Notes for owners · Branding and communication
What candidates check about a company before they accept an offer
Review sites, LinkedIn, former colleagues, your office and your offer letter: where a candidate looks before saying yes, and a short walk-through to see your own company as they do.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
On this page
Your candidate has the offer letter and has not signed. Over the next two evenings they may look you up in five places and compare what each says with what the recruiter told them. A gap between any two can make a person decline, and they may not tell you why. The places are a review site or Google, LinkedIn, a former colleague's phone, your careers page and posts, and your office or plant. The offer letter itself is a sixth.
What the candidate looks for in each place
| Where | What they are trying to find out | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| Review sites and Google | Would someone like me stay? Why did people leave? | Read every review of your name once, as a stranger |
| Who works here, for how long, and where did they go? | Check your own team's profiles describe their roles truthfully | |
| A former colleague | The real story, in two minutes | Nothing now. Be a place people can speak well of |
| Careers page and posts | Do pay, place and process match the call? | Keep them consistent with the offer |
| Office or plant | Do the people look as if they want to be here? | Let them meet the team, not only the interviewer |
| The offer letter | Is anything in here new to me? | Read it as a stranger |
The third row is the one you can influence least. A candidate who knows someone who left you may well phone them. What that person says depends on how they left, so how you treat people on their last day is part of your hiring.
The offer letter
The offer letter can undo a good interview. A clause on probation, notice period, variable pay, a bond or a shift pattern that appears for the first time in the letter feels like a trap, even if it is standard practice.
List every term in your letter and ask when the candidate first heard it. Anything first heard at the offer stage should move earlier, to the first call or the job post. Your own adviser can tell you which terms are lawful and customary in your sector. Your job is narrower. Nothing in the letter should come as a surprise, and that is the whole test.
| Term | Say it by |
|---|---|
| Pay, fixed and variable | The job post |
| Shift and working days | The job post |
| Probation length | The first call |
| Notice period | The first call |
| Anything unusual, such as a bond or training cost recovery | The first call, in writing |
| Reporting manager | The interview |
One evening in Kozhikode
This is an invented case, not a client. A digital agency of about twenty people hires a graphic designer. The candidate liked the interview with the creative head. Two days after the offer, the candidate looks up the agency.
On Google there are two reviews. One says designers are expected to finish client work in the evening when a campaign is due. On LinkedIn, four designers left within a year. A friend of a friend who left rings back and says the creative head is excellent, the founder changes briefs late, and unpaid evenings are normal at launch time. The careers page says "flexible hours". The offer letter has a three-month notice period nobody mentioned.
The candidate declines. The founder assumes it was a better offer elsewhere.
None of the evening work was unusual for an agency. What put the candidate off was the page saying "flexible" while the reviews and the friend said otherwise, and the notice period appearing from nowhere.
The agency made three changes. The careers page now says that launch weeks run long and describes how time off follows. The notice period is stated in the job post and on the first call. And the founder wrote down how late brief changes are handled, then told the next candidate in the interview. The next offer was still declined, this time over pay, which none of the three changes could touch. The review replies are a separate job, covered in how to handle bad employee reviews online.
A walk-through for you to do
Give an afternoon to this, or hand it to someone outside your team.
- Search your company name plus "reviews", "salary" and "jobs". Note what is on page one and what is missing.
- Open the review page on your phone, since many candidates will read it there.
- Open your careers page and one job post. Write down the pay, place and process they state.
- Ask your recruiter to describe the role aloud. Compare it with the post.
- Find three people who left in the last two years and look at where they went. Do not contact them yet.
- Walk in as a candidate would. Is reception told someone is coming?
- Read your draft offer letter and mark every term the candidate has not seen before.
Limits
You cannot control what former employees write, and you should not try. Ask a site to remove a review only if it breaks that site's rules, for example by naming a private person or including abuse. Do not write anonymous praise yourself; it is dishonest and, once noticed, costs more than it earns.
This checking is lighter for walk-in and shop-floor roles, where the candidate often knows people inside already. It matters most for roles where a person holds several offers: design, sales, accounts and technical staff.
Make what they find match what you say
Run the seven steps before the next offer goes out, and fix the one gap that would make you decline. The employer branding hub links the rest. If you want the whole picture looked at, online reputation management covers the review side, and you can tell us what you need.
