A Claude Skill that takes a candidate’s full interview record plus the role’s internal compensation band and produces an offer-prep brief — recommended offer composition, anticipated negotiation, candidate-specific closing strategy, and an explicit escalation flag when the recommendation needs comp-committee review. Replaces the typical “we’ll figure out the offer when we get there” approach with a 15-minute structured prep that materially improves offer acceptance rate on senior hires without training the team to chase unverified competing-offer claims.
The Skill is designed to be the recruiter’s pre-call brief, not the offer itself. It produces a recommendation the recruiter and hiring manager review; where the recommendation falls outside band, posted-range, or internal-equity guardrails, the brief sets escalation: comp-committee and stops. That escalation behaviour is the point — a comp tool that always returns a number trains the team to ignore it the first time the number is wrong.
When to use
Use the Skill before the recruiter opens the offer conversation, once the hiring manager has signed off “yes, we want to make an offer to this person.” Typical triggers:
Senior+ IC roles, all manager+ roles.
Any role where the band has more than 15 percent spread between floor and ceiling.
Any role where competing-offer signal has surfaced during the loop.
Any hire in a posted-pay-range jurisdiction (CA, CO, NY, WA, IL, and others), where mis-placing the offer outside the posted range creates legal exposure.
The Skill loads the role’s comp band, the candidate’s interview record, and any competing-offer evidence the recruiter has captured. It returns a markdown brief covering composition, rationale, anticipated pushback, closing strategy, and either a within-band recommendation or a comp-committee escalation with the triggering criteria named.
When NOT to use
Auto-extending offers without human review. The output is a brief. The recruiter and hiring manager — and where required, the comp committee — approve before any number reaches the candidate. The Skill never produces send-ready offer-letter language.
Customer-facing or candidate-facing comms about competing offers. The Skill reasons about competing-offer signal internally to size the recommendation. It does not draft messages to the candidate that reference, validate, or counter a competing offer — that is a recruiter judgment call, often a legal one.
Replacing the comp committee on above-band recommendations. Any recommendation that lands above the published band, outside posted pay-range jurisdictions, or that creates a new internal-equity exception triggers comp-committee escalation. The Skill does not pre-decide what the committee should approve.
Reasoning over current-salary anchors. Asking for or anchoring against the candidate’s current employer salary is illegal in many US states and several EU jurisdictions. The Skill’s method does not request or accept a current-salary input.
Junior, in-band, single-component offers. A new-grad role at the band midpoint with no competing-offer signal does not need this prep. The Skill is overkill for offers where the recruiter’s standard template already does the job.
Setup
Drop the Skill. Place the contents of the artifact bundle into your Claude Code skills directory at .claude/skills/offer-prep/. The bundle contains SKILL.md plus three reference files under references/.
Replace the template references with your real bands and rules. The Skill is unbounded without them.
references/1-comp-band-template.md — split into one file per role family (Engineering, GTM, Product, etc.) and document floor / midpoint / ceiling per level for base, bonus, equity, and signing. Document your geographic adjustment table and your signing-bonus policy. Document the internal-equity guardrail percentage.
references/2-competing-offer-evidence.md — keep the format as the recruiter-facing template. The recruiter fills it in per candidate before invoking the Skill.
references/3-escalation-criteria.md — replace the REPLACE % placeholders with your actual thresholds (above-band, equity stretch, internal-equity breach, pay-equity-pattern lookback window) and document who sits on the comp committee, what the SLA is, and where decisions are logged.
Test on closed offers. Run the Skill on five recent offers whose prep already happened (extended, accepted or declined, far enough in the past that you have outcome data). Compare the Skill’s recommendation to what the team actually offered. The point is not “the Skill matched” — it is identifying the cases where the Skill would have flagged a comp-committee escalation that the team skipped, or recommended a different placement than the team chose. Tune the bands and thresholds based on what you find.
