For years, one of the most critical moments in compensation has been the job offer. Compensation teams would set ranges, hand them to recruiters, and step back. From there, recruiters and hiring managers worked out the final number.
The recruiter’s incentive is speed: close the candidate and move on. The manager’s incentive is preference: land “their” person. Both are understandable. But lurking underneath is a bigger responsibility: ensuring fairness and equity across the workforce.
And here’s the rub: the people making the offer decisions often don’t have visibility into the comparisons that matter. Pay equity isn’t just about where one new hire lands in a range, it’s about how they stack up against peers across teams, functions, and sometimes geographies. That context lives in Compensation, but it rarely makes it to the edge of decision-making.
That’s why we’ve added a new category to the CompTech Landscape: Offer Guidance.
These tools represent the next wave of AI-powered solutions designed to extend the reach of the compensation team into the offer process itself. They sit closer to the recruiter and hiring manager, providing real-time, contextual guidance when it matters most.
The promise:
The players in this space are moving fast, building integrations, and experimenting with how much context is “just enough.” It’s early, but the potential is clear: offers no longer need to be a blind spot. With Offer Guidance, compensation’s values - fairness, consistency, equity - can be built directly into the decision.
We’ll be watching this space closely.