In a discussion with one of my fellow HR professionals; she was telling me about a new idea her boss came up with to expedite offer letter processing within HR office to reduce preparation time before it takes the long wait of approval and signature.

The talk about this spur my HR neuros; I did what we all do shake my mind muscle and cleared a space; getting ready to absorb fresh feed; she continued saying “A PROGRAM”; the moment she stated this word; my mind started imagining “COST”, “LABOR”,” LEARNING CURVE”; I kept quiet letting her finish to gain a better understanding of “THE PROGRAM”, may be I’m wrong.

Her second word was “HANDMADE”; that made me change my mind; saying “WHY JUDGE QUICKLY”; I stretched the memory space and kept listening; thereafter “A PROGRAM HANDMADE BY A PROGRAMMER TO PRODUCE OFFER LETTERS WITH TAILORED MADE CONDITIONED TO OUR COMPANY” And the following conversation happened:

ME: So do you have to encode all the candidate details?
HER: Yes, candidates and conditions in every contract.
ME: What was the cost of that freelancer programmer who did this?
HER: around 10,000 $
ME: Can I see it?

Quickly she opened her laptop and I saw a standalone application looks like an executable MS access program, blue color, big buttons, check boxes, selection drop menus and lots of input fields.

ME: Can we try to make an offer letter?
HER: Sure, let’s do a trial

I timed out how long it took to get a PDF version or a printable version using the 10k program; after 10 minutes, the offer letter was ready in PDF mode.

I was comparing the highly paid software to my practices in HR office, which takes 3 MINS with no additional investment or labor it only need MS Word, Excel and some knowledge.

When I started my career and I was asked to prepare offer letters, I was doing the best and the fastest I could one by one; I was vulnerable to frequent mistakes due to change in conditions, special condition and boredom; it didn’t change when I became the manager I was also reviewing one by one and catching the same mistakes I was caught.

I ACTULLY DIDN’T DO THAT


LEARN THIS THERAPY AND NEVER WORRY AGAIN ABOUT OFFER LETTER PREPARATION TIME


A technique that I taught every recruitment executive I worked with, and till date been used over the years with the same efficiency, here are the steps:

Step 1: GROUND WORK
Prepare a basic offer letter or may be two (line staff / manager), if you gain the skill you may not need to prepare two and one would be enough.

Step 2: DEFINE VARIABLES Highlight all parts of the contracts that changes every time a contract being prepared, which can be anything related to your individual property.

Step 3: CREATE AN EXCEL SHEET
Title your variables to be the header in every column in the excel sheet starting from the first column cell reference [A1]. After you complete save the file in the same location of offer letter.

Step 4: OPEN OFFER LETTER IN WORD
Open the standard offer letter and follow this step to convert it to dynamic mailing letter

Next:

Choose the excel sheet that contains all the variables and make sure the ticket box is clicked

Once this step is completed couple of other options will get activated as shown in below image, select insert merge field and a list of all variables will be visible, ready for insert.

Select the areas you highlight earlier and upon selection insert the variable from the merge menu to the corresponding field, you should end up with something similar to below image; make sure you format the insert field as you wanted printed in your final offer letter.

Next: Finish and merge
Those were the simple basic link between excel and word to convert your offer letter dynamically linked to your variable sheet, though there are more into it than just a link! This offer letter episode will continue to cover a full offer letter preparation that would take only 3 mins to produce and the more you have to produce the easier it gets.