You have the written offer in front of you. What do you check before you sign it?

The document is the only durable record

Everything encouraging that was said during the process was said by people whose roles can change. Managers move, recruiters leave, policies get rewritten, and the reorganisation that dissolves your team was not anticipated by anyone who spoke to you. What remains is the signed paper and whatever policy documents it incorporates by reference. So the work at this stage is unglamorous reconciliation: put your notes from the calls beside the offer and find every place they differ.

Differences are usually not deception. Offer letters are generated from templates, and a recruiter relaying a hiring manager's intention through an HR system loses detail. That is precisely why you check — the errors are ordinary, and ordinary errors become your problem in month seven.

Reconcile the numbers first

Read the compensation breakdown as components rather than as a total. Fixed base is the figure that matters most, because notice-period pay, next year's percentage rise and often loan eligibility are all computed from it, so a total that is reached by inflating other lines is structurally weaker than the same total with a higher base.

Then look at how the variable component is defined, which is where the largest quiet gap usually sits. A bonus described in conversation as "twenty percent" can appear in the letter as a target subject to company performance, individual rating and being in employment on the payout date. Each of those conditions is a different risk. Ask what percentage of target was paid in the last two cycles, whether the first year is prorated from your joining date, and whether you receive anything if you resign before the payout month.

Any joining bonus, retention payment or relocation support needs the same treatment: is it paid once or in instalments, and is it repayable if you leave within a period. A repayable amount is not a benefit, it is a constraint with a number attached, and the number is worth knowing before you sign rather than when you next want to move.

For equity, the letter should tell you the grant, the vesting schedule and the cliff, and whether it is stock or options. If the detail lives in a separate plan document, ask for that document. It is normal to receive it.

Clauses to read slowly

Several standard clauses are worth reading carefully, not because they are unusual but because their effect depends on details that are easy to skim past. What any of them can actually do to you depends on your jurisdiction and on the agreement itself, and those differ enough that the only sensible position is to check rather than assume. Where a clause carries real money or would constrain your next move, it is worth paying for an hour of local legal advice; that is a cheap decision at the scale of an annual salary.

Clause	What to establish
Probation	Its length, and what notice applies during it on both sides
Notice period	The number after probation, and whether it differs by who resigns
Variable pay	The conditions attached, and who decides them
Clawback or bond	The amount, the period, and whether it is pro-rated
Work location	Whether a specific office is named, and who may change it
Intellectual property	What is assigned, and how personal or open-source projects are treated
Restrictive covenants	The scope and duration of any non-compete or non-solicit wording
Referenced policies	Which documents the letter incorporates that you have not seen

The last row is the one candidates skip entirely. An offer that binds you to the employee handbook, the leave policy and the attendance policy has bound you to documents you can ask to read, and asking is not an odd request. The intellectual-property clause deserves a look for anyone who writes code outside work, because the boundary it draws varies considerably between employers and between jurisdictions.

Get the verbal arrangement written down

If something material was agreed in conversation and does not appear in the letter, it does not yet exist in any form that outlasts the person who agreed it. The list of things that reliably fall through this gap is short and predictable: a fully remote or reduced-office arrangement in a company with a hybrid policy, a start date later than the default, a title, a pre-booked holiday, a review at a defined point, a promise about which team you join.

Ask for these in one message rather than three, and ask in a way that is easy to say yes to.

"Thank you — I am ready to accept. Two things to line up with what we discussed. The letter names the Pune office; we had agreed I would be based in Bengaluru and travel monthly, so could that be reflected? And I have leave booked from the twelfth to the twentieth of next month, which I mentioned to Priya — happy for it to be unpaid. Once those are in, I will sign the same day."

That is specific, it names the person who agreed each item, it offers a concession, and it ends with a commitment. Recruiters process requests like this routinely. What they cannot process is "can you make it more flexible", which has no action attached.

If a request is refused, the refusal is itself information. A company that will not write down an arrangement it says it is happy with is telling you how much the arrangement is worth.

Asking without becoming a problem

Tone decides how this lands. Every question should be framed as clarification of the document rather than suspicion of the people, because you will be working with the recruiter's colleagues shortly. Batch your questions into one email or one call, be explicit that you intend to accept, and give a date by which you will sign.

The one thing not to do is sign first and ask afterwards. Once the letter is signed, every item you wanted becomes a favour rather than a condition, and the leverage you had — a role that is still unfilled and a panel that has chosen you — is spent. That window is narrow and it closes on your signature.