Create an account in less than 5 minutes! Sign up now »

image/svg+xml
Blog

A blog for entrepreneurs, innovators and changemakers to learn, scale and grow.

The Art of the Offer Call

Paije
Last updated: November 16, 2021
 •  8 min read

Like the rest of our recruiting process, our offer calls are intentionally unique, and form the critical last step in landing your next gig at Xendit.

The primary goal of the offer call is to align on goals, expectations and answer any questions on what it’s like to join the Xendit family. It’s also the last culture-fit check of the process to ensure that we all get along. In that sense, it’s a little bit like marriage counseling where the goal is to intentionally talk about the tough stuff and see if we all come out in one piece, and still in love!

Format

All Candidates have at least 1 offer call, however for the more complex situations (relocations, heavy negotiation, etc.) we may add in a few more as needed to ensure candidates are feeling comfortable and well informed to make their decision. 

The below topics are typically what gets covered in the offer process, but may occur over a few calls if needed.

  1. Trial Feedback

We love giving feedback for all of our trial candidates because, regardless how things pan out, we’ve all put a heap of effort into the relationship so far, and we want our candidates to succeed wherever they land. Trial feedback may take the form of a casual discussion, or a more structured document. 

Our snapshot view of candidates during the interview process, and particularly the trial process does give us a pretty good sense of where candidates excel and where we’d expect to see growth as they onboard to Xendit. Keep in mind that our goal is not to critique or take candidates down a notch, and sometimes we get our evaluations wrong – nobody’s perfect right? If we do get it wrong, then we hope it is considered as an opportunity to prove us wrong in the first few weeks at Xendit, instead of an insult 🙂

  1. Role Expectations

There’s nothing more rewarding than aligning on the future together! The relevant manager will usually take the candidate through the vision for the role, future goals and expectations. Our goal is to get candidates excited about the impact that they will be able to make at Xendit, the people they’ll be working with and their growth trajectory. Candidates are encouraged to fully participate in this dreaming process, ask questions and get on board the Xendit train.

  1. Candidate’s Package Expectations

As a global company, we’re present in a lot of markets and we value diversity highly. This means that we don’t necessarily have the “cookie cutter” salary packaging that is commonly seen in the bigger corporates.

There are two streams of thought at Xendit:

  • Where roles are more clearly defined, and there’s multiple people with the same job description, we can have some structure. This structure typically comes in the form of a “levels framework” in which we benchmark people internally at a specific skill level. The more people grow, the higher their level gets. This is most common in our engineering teams where people are specialized into skill sets and areas of expertise, and we are able to benchmark salaries both internally and externally to understand the market value of a candidate.
  • Where roles are more fluid, change regularly, or the first of their kind at Xendit, we have the opportunity to be a little more flexible. This is much more common in the Business side of the org, especially if we’re bringing in talent from different fields of work entirely! In this space, we do our best to understand external market drivers, and benchmark ROI internally to other equivalent skillsets or deliverables. We like to get creative 🙂

We know that talking about current package information can be taboo in some regions, so we’ll never pressure candidates to share what they aren’t comfortable with. But we will generally ask two questions: 

  1. What is your current package?
  2. What are you hoping for at Xendit?

Not everyone is great at negotiating – with this framework for discussion, we are better able to look after the quieter folks who aren’t comfortable in a fully fledged negotiation. In fact, we don’t really like the sport of negotiating when it comes to offers so will tend to steer conversations away from the game, and towards clear justifications and real needs.

The more open candidates can be with us, the more we will be able to meet both the candidate’s and Xendit’s needs. 

At the very least, we expect all candidates to be able to clearly articulate what package they are hoping to receive from Xendit, and (importantly) be able to explain why.

Being open, honest and transparent are some of our key values at Xendit – and we expect to see these traits shining through during the offer process.

  1. Xendit life perks & package discussion

In this final call component, we get to share all of the cool things there are to know about Xendit – where possible, we’ll do our best to talk through areas that really matter to that specific candidate. This is really an “ask me anything” section of the call where it’s all fair game. We want candidates to feel at ease and very confident in their choice to join Xendit by the end of the call.

Life@Xendit Perks

This is where we get to brag a bit about our culture and how that impacts life at Xendit. We’ll talk about our highly flexible leave policy, unique-to-you work schedule, awesome food at HQ, stellar health insurance options and the social lives of our xenpeeps.

Travel Requirements

If applicable, we’ll talk about any travel requirements specific to the role. We just LOVE it when we get to hang out face to face, accept ping pong challenges and blow off some steam with a game or sport. While Xendit is entirely remote enabled, and we have offices across several countries, we encourage everyone to visit HQ in Jakarta whenever possible to help forge bonds that stand the test of time.