What the Skill actually does
The method runs six sub-tasks in fixed order. The order matters — the comp-band check in step 1 gates whether steps 2-5 produce a recommendation at all.
Pull the comp band first. Loading the band before reading anything about the candidate avoids anchoring bias toward whatever the candidate said they wanted. If the loop signal points outside the band, the brief escalates rather than fitting a story to a predetermined number.
Read the interview signal. The Skill extracts level calibration from the debrief, stated motivations from the recruiter and HM screens, and risk signals (commute, equity-vs-cash preference, role scope ambiguity, manager-fit anxiety). If the loop did not calibrate level — fewer than four interviewers, mixed signal — the Skill surfaces that as a blocker rather than guessing midpoint.
Factor competing offers explicitly. Each competing offer is classified as verified (offer letter seen or third-party confirmation), claimed-credible (specifics match seniority and the named company’s known band), or claimed-unverified (vague mention, no specifics). Unverified claims never drive a recommendation outside the band. The classification is visible in the rationale so the team decides how much weight to give it.
Recommend offer composition. Place base within the band based on level calibration and competing-offer weight. Place equity using the company’s standard grant for the level unless the loop or competing offer justifies a stretch. Place signing only if there is a specific reason (relocation, unvested-equity bridging, comp gap that base cannot close without breaking internal equity). Compute Year-1 cash, Year-1 plus annualized equity, and equity at the most-recent 409a or last-round price.
Draft anticipated negotiation and closing. For each likely pushback (drawn from interview signal plus competing offers), name the specific likely push, the recommended response, and the walk-away threshold. The closing strategy names what to lead with, what to address proactively, what timing pressure to apply or relieve, and what role the hiring manager plays in the call.
Set escalation flag. Run the recommendation through the escalation criteria. If any hard trigger fires (above-band base, above-band equity, above-policy signing, internal-equity breach, outside posted pay range, pay-equity pattern risk), set escalation: comp-committee, list the triggered criteria, and stop. Soft triggers (split level calibration, claimed-credible competing offer, comp-priority candidate at midpoint) flag but do not block.
A single offer-prep run reads the candidate’s interview record (typically 5K-15K tokens of debrief notes and screen transcripts), the comp band file for the role family (1K-3K tokens), and the two evidence/escalation templates (1K tokens combined). Output is a 1K-2K-token brief. With Claude Sonnet 4.6 at current pricing, a single prep lands in the 3-8 cent range — measurably less than one minute of a senior recruiter’s loaded cost.
Time saved per recruiter is the larger number. Recruiters running the Skill before senior offers report cutting offer-prep time from 45-60 minutes (gathering debrief notes, building a comp recommendation in a spreadsheet, drafting negotiation scenarios in a doc) to 15-20 minutes (reviewing the brief, validating the competing-offer evidence, deciding whether to escalate). On a recruiter carrying 8-12 senior requisitions, that is roughly 4-6 hours per week reclaimed.
The bands and thresholds in the reference files are the load-bearing investment, not the Skill itself. Plan on 3-5 hours from a comp partner to do the initial fill, and 30 minutes per quarter to refresh.
Success metric
Watch offer acceptance rate at senior levels (L5+ IC, M4+ manager) over a rolling 90-day window. Mature programs report a 10-20 percentage-point improvement at senior levels once structured offer prep replaces ad-hoc prep, with most of the gain coming from candidates who would have declined over a closeable objection (commute, equity preference, comp-committee approval timing) that the brief surfaced and addressed.
A second metric to watch: the share of offers that triggered comp-committee escalation but were declined by committee. Above roughly 20-30 percent decline rate, the bands or thresholds in the reference files are mis-calibrated — recruiters are spending committee time on cases that should never have escalated, or the bands need to widen.
vs alternatives
Manual recruiter math. A spreadsheet plus the comp band PDF works. It scales poorly: every recruiter builds a slightly different recommendation logic, competing-offer claims drift into anchors without verification classification, and pay-equity patterns are invisible until an audit surfaces them. The Skill makes the logic explicit and the escalation behaviour consistent across recruiters.
