Drafting an offer with grounded comp ranges

What the Draft Offer modal does

Once an applicant is worth an offer, the hardest number to get right is the base pay, and the easiest way to get it wrong is to guess. The Draft Offer modal reads your peer network's compensation data (or, when that's too thin, published research) for the role, shows it to you as a range instead of a single figure, and assembles the rest of the package (bonus target, truck, phone, health contribution, PTO, 401(k) match, and the fully burdened annual cost) around whatever base you land on. It also drafts three counter-offer scripts for the pushback moments that come up in almost every negotiation.

Verinode never tells you what to pay someone. It never hands you a single "correct" salary. What it does is put the same peer-benchmarked range in front of you that a fractional COO with visibility across the market would have, so your opening number is a deliberate choice inside (or outside) that range, not a shot in the dark. You pick the number. You send the offer from your own inbox.

Where to find it

Open Recruiting from the sidebar (/recruiting), go to the Applicants tab, and click into a scored applicant. On that applicant's Context tab, a Draft Offer button sits at the top right. Clicking it opens the modal, which immediately loads a grounded comp draft for that applicant's requisition.

While it loads, the modal reads "Pulling grounded comp + assembling package…". If the load fails outright, an error line appears above the content instead (for example, a network or server error message), and no draft renders until you close and retry.

Before you open it: the Legal Review flag

If the applicant's resume triggered a compliance flag (Verinode calls this the ban-the-box block internally, and displays it as a Legal Review Flag), the Draft Offer button is disabled. Hovering it shows "Clear the legal review flag before drafting an offer."

The flag itself renders above the applicant's other details as a bordered panel:

Legal Review Flag Criminal-history mention detected in the resume. Verinode has not scored this attribute. You review and decide before advancing.

This exists because criminal history is a protected consideration in most jurisdictions' ban-the-box and fair-chance hiring rules, and whether (and how) to weigh it is a legal and policy decision, not a scoring one. Verinode does not fold it into the applicant's overall score and does not resolve the flag for you. The same defense-in-depth applies to any resume text you read elsewhere on the applicant: age, disability, marital status, and other protected-class mentions are automatically redacted from displayed notes and work-history summaries before you ever see them. Clear the flag (meaning: complete your own documented review with counsel) once you've made a considered call, and the Draft Offer button unlocks.

The Peer Range

The first block in the modal is labeled Peer Range, showing three numbers side by side:

• p25, the pay level 25% of the comparison group falls below.
• p50, the midpoint, shown in copper and slightly larger than the other two, since it's the number most offers should center on.
• p75, the pay level 75% of the comparison group falls below.

Underneath, an italic attribution line explains where the range came from, and it can read one of a few ways depending on how much data is behind it:

• Peer-sourced, drawn from the anonymized wage data other operators have contributed for that role, scoped to your state where there's enough of a state-specific pool, or nationally otherwise. When this is the source, a sample-size note ("n=…") sits alongside it, so you can see roughly how much peer data the range rests on without Verinode ever showing you a single operator's number.
• Research-sourced, when peer contribution for that role and scope is too thin to responsibly show. Verinode falls back to a named published industry source instead of guessing, and the attribution line names that source.
• "requisition posted range (peer cohort thin)", when neither peer nor research data clears the bar. In this case the range you see is simply the Low/High you (or the Hiring Advisor) already posted on the requisition itself, with p50 computed as the midpoint. It's still a range, just not a network-benchmarked one.

If none of the three sources produce a range at all (no peer data, no research match, and no comp range on the requisition), the Peer Range block shows dashes, and a warning explains why (see Warnings below).

Wage data is one of the most re-identifying things an operator can contribute, so it carries the tightest privacy handling of any benchmark on the platform: Verinode never shows a single operator's compensation figure, only the aggregate range and its sample size, and peer comp visibility itself only unlocks once you're on a paid tier or have contributed your own compensation data (the same contribution-scoped dividend model behind every peer number on Verinode, see how benchmarks work).

Opening Base and Recompute

Below the range sits an Opening Base field, pre-filled with the range's p50 (rounded to the nearest dollar) the first time the modal loads. Type a different number and click Recompute to rebuild the rest of the draft, the bonus target and the burdened total, around that figure instead. The Peer Range itself doesn't move: it's a property of the role and location, not of the number you're testing.

Recompute validates what you type; anything that isn't a valid positive number (after stripping commas, dollar signs, and spaces) shows "Enter a valid opening base" instead of submitting.

