What Happens After You Sign an Offer Letter?

What happens after you sign an offer letter? There are two main distinctions. One, a professional could be given an offer letter and that’s it. There’s no employment contract that follows. It’s just you kind of agree to the terms of the offer letter, and then you start the job. And then the second way would be the employer asking the potential employee to sign an offer letter, agreeing to basic terms. And then at that point, they’ll incorporate those terms into an employment agreement, offer the employment agreement to the prospective employee, and then that person needs to decide if they want to sign the employment agreement and then move forward with the relationship. Let’s first go with, if you begin an offer letter with no employment agreement to follow.

In that scenario, you’re most likely in an at-will employment relationship, meaning, the agreement or the employment relationship can be terminated at any time, for any reason, with no notice, unless it’s specified in the offer letter. And then, for the most part, there wouldn’t be any kind of restrictive covenants that follow the employment relationship ends. Restrictive covenants could include a non-solicitation agreement and a non-compete. Those are the two most common or the two that matter the most for most employees. If you do negotiate, they provide you an offer letter that just goes through basic things, such as compensation, benefits, start date, and that’s about it. I would say most licensed professionals usually would sign employment agreement. Attorneys don’t for the most part, but almost anyone in healthcare, physicians, nurse practitioners, PAs, vets, chiropractors, dentists, always sign employment agreement.

Let’s say you’re in another situation where they give you an offer letter, you agree to the terms, and then they’ll follow up the employment agreement. Now, many people ask, alright, what if I’ve signed the offer letter, but then when they give me the employment agreement, it doesn’t look so great. Do I have to go through with the job? The answer is no.  Unless there’s strange language in the offer letter that states that it’s binding, which would almost never happen if they’re going to follow up with an employment agreement. You can still negotiate terms. Let me just give you an example. Let’s say in the offer letter, it just states there’s a non-compete, but it doesn’t have any of the details of it.

So, you get the contract and then you look in the non-compete and it’s five years and covers an entire state, right? Like you will absolutely have to move out of the state if you want to continue in your profession. Well, obviously, that’s not a reasonable non-compete, but that could make a job that may have looked great at a hundred thousand a year be only worth 200,000 a year if you’re going to accept that terrible non-compete. Even if you’ve accepted the terms of the offer letter, it doesn’t mean you have to go through and execute the employment agreement. The employer is probably going to hem and haw about, well, you agreed to the terms and now you’re coming back to us. So, I find it is most effective if you can provide some context as to why it did look good at the beginning, but after reading the actual details of the employment agreement, it’s not so good.

I think most smart employers can understand that and appreciate that. If you just simply come back at them and say, no, now I want to double the salary or double the bonus or whatever it is without providing any context at all, I’m going to assume the employer is not going to be pleased with that and may even pull the offer. So, what happens when you sign an offer letter? First, an employment agreement will likely follow, and then you’ll have to determine if you want to go through with that or they’ll just give you the offer letter. It’s kind of an at-will relationship and you can leave at any time and there likely aren’t any strings attached to it at all.