Ashby and Greenhouse comp tools.Ashby and Greenhouse both ship offer-management modules with band enforcement and approval workflows. They handle the approval-routing layer well — they do not produce a candidate-specific brief that reasons over interview signal, competing-offer evidence, and closing strategy. Use the ATS module for routing and audit; use the Skill for the brief that feeds the routing.
Comp committee deliberation on every senior offer. Sending every senior offer to comp committee burns the committee’s time on in-band cases that do not need their attention. The Skill’s escalation logic routes only the cases that genuinely need committee judgment, leaving the rest to recruiter-and-HM approval on the brief alone.
Pave or Carta market-data tools alone. Market data is an input to the band, not a substitute for a candidate-specific brief. Loading market data without a structured method to combine it with interview signal and competing-offer classification produces the failure mode this Skill is designed to prevent — recruiters citing market percentiles to justify above-band offers that the internal band does not support.
Watch-outs
Pay-equity drift. Repeated above-midpoint offers concentrated in one demographic pattern accumulate into pay-equity exposure even when each individual offer is defensible. Guard: the brief includes a pay-equity-check block listing the last five offers at the same level plus geo and their band-position. If the new recommendation would extend a pattern, the brief sets escalation: comp-committee regardless of size.
Jurisdictional pay-disclosure laws. Posted-pay-range laws require the offer to fall within the posted range. Guard: the posted_range input is required for those jurisdictions. If missing, the Skill refuses to produce a number and asks the recruiter to confirm the posted range first.
Unverified competing-offer claims. Candidates sometimes inflate or invent competing offers; recruiters sometimes let those claims drive escalation. Guard: every competing-offer entry is classified per the verification rules in references/2-competing-offer-evidence.md, and unverified claims never drive a recommendation outside band.
Stale comp bands. A Skill bounded by 18-month-old bands produces 18-month-old recommendations. Guard: refresh the reference files quarterly; the templates include a last reviewed field the brief surfaces if it is older than the refresh cadence.
Don’t surface protected-class signals. Negotiation strategy must not consider candidate demographics or current-employer pay history. Guard: the method reads only the interview record, the comp band, and the explicit competing-offer evidence — it does not request or accept current-salary or demographic fields.
Stack
This workflow sits in the recruiting vertical, typically alongside Ashby or Greenhouse as the system of record for the interview loop and offer-approval routing, Claude Code as the runtime for the Skill, and optionally Pave or Carta as the market-data feed for the quarterly band refresh. See the recruiting workflows index for related prep artefacts.
---
name: offer-prep
description: Produce an offer-prep brief the recruiter takes into the offer call. Reads the candidate's interview record, the role's internal comp band, and any competing-offer signal, then drafts a recommended offer composition with rationale, anticipated negotiation, and escalation flags. Replaces ad-hoc "we'll figure it out when we get there" offer prep.
---
# Offer prep
## When to invoke
Invoke before the recruiter opens the offer conversation with a candidate, once the hiring manager has signed off "yes, we want to make an offer to this person." Typical use cases: senior+ IC roles, all manager+ roles, any role where the band has more than 15% spread between the floor and ceiling, any role where a competing offer signal has surfaced in the loop.
Do NOT invoke this skill for:
- **Auto-extending offers.** The output is a brief for a human to review and decide on, not a draft to send. The recruiter and hiring manager (and where required, the comp committee) approve before any number reaches the candidate.
- **Customer-facing or candidate-facing comms about competing offers.** This skill reasons about competing-offer signal internally. It does not draft messages to send to the candidate that reference, validate, or counter a competing offer — that is a recruiter judgment call.
- **Replacing the comp committee.** For any recommendation that lands above the published band, outside posted-pay-range jurisdictions, or that creates a new internal-equity exception, the brief sets `escalation: comp-committee` and stops. It does not pre-decide what the committee should approve.