Most people within the asia region will travel monthly, while those from a little further away will do more substantial quarterly trips. We’ll confirm here what frequency and duration will work for your personal life as well as the team to ensure the optimum arrangement. And don’t worry – we’re pretty flexible!

The Numbers

Naturally, we’ll dive into the specific numbers and package configuration that Xendit can make work, in alignment with the candidate expectations. Our hope is that we can quickly and openly reach a set of numbers that look after both the candidate AND Xendit. Everyone needs to live to see another day, so we expect that candidates won’t “over ask” in an effort to get more money – in the same way that Xendit will not “low ball” the offer in order to get a cheap hire. 

The Xendit family relationship starts right here, where everyone looks out for the other person’s interests.

We’ll also talk through all the nitty gritty as required from how taxes/regulatory contributions work for that market, what happens with work visas, relocations, and anything else that comes to mind!

As long as the candidate hasn’t thrown us any curve balls, our goal will be to reach generally suitable offer terms by the end of the call. After that, it’s all a matter of getting formal approval from the Founders and sending over the official offer letter for signing!

When Can I Start??!

We’re all SO EXCITED at this point – but we know sometimes there’s a few pesky things to sort through that can slow things down. It’s all about open communication, and we’ll find a way! Here’s some things we consider:

  1. How long is the candidate’s notice period (if applicable)
  2. Is there a way to shorten the notice period (e.g. utilize some unused annual leave)
  3. Does the candidate need a longer notice period in order to properly transition out of their last role?
  4. Does the candidate need a few days to reset/move house/etc. between their last day at the prior employer and their first day at Xendit?
  5. Is there a work visa required and how long will it take to obtain it?

At Xendit, we love having our new people start on a Monday – this is because inductions sessions are way more fun in a group, and it can be nice to have a ‘cohort’ to start with! Having said that, if that doesn’t work, we can make alternate arrangements!

Candidates should feel free to openly discuss any requirements they have, so that we can reach the most mutually beneficial timing.

Establish Next Steps

Once we’ve knuckled down some information and had a good chat, we like to lay out next steps to keep the momentum going!

  1. Establish if there’s any pending questions that need answering for either party
  2. Xendit will provide a timeline to get final approval & issue the formal offer letter (this usually takes 24-48 hours)
  3. Candidates agree to a rough timeline to accept/deny/revert with thoughts – we are more than happy to be flexible if needed, but feel it’s best to have an agreed timeline to work towards. Typically, our offers are only valid for ~1 week unless otherwise discussed

Once the official Offer letter has been signed by the candidate, Xendit HR will start the onboarding process which includes collection of personal information, preparing a contract/NDA, and scheduling activities for Day 1. 

Meta Goals of the offer call

Final culture check

The offer call is where we really get to see the candidate’s culture and fit for Xendit in action. The way candidates position expectations and explain rationale are all excellent examples of how they think, operate and communicate. More than that, this is the moment where we discover what really is the most important thing to the candidate. 

A cautionary tale: we’ve had candidates tell us that growth and development are their primary drivers throughout the recruitment process, only to find during the offer call that those opportunities held very little weight when it really came down to it. Needless to say, that final culture check didn’t quite go as planned. The lesson to learn from this is to consistently present your true self and motivations throughout the entire process – we love people who are genuine, honest and transparent and are always looking for these qualities to shine through at every step along the way!

I mentioned justification of expectations and positioning – let’s dive into that too. We’re all highly data driven in our decision-making across the organisation, so it stands to reason that we’re looking for people that have a similar passion for data. When candidates request a specific salary increase or amount, the very next question from Xendit will inevitably be “Why? What is driving that request?” – I strongly recommend that all candidates have a great reason to back their requests, such as market data or a competing offer. 

Surviving to live another day

Looking after our candidates (and future family) is a position that we don’t take lightly- yep, even the quiet ones who don’t know how to negotiate yet. Rest assured that if a candidate is not asking for the right things, their manager is going to go to bat for them. We do this at the offer stage, all the way through to our 6 monthly performance reviews. We are not here to get free labour or take advantage of others – where we see genuine value, cultural alignment and outsized impact, we aren’t afraid to make significant adjustments, or help negotiate someone’s offer up to a more appropriate market value.

We hope our candidates look after Xendit too! After all, we all want a company that will stand the test of time and keep succeeding – sometimes, that means not taking home quite as much cash as can be squeezed out of another company. A great way to get the best of both worlds is to negotiate a bonus – this shows that you’re willing to put your money where your mouth is by betting on your own performance, while reducing the early risk to Xendit. Another way is to take advantage of our ESOP program in lieu of cash – this demonstrates your commitment to the achievement of Xendit’s goals, and over time should deliver outsized value back to us all.

Remember! Be yourself, be genuine, be open, be honest – from there, anything is possible!

Learn more about payments in Indonesia

Understanding the opportunities and challenges of the local market is key to staging an effective entrance.

Related posts