From offer accepted to the onboarding handoff

When a candidate accepts an offer, recruitment’s job is not to narrate day-one onboarding. It is to hand a defined packet to whoever owns activation: identity, role, compensation, joining date, and documents already collected. This page stops at that seam. The pipeline after handoff — creating the employee, collecting remaining papers, access, and “active” — stays on hire-to-activate onboarding. Stage-by-stage hiring operations stay on the recruitment hiring checklist. Product surfaces: Dayzen recruitment (including offer templates) and Dayzen onboarding (new-joiner pipeline).

If the packet is a PDF in a chat thread and a first name, onboarding will invent a second person. Missing identity is how you get duplicate employee records: a candidate row and a freshly typed employee who are the same human.

Accepted offer is a set of facts, not a mood

Verbal “they said yes” is not a handoff. The recruitment record should show, at minimum:

• Which job or requisition was offered.
• That an offer was issued (template, version, date).
• That the candidate accepted (date, and the channel you treat as binding internally — signed letter, portal accept, or written email you filed).
• The facts the offer contained: role title, reporting line if you stated it, CTC or the pay structure you committed, joining date, work location or remote pattern if it was part of the deal.

Dayzen recruitment includes offer templates so those fields are not reinvented in a freeform letter every time. A template does not replace approval. If your company requires a salary approver, that approval belongs on the offer before you call it accepted. The hiring checklist can list who signs; this page only requires that the signed result is in the packet.

Do not treat “Offer” on a pipeline board as the packet. Pipeline stages are candidate states; the handoff is a document of facts those states should already hold. Designing the columns is a sibling topic. Here you export what onboarding must not retype from memory.

The packet: five bundles onboarding should not have to guess

1. Identity

Onboarding will create or convert an employee on a unique person. Recruitment must pass the keys you already collected, with the same spelling you will search later:

• Legal name as on the offer (and the name they applied under, if different).
• Personal email and phone that actually reach them.
• Candidate or application ID from the ATS or recruitment record.
• Date of birth if you already collected it for the offer or background step.
• Identity numbers you already hold for a stated purpose (for example PAN where you collect it at offer). Do not use the handoff to invent a new document hunt that onboarding already owns.

If two of those keys are blank, stop and complete them before you open an add-employee wizard. Search the employee directory — including exited people — before anyone creates a row. Rehires especially: the packet should say “former employee ID X,” not “new hire.” The duplicate-records article is the failure mode when this search is skipped.

2. Role

Pass the internal role, not only the posting title. Onboarding and payroll need department, designation, employee type (full-time, intern, contract — as you actually classify), reporting manager, and work location or entity. If the public ad said “Growth ninja” and the offer said “Senior executive — sales,” the packet uses the offer. Job description versus posting is a different distinction; the handoff uses the internal spec and the signed offer, not the marketing headline.

3. CTC and pay structure

Hand the compensation the offer committed: CTC, and the break-up you showed the candidate if you showed one (basic, HRA, allowances, as in your template). Variable pay should be labelled as variable, with the period it refers to, so payroll does not treat a joining bonus as monthly. Do not turn this page into a salary-structure essay. Onboarding and payroll need the numbers and labels that were offered, not a new CTC invented at joining because “finance will finalise.” If finance must still confirm a code or cost centre, put that as a named open item in the packet — not as a blank CTC.

Dayzen payroll will calculate from the employee’s structure later. The handoff’s job is that the structure someone types matches the offer, not that recruitment runs payroll.

4. Joining date

One date, in writing, with timezone implicit to the work location. If the date slipped after accept, update the packet before onboarding schedules assets and access. A delayed joiner is a status on the same person. Creating a second employee because the first profile “isn’t active yet” is a classic duplicate. If the candidate cannot join on the offered date, recruitment owns the renegotiation; onboarding should not guess a Monday.