## Inputs
- Required: `candidate_context` — path to or pasted contents of the candidate's interview record (Ashby/Greenhouse/Lever export, debrief notes, scorecards, recruiter-screen and hiring-manager-screen notes).
- Required: `role` — role title, level, and team, plus a path to the comp band for that level (see `references/1-comp-band-template.md`).
- Required: `comp_band` — the role's internal salary range, equity range, bonus structure, signing-bonus policy, and any geographic adjustment table.
- Optional: `market_data` — Levels.fyi, Pave, or Carta benchmarks for the role + level + geo. If omitted, the brief uses only the internal band and flags "market context not loaded."
- Optional: `competing_offers` — what the candidate has said about other processes (see `references/2-competing-offer-evidence.md`). Free-form OK, but the brief downgrades unverified claims (see Watch-outs).
- Optional: `posted_range` — the salary range posted on the job ad, if any. Required for jurisdictions with pay-disclosure laws (see Watch-outs).
## Reference files
Always read the following from `references/` before generating the brief. Without them, the recommendation is a guess.
- `references/1-comp-band-template.md` — the template for documenting a role's internal comp band. Replace the template's contents with your real bands per role + level. The skill's recommendation is bounded by this file.
- `references/2-competing-offer-evidence.md` — the format for capturing what the candidate has actually said about other offers, what is verified vs. claimed, and what the recruiter has done to validate it.
- `references/3-escalation-criteria.md` — the rules for when the brief sets `escalation: comp-committee` instead of recommending a number.
## Method
Run these six sub-tasks in order. Do not parallelize — the comp-band check in step 1 gates whether steps 2-5 produce a recommendation at all.
### 1. Pull the comp band first
Load `comp_band` for the role + level + geo before reading anything else about the candidate. Why first: it bounds the entire recommendation. If the candidate's signal points outside the band, the brief sets `escalation: comp-committee` immediately rather than fitting a story to a predetermined number. Reading the candidate first creates anchoring bias toward whatever the candidate said they wanted.
Output of this step: the floor, midpoint, and ceiling for base, bonus target, equity, and signing — plus any geographic adjustment factor.
### 2. Read the interview signal
From the candidate's interview record, extract:
- Level signal — did the loop calibrate the candidate at the role's level, above, or below? Cite the debrief.
- Stated motivations — what the candidate said matters about the role, compensation, team, location, growth. Cite the recruiter-screen and hiring-manager-screen notes.
- Risk signals — anything in the loop that suggests the offer needs to address a specific concern (commute, equity-vs-cash preference, role scope ambiguity, manager-fit anxiety).
If the loop did not calibrate level (e.g. mixed signal, fewer than 4 interviewers), surface that as a blocker rather than guessing a midpoint.
### 3. Factor competing offers explicitly
If `competing_offers` is provided, classify each:
- **Verified** — recruiter has seen the offer letter or has direct third-party confirmation. Treat as a real anchor.
- **Claimed-credible** — candidate stated specifics (company, role, comp numbers) that match the candidate's seniority and the named company's known band. Treat as soft anchor; flag for verification.
- **Claimed-unverified** — candidate mentioned "I have other things going on" or named a company without specifics. Do not anchor against this. Surface it but recommend ignoring for sizing purposes.
Why factor explicitly: the failure mode is recruiters letting unverified claims drive comp escalation. The brief makes the verification status visible in the rationale so the comp committee (or recruiter+HM) decides how much weight to give it.
### 4. Recommend offer composition
Using the band (step 1), the level signal (step 2), and the competing-offer weight (step 3):
- Place base within the band — typically band-midpoint for at-level candidates, above-midpoint for top-of-band loop calibration, at-floor only with explicit rationale.
- Place equity — bias toward the company's standard grant for the level unless the loop or competing offer justifies a stretch.