Directly under the field, a plain reminder sets the frame for the whole exercise: staying inside p25 to p75 keeps you aligned with the peer cohort. Going above p75 signals you're making a premium hire, worth doing deliberately for a hard-to-fill role or an exceptional candidate. Going below p25 signals bargain-hunting, and it's flagged here because it's the move most likely to cost you the hire later through turnover.

Total Package

The Total Package block turns your chosen base into the full annual picture:

• Base, your opening number from above.
• Bonus Target, calculated as 5% of base.
• Truck Allowance and Phone Allowance, shown per month.
• Health Contribution, your employer contribution toward the employee's health coverage, per month.
• PTO, in days per year.
• 401(k) Match, as a percentage.
• Burdened Annual Total, set apart with a top border and shown in copper: your base grossed up by the burden rate, which is the fully-loaded cost of the position (payroll taxes, workers' comp, benefits load, and the rest) on top of the raw salary. A footer line under it states the burden percentage used.

The burden percentage comes from your own operator-level burden rate if you've set one; otherwise it falls back to a researched industry rate for the role, or a flat 28% placeholder if neither is available. Because burden is where "what you pay" and "what it actually costs you" diverge, this is the same net-cost lens Verinode uses everywhere else on the platform, see understanding your margin for how burden and true cost show up in your job-level margin.

Truck allowance, phone allowance, health contribution, PTO, and 401(k) match are populated with standard starting figures to give you a complete draft immediately, they are not read from your own benefits plan. Before you send an offer, swap in what you actually provide.

Warnings

When the grounded range or the underlying lookup runs into a problem, a warning banner appears above the Total Package block (bordered and tinted in the maintain-signal color). You'll see one of two messages depending on what went wrong:

• If the comp lookup itself failed (a transient error, not a data gap), the draft falls back to whatever range is posted on the requisition and flags that it did so.
• If there's genuinely no comp data anywhere, no peer range, no research match, and no comp range saved on the requisition itself, the warning says the offer can't be structurally grounded and tells you to add a comp range to the requisition first.

Either way, the fix for the second case is the same: go back to the requisition (Open Roles tab) and set a Low and High figure, then reopen Draft Offer.

Counter-Offer Scripts

The right-hand column holds three drafted scripts, one per common negotiation moment:

1. Candidate asks for more base. Anchors back to the peer-benchmarked number for the role and location, then redirects the conversation toward outcomes: what the candidate would commit to hitting in their first 90 days, tied to margin or cycle time, as the path to a faster comp review rather than a higher starting number.
2. Candidate compares a competing offer. Reframes the comparison away from base alone, toward the full burdened package (truck, phone, health, PTO, 401(k)), and asks the candidate to share their competing offer's full package so the comparison is apples to apples.
3. Candidate pushes on start date. Sets a standard two-week expectation (three if that's what a clean exit from their current employer requires), and offers to work a compressed ramp schedule with the crew lead if more time is genuinely needed.

Each script is a draft in your own voice to send from your own inbox, not an auto-send. Verinode never contacts a candidate directly, and the modal says so explicitly underneath the scripts: adjust the language to fit how you actually talk to people, then copy and send it yourself.

Copy Offer Package

The Copy Offer Package button in the modal's footer copies a plain-text summary to your clipboard: the applicant's name, the full total-package breakdown (base, bonus target, truck and phone allowances, health contribution, PTO, 401(k) match), the burdened annual total with its burden percentage, and the peer range with its attribution. Paste it into an email, an internal note, or wherever your offer paperwork starts. The button reads "Copied ✓" for a couple of seconds after you click it, then reverts.

How to use it

1. Score the applicant first (see reading Open Roles and applicant scores), so the modal has a real requisition and role to ground against.
2. Open Draft Offer and read the Peer Range and its attribution before touching anything, know whether you're looking at peer data, research, or a thin fallback.
3. Leave the Opening Base at p50 unless you have a specific reason to move it, and if you do move it, keep the p25 to p75 guidance in mind.
4. Read the Total Package burdened total, that's the number that actually hits your books, not the base alone.
5. Adjust the truck, phone, health, PTO, and 401(k) lines to match what you really offer before you send anything, they start as standard placeholders.
6. Use the counter-offer scripts as a starting draft for the conversation, not a script to read verbatim.
7. Copy the package and send the offer yourself, from your own inbox, in your own words.

Related articles

• Recruiting: overview and how the section works
• Open Roles and requisitions
• Drafting a new role with the Hiring Advisor
• Understanding your margin
• How benchmarks work