Also pass last working day at the previous employer only if you collected it and it affects your joining logistics. Do not delay the whole packet for a relieving letter that onboarding will collect as a document task after handoff — unless your policy says no employee row until that paper exists. If that is the policy, write it; do not leave it as a silent fight between TA and HR.

5. Documents already collected

List what recruitment already has, with a pointer to the file store or ATS attachments: signed offer, application form, CV, ID copies you took at offer, any background-check report you already received. Onboarding’s remaining checklist should start from the gap, not from zero. Duplicate uploads of the same PAN image under two people are a symptom that identity was not shared.

Do not dump every email in the thread. Curate. A 40-message CC chain is not a packet.

Who hands off, who accepts, and when the requisition may close

Name two roles. Recruitment (or the recruiter of record) prepares the packet. HR operations or the onboarding owner accepts it — meaning they confirm the five bundles are present enough to start hire-to-activate without inventing keys. Acceptance is a dated event. Chat “please onboard them” is not acceptance.

Until acceptance, the candidate can still be in Offer/Hired in recruitment without an employee identity. After acceptance, recruitment should not keep editing CTC in a side letter that onboarding never sees. Changes go through a written revision both sides file.

Closing the job requisition is related but not identical. You may close the opening when hired is certain, even if the packet is still being packed. You should not close it in a way that deletes the candidate identity onboarding still needs. Archive the job; keep the person.

The hiring checklist covers sourcing through offer as ops steps. Use it so the offer that was accepted is the offer that was approved. This page does not replay those steps. It asks whether the result is portable.

What this page refuses to retell

Hire-to-activate owns:

• Converting or creating the employee record on one identity.
• The remaining document list and verification you require to mark someone active.
• Provisioning that is not recruitment’s (email, attendance enrolment, payroll structure in the HRMS, assets).
• Day-one and first-week tasks in the new-joiner pipeline.

Dayzen onboarding includes that new-joiner pipeline. Do not copy its stages into a “TA onboarding” mini-board that never syncs. Recruitment may complete pre-boarding document collection as part of the packet. Once the packet is accepted, further tasks are onboarding’s, even if the same human in a small company wears both hats. The hat change is the point of the seam: same operator, different object (candidate versus employee).

Failure modes at the seam

Symptom	Usual missing packet field	What to do
Two profiles, one human	Candidate ID, emails, prior employee ID	Search, then convert; see duplicate employee records
Payroll CTC ≠ offer	Break-up and variable labels	Do not activate pay structure from a verbal recap
Laptop ordered for the wrong Monday	Joining date after a slip	Revise packet; do not create a second joiner
Manager unknown on day one	Reporting line on the offer	Block acceptance until role bundle is complete
Documents re-collected in panic	Inventory of what TA already holds	Pass pointers; onboarding lists only the gap

Background checks that are still in flight can be an open item in the packet with an owner. They should not be an excuse to skip identity keys. You can onboard with a named pending check if policy allows; you cannot onboard safely with no email and no application ID.

A packet checklist you can paste into the ATS note

1. Application / candidate ID; legal name; personal email; phone; former employee ID if any.
2. Requisition ID; internal designation; department; entity; location; manager.
3. Offer template name and date; acceptance date; CTC and structure as offered; joining date.
4. Attachments already on file, listed by type.
5. Open items (pending check, cost centre, laptop) with owners — not blanks in identity.
6. Onboarding owner acceptance date.

If item 1 is weak, do not compensate by writing a longer essay in item 6. Identity first. The duplicate-records article exists because teams skip that search when they are busy celebrating an accept.

Handoff is complete when onboarding can find one person and one start date without opening recruitment’s inbox. Everything after that is hire-to-activate, not a longer offer email.

Keep Dayzen offer templates as the recruitment-side container for what was promised. Keep the onboarding new-joiner pipeline as the work after the packet is accepted. Link the hiring checklist for how you got to a clean offer. Stop this article at the seam so you do not maintain two onboarding guides.