- Place signing — only if there's a specific reason (relocation, leaving unvested equity behind, bridging a comp gap that base can't close without breaking internal equity).
- Compute total Year-1 cash, Year-1 plus equity-grant-divided-by-vest, and equity at the company's most-recent 409a or last-round price.
### 5. Draft anticipated negotiation and closing
For each likely candidate pushback (drawn from interview signal + competing offers), write:
- The likely push (specific, citing the source).
- The recommended response (what the recruiter says).
- The walk-away threshold (what number or term the team will not exceed).
For the closing strategy: what to lead with for this candidate, what to address proactively, what timing pressure to apply or relieve, what role the hiring manager should play in the call.
### 6. Set escalation flag and "needs comp-committee review" fallback
Run the recommendation through `references/3-escalation-criteria.md`. If any criterion fires, set `escalation: comp-committee` in the output, list the criteria that fired, and stop. Do not soften the recommendation to avoid escalation.
Why a fallback rather than a forced recommendation: forcing a within-band number when the candidate signal is genuinely above-band trains the team to ignore the brief. The escalation path is the trustworthy behavior.
## Output format
```markdown
# Offer prep — <Candidate name> for <Role>, <Level>
escalation: <none | comp-committee>
escalation-reasons: <empty | bulleted list of triggered criteria>
## Recommended offer
- Base: $<X> (band: $<floor>–$<ceiling>, midpoint $<mid>)
- Bonus target: <Y>%
- Equity: <Z> RSUs / options, <vest> vest
- Signing: $<W> (reason: <relocation | unvested-equity-bridge | none>)
- Start date: <target>
- Year 1 cash: $<X + bonus-at-target + signing>
- Year 1 + equity-annualized: $<above + equity/vest-years>
## Why this composition
- Level calibration: <at-level | above | below>, source: <debrief link>
- Stated motivations: <bulleted, with source notes>
- Competing-offer weight: <none | verified | claimed-credible | claimed-unverified>
## Anticipated negotiation
- Likely push: <specific>
- Source: <interview note or competing-offer record>
- Recommended response: <specific>
- Walk-away: <number or term>
## Closing strategy
- Lead with: <what to emphasize>
- Address proactively: <concerns from loop>
- Timing: <pressure to apply or relieve, with reason>
- Hiring manager role: <what they do on the call>
## Open questions for the team
- <Anything the brief cannot resolve>
## Pay-disclosure compliance
- Posted range: $<floor>–$<ceiling> (jurisdiction: <state/country>)
- Recommendation within posted range: <yes | NO — escalate>
```
## Watch-outs
- **Pay-equity drift.** Repeated above-midpoint offers for one demographic pattern (e.g. external hires vs. internal promotes, one gender, one region) accumulate into pay-equity exposure even when each individual offer is defensible. Guard: the brief includes a `pay-equity-check` block that lists the last five offers at the same level + geo and their band-position. If the new recommendation would extend a pattern, the brief sets `escalation: comp-committee` regardless of size.
- **Jurisdictional pay-disclosure laws.** In states/countries with posted-pay-range laws (CA, CO, NY, WA, IL, etc.), the offer must fall within the posted range. Guard: the `posted_range` input is required for those jurisdictions; if missing, the brief refuses to produce a number and instead asks the recruiter to confirm the posted range.
- **Unverified competing-offer claims.** Candidates sometimes inflate or invent competing offers. Guard: every competing-offer entry is classified verified / claimed-credible / claimed-unverified per step 3, and the rationale section makes the classification visible so the team decides how much weight to give it. Unverified claims never drive a recommendation outside the band.
- **Protected-class proxies.** Negotiation strategy must not consider candidate demographics, current-employer pay history (illegal to ask in many jurisdictions), or proxies for either. Guard: the method reads only the interview record, the comp band, and the explicit `competing_offers` input — it does not request or accept current-salary or demographic fields.
