Formal Offer: Letter vs. Actual Contract

Formal Offer: Letter vs. Actual Contract

Anon (guest) 03 Jan 2011 23:02

What is the difference?

I'm expecting a formal offer in the form of a letter signed off by the dean & provost. My understanding is that it will detail all the terms of the offer (salary, start-up, teaching, moving expenses).

I have several other interviews scheduled, but I'll likely be accepting this offer. At what point can I be 100% confident that everything is lined up and I can cancel the other interviews?

Is just this letter enough? Or is there some type of contract I should be getting?

some_guy (guest) 04 Jan 2011 00:15

Interested to hear what others say as well, but from a business law stand point once you've received the formal offer (in whatever form it is letter or otherwise) and communicated back in kind that you've accepted you can now cancel the other interviews as you're now set to be an employee at X university.

some_guy (guest) 04 Jan 2011 00:18

forgot to say, once I received a "formal" offer over email. So yes, a letter is enough in the grand scheme of things.

overlyanon (guest) 04 Jan 2011 15:58

Ditto some_guy. This would be my take on it as well.

Anony (guest) 04 Jan 2011 15:25

I had the same situation. I got a verbal offer, that was then sent as an e-mail offer with details from the department head. The next step was the formal written offer, which came in the form of a letter. This letter was scanned and e-mailed to me, as well as sent via postal mail. When it arrived via postal mail, it came with an employee background form and a form authorizing them to use my SSN to put me on payroll. When I saw that, I felt pretty confident that this job was really going to happen. :) But, I never got an additional, more formal contract beyond the letter. The letter referred to itself as a contract, but there was none of the heavy legalese that I was expecting—simply an explanation of the terms of my salary, length of contract, and references to the faculty manual, which contains a lot of the expected legal stuff. Purportedly, the contract is binding once your signature is on it, so once you do that, I think you're safe to cancel the other interviews. At least, that's what I did! Congrats on the job!