Overview

Signature Methods in Eightfold determine how candidates receive and sign offer letters—digitally or manually—across both the Candidate Portal (PCS) and email-based delivery. Selecting the right combination of delivery and signature method helps teams balance speed, compliance, and candidate convenience.

This capability gives organizations flexibility to support native e-signing, DocuSign workflows, Adobe Sign workflows, and wet signatures, while ensuring all signed offers are ultimately captured and tracked in Eightfold.

Key benefits

For recruiters and coordinators

• Flexible offer delivery — Send offers through PCS or email based on candidate and workflow needs.
  
• Multiple signing options — Support Eightfold eSign, DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or wet signatures
  
• Centralized record-keeping — Ensure signed offers can be uploaded and stored in Eightfold

For candidates

• Choice in how they sign — Sign offers digitally or manually depending on the method selected.
  
• Familiar signing experience — Use DocuSign directly via email or embedded signing, or sign through an embedded Adobe Sign experience if your organization uses Adobe Sign.
  
• Clear instructions — Guided signing or upload experience based on how the offer is sent.

For your organization

• Compliance and traceability — Capture audit details for digital signatures and maintain signed copies for manual workflows.
  
• Enterprise-grade security — Use DocuSign with two-factor authentication when required. — Connect an Adobe Sign account your organization already owns, often bundled with a broader Adobe enterprise suite, instead of adopting a separate e-sign vendor.

Core concepts

Offer delivery method

How the offer is sent to the candidate:

• Candidate Portal (PCS)
  
• Email

The delivery method influences where the signing experience happens.

Signature method

The mechanism used to capture the candidate's signature:

• Eightfold-hosted eSign
  
• DocuSign
• Adobe Sign
  
• Manual (wet) signature

Embedded vs external signing

Some digital signature methods allow candidates to sign directly within an Eightfold page, while others redirect candidates to an external signing experience.

Key concept: Offer delivery (PCS vs email) and signature method are related but distinct choices—and together they determine where and how signing occurs.

How it works

Once an offer is approved, recruiters choose how to send the offer and which signature method to use. Together, these determine the candidate's signing experience.

Eightfold-hosted eSign

• Available when the offer is sent through PCS
  
• Candidates sign directly within PCS
  
• Eightfold captures signer IP address and timestamp for audit purposes
  
• No external tools or accounts required

DocuSign (Native integration)

DocuSign can be used regardless of whether the offer is sent via PCS or email.

DocuSign supports three signing experiences:

• DocuSign email flow — Candidates receive a DocuSign email and sign directly on DocuSign
  
• Embedded DocuSign — Candidates receive an email from eightfold, sign through an embedded DocuSign experience within an Eightfold page
  
• Career Site — Candidates are redirected to the career site page where they can sign-in to their account and sign the document

Customers can configure DocuSign in two ways:

• Admin-controlled DocuSign account
  
• Per-user DocuSign setup

Two-factor authentication is supported for DocuSign to meet security and compliance requirements.

Adobe Sign (Native integration) (New section)

Adobe Sign is a "Bring Your Own" e-signature integration — customers connect their own existing Adobe Sign account, and recruiters send offer documents for signature through that account directly from Eightfold. A tenant can use either Adobe Sign or DocuSign as its native e-signing provider, not both at the same time. This integration is not available via the non-embedded email signing flow.

Sending an offer:

1. From the candidate's offer, the recruiter clicks Send Offer Letter and sets Signing Method to Adobe Sign — this routes the offer document to the connected Adobe Sign account instead of DocuSign or Eightfold's native eSign.
   
2. The candidate opens the offer from the Candidate Portal (PCS) and, after reviewing the offer document, clicks Accept — this redirects them into an embedded Adobe Acrobat Sign signing experience inside Eightfold, so they never leave the Eightfold page to sign.
   
3. The candidate agrees to Adobe's terms, clicks the highlighted signature field, draws their signature, and submits it. The offer status updates to Candidate Accepted / Pending Signature.
   
4. If the offer also requires an internal signer (for example, a hiring manager or the recruiter), that person signs the same way from their own view of the offer — clicking Sign Offer opens the same embedded Adobe Acrobat Sign experience for their signature field. Signers complete the document in a defined order, and progress is tracked per signer.
   
5. Once every signer has completed their signature, the offer status updates to Signed, and the fully executed, signed PDF is automatically stored and viewable on the candidate's Offer Documents tab — no manual upload required.

Manual (Wet) signature

• Career Site - Candidates download, sign manually, and upload the signed document directly in PCS

If the offer is not sent via PCS:

• Recruiters can send the offer offline through an eightfold email
  
• The signed document is returned to the recruiter by the candidate through email
  
• The recruiter uploads the signed offer back into Eightfold

Signature Methods are not designed for:

• Collecting signatures for non-offer documents (e.g., onboarding forms)
  
• Managing long-form legal contracts outside the offer process

Best practices

Align delivery and signing intentionally — Decide upfront whether PCS or email is the primary delivery channel and standardize signing methods accordingly.

Use PCS for wet signatures — Manual signatures should be handled through PCS whenever possible to reduce recruiter overhead.

Reserve DocuSign for compliance-heavy cases — Use DocuSign where authentication, auditability, or legal defensibility is required.

Train recruiters on fallback uploads — Ensure recruiters know how to upload signed documents when signing occurs outside PCS.

**Treat Adobe Sign as a DocuSign alternative, not an add-on** — choose it when your organization already has an Adobe Sign subscription, since a tenant can only have one native e-sign provider active at a time.

Pro tip: Many teams default to PCS + Eightfold eSign for most offers and selectively use DocuSign or wet signatures only when required—simplifying operations without sacrificing flexibility.

Frequently asked questions

Q: Can DocuSign be used without PCS? A: Yes. When offers are sent via email, candidates can sign through DocuSign email or an embedded DocuSign experience.

Q: Is wet signature available without PCS? A: Yes. If PCS is not used, recruiters must upload the signed document themselves.

Q: Where does signing happen when the offer is sent via email? A: Signing happens outside PCS—either on DocuSign/Eightfold hosted Docusign page or offline—depending on the selected signature method.

Q: Can I use Adobe Sign and DocuSign at the same time? A: No. A tenant can have only one native e-sign provider configured at a time — enabling Adobe Sign replaces DocuSign as the available option, it doesn't add to it.

Q: Can individual recruiters connect their own Adobe Sign account? A: Yes. Both flows are supported — an admin can connect a single Adobe Sign account for the whole organization (with all recruiters sending through that shared account), or an individual recruiter can connect their own Adobe Sign account for their own use.