- **Don't auto-extend.** The brief produces a recommendation. Humans approve and extend. Guard: the output never includes recipient email, signature, or send-ready offer-letter language.
# Comp band — TEMPLATE
> Replace this template's contents with your real comp bands per role + level
> + geo. The offer-prep skill reads this on every run; without your real
> bands, the recommendation is unbounded and the escalation logic in
> `3-escalation-criteria.md` cannot fire correctly.
## How to use
One file per role family (e.g. `eng-comp-band.md`, `gtm-comp-band.md`, `product-comp-band.md`) lives in your private fork of the references directory. The skill loads the relevant file based on the `role` input. Each file follows the structure below.
## Role family: REPLACE_ME (e.g. Engineering)
### Level matrix
| Level | Title pattern | Band midpoint base | Equity tier |
|---------|---------------------------|--------------------|-------------|
| L3 | Software Engineer | $REPLACE | T1 |
| L4 | Senior Software Engineer | $REPLACE | T2 |
| L5 | Staff Software Engineer | $REPLACE | T3 |
| L6 | Principal | $REPLACE | T4 |
| M4 | Engineering Manager | $REPLACE | T2 |
| M5 | Senior Engineering Manager | $REPLACE | T3 |
### Per-level bands
For each level, document floor / midpoint / ceiling. The skill uses these as hard bounds. Above-ceiling recommendations trigger `escalation: comp-committee`.
#### L4 — Senior Software Engineer (example)
| Component | Floor | Midpoint | Ceiling |
|-----------------|--------------|--------------|--------------|
| Base | $REPLACE | $REPLACE | $REPLACE |
| Bonus target | REPLACE % | REPLACE % | REPLACE % |
| Equity (RSUs) | REPLACE | REPLACE | REPLACE |
| Signing maximum | $REPLACE | — | $REPLACE |
Vest schedule: REPLACE (e.g. 4-year, 25/25/25/25, 1-year cliff).
Equity priced at: REPLACE (e.g. last-round preferred, current 409a).
#### L5 — Staff Software Engineer
(repeat structure)
### Geographic adjustment table
| Geo | Adjustment factor |
|---------------------|-------------------|
| US Tier 1 (SF/NYC) | 1.00 |
| US Tier 2 | REPLACE |
| US Tier 3 / remote | REPLACE |
| EU Tier 1 (London) | REPLACE |
| EU Tier 2 | REPLACE |
| LATAM remote | REPLACE |
Apply the factor to base. Bonus target and equity are typically NOT geo-adjusted — confirm with your comp framework.
### Signing-bonus policy
When signing is allowed, and the maximum:
- Relocation bridging: up to $REPLACE, repayable on REPLACE schedule.
- Unvested-equity bridging: up to estimated value of REPLACE months of unvested grant at prior employer. Requires documentation.
- Pure comp-gap closing without one of the above reasons: NOT ALLOWED.
### Internal-equity guardrail
If the recommendation would place the candidate above any current employee at the same level + geo by more than REPLACE %, the brief sets `escalation: comp-committee` regardless of band position.
### Last reviewed
REPLACE_DATE — refresh whenever bands change so the brief's recommendation is bounded by current numbers.
# Competing-offer evidence — TEMPLATE
> Capture what the candidate has actually said about other offers, what the
> recruiter has done to validate it, and the resulting verification class.
> The offer-prep skill reads this format and assigns weight per the rules
> in `SKILL.md` step 3.
## Why this matters
Recruiters routinely let unverified competing-offer claims drive comp escalation. That trains candidates to claim more and trains the team to spend above-band on signal that may not exist. This template forces the classification to be explicit so the comp committee or recruiter+HM decides how much weight to give each entry.
## Format
One block per claimed competing offer.
### Competing offer — REPLACE_COMPANY_NAME
- **Source of claim**: where the candidate raised it (recruiter screen on REPLACE_DATE, debrief, post-loop email, etc.)
