Most Job Seekers Skip Negotiation — and Pay a High Price

Even in lucrative fields, candidates leave money on the table by taking the first offer

Job candidates who negotiate their compensation prior to hiring usually walk away with noticeably higher salaries, better benefits or both, according to a long-established consensus of research. Yet well over half of job seekers still just accept the initial offer. 

A working paper by Harvard’s Zoe B. Cullen, Brown’s Bobak Pakzad-Hurson and UCLA Anderson’s Ricardo Perez-Truglia suggests a simple way to help get over this reluctance to negotiate the terms of our livelihoods. Giving candidates some data about the normalcy and high success rate of compensation negotiations often encourages them to make counteroffers. And they collect significantly better compensation as a result. 

The researchers recruited about 3,858 tech job seekers on levels.fyi to participate in separate experiments between May 25, 2023, and Feb.10, 2025. The sample averaged 31 years in age; seven years’ work experience; and annual compensation between $217,000 and $221,000. About 20% were women. Each participant was initially asked about past experience and beliefs around salary negotiations.

One of the treatments, called the encouragement treatment, presented subjects with a simple message nudging them to negotiate the terms of future offers. The message included advice such as “companies expect you to negotiate” and “don’t feel guilty about negotiating.” It also provided factual information from a survey conducted by Fidelity Investments. About 42% of job candidates counter initial offers, the message read, and about 85% of them got at least some of what they asked for. Finally, the message explained how money left on the table when a new offer is not negotiated significantly depresses pay over the course of a career.

$27,000 a Year for the Taking

The group was surveyed again some months later. By then, about 82% (1,336 participants in this “encouragement” treatment group) had received at least one job offer. Some 61% of those countered their initial offer, compared with 54% of a control group that did not read the message. The individuals who countered experienced an average increase in compensation terms of about 12.45%. For the study’s sample, that percentage gain equates to an average $27,000 annually over the initial offer. 

Returns to these negotiations likely would have been higher if the tech job market had been stronger, the researchers suggest. Tech job postings were just beginning to decline when participants completed the surveys.

Should You Be Afraid to Counter?

The study notes that some participants explicitly expressed fears of backlash, such as losing a job offer by trying to negotiate more. A few subjects had already experienced it. About 40% of offers in the sample were made verbally, “allowing employers to withhold written offers without formally retracting them” if they choose, the researchers note. The study argues that some individuals refrain from negotiating because they perceive the risks to be much higher than they actually are.

The U.S. job market is less robust today than it was during the study period — especially in the tech sector — and there are reports of employers playing hardball. As far back as May 2025, recruiters noticed a rise in employers characterizing their first offer as “best and final” to stave off negotiations, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal. In the past, recruiters considered that practice highly unusual. The trend coincided with a large rise in the percentage of recent hires who took the first offer without negotiating.

Research tends to treat offer withdrawals during negotiations as very rare, focusing instead on the lost benefits of not negotiating. According to a 2024 literature review of several studies around the subject, researchers found that managers withdrew offers after counters far, far less often than job candidates believe they do.

In an email exchange, Perez-Truglia says that “depending on the strength of the job market, the potential benefits (and risks) of negotiating compensation may rise or fall.” Job candidates should calibrate the advice suggested by the study accordingly, he suggests.

Negotiation Coaching?

The study also posits that insecurities about personal negotiating skills might scare job seekers away from countering initial offers. In a separate experiment, subjects were asked about their willingness to pay for coaching specifically aimed at helping improve their salary negotiating skills. Then they were offered 80% discounts for this coaching through levels.fyi, which typically sells the training in packages costing $1,250 or $2,450.

There were few takers, and, as a result, the discount produced no statistically meaningful increases in negotiation attempts. This evidence suggests that individuals are not refraining from negotiating because they feel they lack the necessary negotiation skills. 

Differences by Gender

Women, who on average get less compensation than men for similar jobs, seemed to benefit from both treatments more than men. The encouragement treatment appeared to prompt a 16.8% rise in women’s negotiating attempts and successful raises. They also were more likely to take up the coaching and go on to make successful counteroffers. As more women negotiated their offers, the pay gap between men and women in the study narrowed. However, the researchers note that the sample size of women in the study is small, as they make up just 20% of the sample, and thus they caution against drawing strong conclusions.