Our best and final offer
Salary negotiation: Is it dead and gone?
FOR DECADES, THE process of landing a job has generally involved a delicate ritual to seal the deal: the salary negotiation. Price discovery in the white-collar job market has long worked based on this mechanism, with wages moving moderately over time as they were agreed upon in the negotiation phase.
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But like everything else in the job market, the old rules are beginning to break down in 2025, and analysts are starting to see the salary negotiation dying off and the “best and final offer” phenomenon rising in its place.
“According to both candidates and HR pros, more and more companies are presenting jobs with best and final pay offers right away,” reads a new report from organizational consulting firm Korn Ferry. The practice is growing out of the tech sector and starting to appear as a more common feature in professional hiring.
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“The goal is to end a negotiation before it starts, at a time when the job market leaves candidates with few options,” Korn Ferry’s report stated.
One reason this is happening is the positioning of employers, who appear significantly more anxious to close the deal quickly, and who are leveraging the perceived strength of their position in the labour market.
But there’s another factor to consider — pay transparency laws. Some research on pay transparency laws suggest they may have the effect of suppressing wage growth, partly because they push employers towards more standardized pay structures, and partly because as published ranges narrow, the potential movement in any negotiation shrinks. Whether or not it is always true, companies can now point to these laws and say they are being compliant, insisting that the package in front of a candidate is just standard procedure.
It’s questionable whether this is a sustainable long-term strategy, though. Employers may be taking advantage of a weak labour market now, but the days of businesses complaining about worker shortages and a lack of employee loyalty weren’t all that long ago, and it would probably be a mistake to think those days are never going to return.
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Korn Ferry’s report argues that businesses are taking a risk hiring talent in this fashion.
“To say [there is no room for negotiation] at the outset takes away from the perceived value of the individual,” said Korn Ferry’s Dennis Deans. Or as Kim Waller, Korn Ferry senior client partner, put it: “If I hear ‘My way or the highway,’ I might be looking at something else.” 
Kieran Delamont