- **Specifics provided**:
- Company: REPLACE (or "not disclosed")
- Role: REPLACE (or "not disclosed")
- Stage of process: REPLACE (e.g. "verbal offer", "final round", "early")
- Comp numbers cited: REPLACE (base, equity, signing — or "not disclosed")
- Decision deadline cited: REPLACE
- **Verification attempted**:
- Offer letter seen: yes / no
- Third-party confirmation (e.g. mutual contact): yes / no, with detail
- Sense-check against the named company's known band: matches / above / below
- **Verification class** (pick one):
- `verified` — offer letter seen or direct third-party confirmation
- `claimed-credible` — specifics match seniority and named company's known band
- `claimed-unverified` — vague mention, no specifics, no validation possible
- **Weight assigned by skill**: derived from class above. The skill never upgrades a class — only the recruiter can mark something as `verified` after seeing the document.
## Multiple offers
If the candidate has multiple competing offers, repeat the block per offer. The skill will use the highest-weighted entry as the anchor. Two `claimed-credible` offers do not aggregate into a `verified` anchor — they remain `claimed-credible` individually.
## What NOT to capture here
- Current-salary numbers from the candidate's existing employer. Asking for these is illegal in many US states and several EU jurisdictions. The brief does not use current-salary anchoring under any circumstance.
- Demographic information about the candidate.
- Information from background-check or reference-call sources — those belong in their own pipeline, not in offer-prep evidence.
## Last reviewed
REPLACE_DATE
# Escalation criteria — TEMPLATE
> The offer-prep skill runs the proposed recommendation through these
> criteria as the last step. If any fire, the brief sets
> `escalation: comp-committee`, lists the triggered criteria, and stops.
> Do not soften a recommendation to avoid escalation — that defeats the
> purpose of the rule.
## Hard escalation triggers
Any single trigger sets `escalation: comp-committee`.
1. **Above-band base.** Recommended base exceeds the level's ceiling in `1-comp-band-template.md`.
2. **Above-band equity.** Recommended equity grant exceeds the level's equity ceiling, or stretches more than REPLACE % above the standard grant for the level.
3. **Above-policy signing.** Recommended signing exceeds the maximum in the signing-bonus policy, or falls outside the allowed reasons (relocation, unvested-equity bridging).
4. **Internal-equity breach.** Recommendation would place the new hire more than REPLACE % above any current employee at the same level + geo (per the internal-equity guardrail).
5. **Outside posted pay range.** Recommendation falls outside the `posted_range` for any jurisdiction with pay-disclosure laws (CA, CO, NY, WA, IL, and others — confirm with your legal team on a current basis).
6. **Pay-equity pattern risk.** The new recommendation would extend a pattern of above-midpoint offers within one demographic dimension over the last REPLACE offers at the same level + geo.
## Soft triggers — flag but do not block
These do not force comp-committee escalation, but the brief surfaces them in `escalation-reasons` for visibility.
- Loop calibration disagreement — the level signal from the debrief is split (e.g. 2 hire-at-level, 2 hire-above-level). The brief recommends band-midpoint and flags the split.
- Competing-offer claim is `claimed-credible` and would push the recommendation above midpoint. The brief surfaces the offer's verification status and asks the team to validate before relying on it.
- Candidate stated motivations include "comp is my top priority" plus the recommendation is at or below midpoint. The brief flags the acceptance-rate risk.
## What "comp-committee review" means in this template
Replace this section with your team's actual escalation path. Typical shape:
- Submit the brief plus the triggered criteria to the comp committee (named members: REPLACE).
- Committee SLA: REPLACE business days.
- Committee may approve as-recommended, approve with modifications, or decline (in which case the recruiter returns to the candidate with the in-band offer or a "we cannot proceed" message).
- Committee decisions are logged in REPLACE (e.g. an Ashby comment, a Notion log) for pay-equity audit purposes.
## Last reviewed
REPLACE_DATE
