How to answer the salary expectations question

Why the question is asked so early

It is a filter, not a negotiation. A recruiter has a band approved for the role and wants to know early whether you are inside it, because the most expensive thing in their week is running four interviews with someone they cannot afford.

That framing matters, because it tells you what a good answer does. A good answer keeps you in the process without fixing a number you will regret. It is not an attempt to win anything at this stage; there is nothing to win yet.

Work out a number before you need one

Decide your range when you are calm, not when a form is in front of you. You want three figures: what you would be pleased with, what you would accept, and the number below which you would say no. Write them down.

Research them from more than one source, because every source is biased in a different direction.

• Public salary bands, where they exist. Several countries and some large employers now publish them, and a posting with a band tells you exactly what the filter is.
• People doing the job, if you can ask. One honest conversation beats any aggregate.
• Aggregated sites, treated with suspicion. They skew towards whoever bothers to submit, and they rarely separate levels properly.
• What the employer is paying for adjacent roles you can see advertised, which is often the most reliable public signal.

When the form will not let you skip it

Many application forms require a number and reject text. If you must enter something, enter the top of your researched range rather than the middle. You can come down with a reason later; coming up without one is much harder.

If the field accepts text, a range works, and a range with a short qualification works better: state the band and add that it depends on the full package. That is true, and it signals that you are thinking about the role rather than only the figure.

When a recruiter asks on a call

The best first move is to ask for their band. It is a normal question, most recruiters have an answer, and the information is more useful to you than to them. Something as plain as asking what range has been approved for the role is enough.

If they will not say, give a range anchored on research rather than on your current salary, and add what it is based on. The reasoning is what keeps the number from sounding arbitrary.

Avoid naming your current salary where you reasonably can. In several places it is unlawful for an employer to ask, and everywhere it anchors the conversation to your last employer's view of your worth rather than this one's.

Remember the rest of the package

Base salary is the headline and often not the largest variable. Bonus structure, equity, pension or provident fund contributions, notice period, remote allowance and the number of paid days off can be worth more than the difference you are arguing over.

This is also where a stuck negotiation unsticks. An employer who genuinely cannot move the base can often move a start date, a review date, a title, or a learning budget, and those are worth asking for once the number is settled.