candidate cannot resign on it and their current employer cannot count notice from it. A real date with a day of the week, moved by a revised letter if it has to move.
Appointment letter clauses pasted into the offer
Numbered clauses on transfer, working hours and termination make the offer three pages long and make the candidate feel they are signing the contract before they have said yes. Those belong in the appointment letter.
Promises made on the phone that never reached the letter
A joining bonus, a later start, a work-from-home day: if it is not in the letter it is not agreed, and the candidate discovers that on their first day from somebody who was not on the call.
Signed by nobody, or by the wrong person
An unsigned PDF, or one signed by a hiring manager with no authority over salary, is a letter the candidate has to take on faith. The HR head, a director or the founder signs, with their designation.
Sent as an editable document
A word-processor file can be changed before it is returned and renders differently on the candidate’s phone. A PDF with real text, signed, attached to an email that says how to accept.
Conditions that were never stated
Withdrawing an offer over a background check the letter never mentioned is, to the candidate, a change of mind. Every condition the company might rely on goes in the Conditions paragraph before the letter is sent.
Questions people actually ask
Is an offer letter legally binding in India?
An offer letter in India is commonly treated as binding once the candidate has accepted it in writing, because an offer, an acceptance and consideration are the ordinary ingredients of a contract and most employment lawyers would regard an accepted offer letter as one. Before acceptance it is a proposal, and either side may walk away from it. In practice, disputes over withdrawn or altered offers are rarely litigated, and courts have generally limited any remedy to actual loss rather than compelling a company to employ somebody, so the letter’s real force is evidential and reputational: it is the record of what was agreed.
What is the difference between an offer letter and an appointment letter?
An offer letter is the employer’s proposal, issued after the interviews and before the candidate has accepted; it states the designation, pay, joining date, probation, notice and conditions, and asks the candidate to accept by a date. An appointment letter is issued after acceptance, usually at or just before joining, and sets out the full terms of employment — working hours, leave, transfer, confidentiality, termination — as the contract the employee works under. The appointment letter repeats, and must agree with, every term the offer letter stated.
Can a company withdraw an offer letter after the candidate has accepted it?
A company can withdraw an accepted offer letter in India when a condition stated in the letter has failed — the background check, the certificate verification, the relieving letter — because the offer was expressly made subject to it. Withdrawing for a reason of the company’s own, such as a hiring freeze, is commonly regarded as a breach of the agreement the accepted letter created; in practice the candidate’s legal remedy is limited and rarely pursued, but the damage to the company’s standing with that candidate’s network and with campuses is real. Most companies that must withdraw an offer for their own reasons offer some compensation and say so in writing.
How long should a candidate be given to accept an offer letter?
Seven days to accept an offer letter is the common courtesy for an experienced hire in India, counted from the date the letter is sent, and it is what the Trilok Systems letter gives. Three to five working days is common for campus offers, where the institute’s placement rules often set the timetable, and forty-eight hours or less reads as pressure and loses good candidates. State the deadline as a date rather than a number of days, and say what acceptance looks like — a signed copy returned by email — so that a reply saying happy to accept is not left ambiguous.
Should the CTC break-up be in the offer letter or in an annexure?
The headline figures belong in the offer letter itself — the total annual CTC, the fixed component and the variable component, with how and when the variable is paid — and the full structure belongs in an annexure attached to it. The annexure lists basic, HRA, other allowances, the employer’s PF contribution, gratuity, any insurance premium and the variable, and is signed alongside the letter. Putting only a total in the letter is the most common reason a new joiner feels misled when the first payslip arrives.
Does an offer letter need a stamp or stamp paper?
An offer letter in India is issued on company letterhead and does not need to be on stamp paper; it is a letter, not a registered instrument. A company seal or rubber stamp beside the signature is customary in some older companies and in public bodies and is optional in a private company — its absence does not weaken the letter. What the letter does need is a dated signature by a person with the authority to hire, with their name and designation, and the candidate’s countersignature on the returned copy.
Who should sign an offer letter in a small company?
In a small company the offer letter is signed by the founder, a director or whoever holds the authority to commit the company to the salary in it, with their name and designation under the signature. In a company with an HR function it is signed by the head of HR or an HR manager, sometimes countersigned by the hiring manager. The test is whether the signatory can answer the candidate’s questions about the terms and can be reached by email, because the candidate will negotiate with, and later hold to account, the person whose name is on the letter.
Write the offer letter now, free
The maker opens on the Trilok Systems letter above. Put your company on the letterhead, the candidate’s details in the address, your figures under Compensation and your dates under Joining, delete what does not apply, and download a PDF ready to sign and send. No account, no watermark.
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