The ‘Best and Final’ Bluff: Why Verbal Offers Are the Tell That You CAN Still Negotiate

Here’s a number that should change how you hear the words “best and final”: about 40% of job offers in a major NBER study were made verbally, which let employers withhold a written offer without ever formally taking it back. That’s not a courtesy. That’s a structural choice, and it cuts both ways.

Our read is simple. When an offer is spoken instead of signed, the employer is keeping the door open on purpose, and “best and final” is usually a verbal speed bump, not a wall. The UCLA Anderson Review writeup of the research makes the dynamic hard to ignore once you see it, and it’s worth understanding before you ever reply to one. If you’ve never thought about how to negotiate salary over email, the verbal-versus-written distinction is where the leverage actually lives.

The 40% That Quietly Hands You Power

The headline stat from the NBER paper isn’t the salary bump. It’s that around 40% of offers arrived verbally, which the researchers note lets employers “withhold written offers without formally retracting them.”

Sit with what that means. A verbal offer is a draft the company hasn’t committed to paper, and a draft is editable by definition. You’re not asking them to break a contract. You’re asking them to finish writing one in your favor.

• Verbal means unsigned. There’s no document locking the number in, which is exactly why employers can move it up without process or paperwork.
• Unsigned means open. The same flexibility that protects the employer protects your right to counter before anything is final.
• “Final” is a word, not a wall. If the offer were truly closed, you’d already have a signed agreement in your inbox, not a phone call.

Interview Guys Take: When a company delivers a number out loud and calls it final, they’re doing two contradictory things at once: keeping their own options open while telling you yours are closed. That asymmetry is the whole game. The verbal format is the tell.

What Counters Actually Earn

The payoff data is blunt. Among tech job seekers in the study who countered their initial offer, compensation rose by an average of 12.45%, which worked out to roughly $27,000 more per year in that sample.

And the broader pattern holds even in a tougher market. In ZipRecruiter’s Q4 2025 New Hires Survey, only 30.4% of new hires negotiated, yet 90.2% of those who did walked away with some additional benefit and about 69% got better base pay.

• 12.45% average lift for tech candidates who countered, per the NBER research, equal to about $27,000 a year in that sample.
• 90.2% success rate among Q4 2025 negotiators who asked for something, even in a cooler hiring climate.
• 85% partial wins in a Fidelity survey the researchers cited, where roughly 85% of those who countered got at least some of what they asked for.

Why Most People Still Say Yes Too Fast

Despite decades of research showing negotiation pays, well over half of job seekers just accept the first offer. In ZipRecruiter’s Q1 2025 data, the negotiation rate sat at only 31%, and signing bonuses had nearly halved to 20% from 43% the prior quarter.

The reason isn’t laziness. It’s belief. People assume the number is fixed, and “best and final” feeds that assumption directly. The same nerves that make a tough behavioral question hard, like the ones you face in final interview questions, follow you straight into the offer conversation.

Interview Guys Take: The most striking finding in the study wasn’t about technique. The “encouragement” group got a plain message, “companies expect you to negotiate,” and their counter rate jumped from 54% to 61%. Nobody taught them a script. Someone just told them the wall was a curtain. That’s why “best and final” works as a tactic: it’s a belief-suppression tool, and knowing that is most of the cure.

The Permission Trap

Harvard’s negotiation experts give one piece of advice that maps perfectly onto verbal offers: never ask if an offer is negotiable, just start negotiating. Asking permission invites a “no” and hands the other side an exit.

The Harvard Program on Negotiation frames any offer as an opening bid, which is exactly the wrong way to hear “best and final” and respond with “is that really final?” The moment you ask, you’ve validated the bluff.

• Don’t ask if it’s negotiable. Treat the number as a starting point and respond with your counter, not a question about whether you’re allowed to counter.
• Silence is a tool. One widely shared case involved a candidate offered 15% below what was discussed who simply went quiet, and the recruiter came back with $12,000 more.
• Sunk cost favors you. After weeks of interviews, the employer has invested heavily in choosing you, and walking away over a reasonable counter is expensive for them too.

When ‘Final’ Might Actually Be Final

Now the honest part. The market in late 2025 looked nothing like a candidate’s playground, and that matters.

ZipRecruiter’s own labor economist noted the drop in negotiation “could reflect both reduced leverage in a slower market and a strategic calculation by workers who fear that pushing too hard might cost them an opportunity.” Lead NBER researcher Ricardo Perez-Truglia said candidates should “calibrate the advice suggested by the study accordingly.”

• Slower markets shrink flex. In a genuine employer’s market, some “best and final” offers really are the ceiling, not a bluff.
• Withdrawal risk is real but rare. The study noted some participants feared losing offers by negotiating, and a few had actually experienced it. Verbal offers give you no written protection if you overreach.
• The sample skews high. Median comp in the study ran around $219,000, with many candidates at Google, Meta, and Apple, where negotiation is normalized and skills are scarce.

Interview Guys Take: The 40% verbal-offer finding and the double-digit gains are most actionable for knowledge workers with scarce skills and high switching costs. If you’re in a high-turnover, lower-wage role where employer power is more lopsided, “best and final” can carry more weight. Read your own leverage before you read the data.

How To Hear a Verbal Offer Without Flinching

You don’t need a clever script. You need to register the format and respond like the number is a draft, because it usually is.

If you’re early in your career and feel like you have no chips to play, the research is still on your side. Plenty of people land raises with little tenure, and our breakdown of how to negotiate salary with zero experience leans on exactly this belief-updating idea.

• Confirm the format. A verbal offer signals the deal isn’t papered yet, which is your window to counter before anything gets signed.
• Counter, don’t query. State the number you want with a brief reason instead of asking whether you’re allowed to ask.
• Get it in writing after. Once you’ve reached agreement, push to convert the verbal terms into a written offer so the flexibility stops working against you.

The Bigger Picture for Your Next Move

This isn’t only about one paycheck. The number you anchor at the start follows you through raises, future offers, and the next role’s expectations.

If you’re eyeing a pivot, the negotiation muscle matters even more, because new fields often start you near a floor. Our guide to the fastest career changes you can make in 6 months or less pairs well with treating every verbal offer as an opening bid rather than a verdict.

And before you even reach the offer stage, the way you frame your story sets the tone. A confident answer to the “tell me about yourself” question signals you know your worth, which makes a later counter feel consistent rather than greedy.

The takeaway from the full NBER working paper isn’t that you should fight every offer to the death. It’s that the format of the offer is a signal, and “best and final” delivered out loud is frequently a tactic aimed at your belief, not your leverage.

Calibrate for your market, your role, and your risk tolerance, then respond to a verbal number like the editable draft it usually is. The same self-awareness that helps you decide whether to lean on automation in interviews, a question we dug into in can you pass a job interview without AI, applies here: know the tool being used on you, and it loses most of its power.